The Next Michael Burry (EP. 480)

8:54Ben Carlson:what i'm i'm a man of the people i still use an allen wrench to put together furniture i feel

8:59Michael Batnick:like you're saying that as if i am not mr allen wrench don't come to me with that you literally

9:06Ben Carlson:got one of our colleagues to put a hang up your that's different that requires that requires their skill and photos you will put together furniture all the time all right okay every day all right course it's locked so here's the thing i do feel like almost everyone thinks that the ai has, the ending has to be black or white. It has to be something on the extreme. Like we're getting 10 % GDP growth with all this productivity, or we're getting the biggest crash in history.

9:33Michael Batnick:Wait, you know what? Let's, let's, let's, let's plant our flag, Ben. We're team middle.

9:38Ben Carlson:We're team middle, right? We're team gray. So it's interesting because Torsten Slock had this new slide out that he released and he says, if AI succeeds, rates will be lower. If AI fails, rates will be lower. So he's one of the few people who's saying like, he's kind of bullish on bonds. So he says, listen, if it generates all this money, it'll be massively deflationary, which I still don't quite believe because of all the money they have to spend for these data centers. And if it doesn't work out, the bubble burst, the NASDAQ is down 50%, and then people go into bonds. So he's saying, regardless, bonds are in a great position.

10:09Ben Carlson:I just, I don't know that it has to be one of the extremes. And I think that's just what people kind of want to happen. Secretly, like we want to have this big bang, like this ending crescendo, whatever. And you just wonder, like, what if it just isn't that? And it's not going to be an extreme.

10:29Michael Batnick:Is this like an always feature of the stock market? It's just like waiting for the next chapter?

10:36Ben Carlson:I just don't know if we've been trained because of the dot-com bubble blowing up and because of the great financial crisis.

10:42Michael Batnick:We had Twin Peaks, and that scarred a generation of investors. Understandably so, of course.

10:48Ben Carlson:i i just i wonder if even if we get the ai bear market there will be an ai bear market at some point is it going to be a v-shaped bottom of course that that's the thing that would leave no one that you wouldn't be very satisfied with that outcome if you're an extreme person i say

11:04Michael Batnick:of course just kidding who knows all right um so kevin warsh did uh they did the jackson whole thing this week and i read his prepared remarks and uh i liked it i thought it was good did you

11:15Ben Carlson:I don't know. It seemed like the macro tourists were all happy that if he actually gave some forecasts and talked about the economy, I don't know. I still don't think it matters. You don't think what matters? He could have spoken in Latin and it wouldn't have mattered to the market. I don't think the Fed giving a forecast of the future is meaningful in any way.

11:35Michael Batnick:Well, he's not doing that. He's doing the opposite. All right. So, Ben, just let me read Kevin Warsh because obviously you're naive to the subject. You don't care and you're not listening. So let me read it. Capital and labor have combined to create the large language models at the heart of AI. Users buy tokens to gain access to the models. Reports put annualized token sales for the two leading labs alone at more than$100 billion, an increase of 500 plus percent from a year ago. The Fed watches all of this attentively. We recognize that AI is a new variable, potentially a new factor of production, that will have consequences for both the economy and the conduct of monetary policy.

12:07Michael Batnick:It opens some major lines of inquiry. Will the application of AI cause a significant sustained rise in productivity across the economy? And if so, when?

12:14Ben Carlson:I'm falling asleep. He looked at, it sounds like he used AI to write this. He's not saying anything new here that no one knows.

12:24Michael Batnick:Yeah, listen, I'm not Mr. Fed Watcher, but I feel like, I feel like you think you're like dropping a mic or something right now.

12:30Ben Carlson:I'm not dropping a mic. I'm just saying, what did he say here that no one is already, not contemplating?

12:36Michael Batnick:It's interesting to hear the head of the central bank talking about the state of the economy as AI, as it pertains to, Nah? Okay. You know just as much as we do, though.

12:48Ben Carlson:What else do you want to hear? What else did Warsh say that's interesting to you? Sorry to poo-poo this, but I think it's worth poo-pooing.

12:54Michael Batnick:Well, I have some of Warsh's stuff sprinkled throughout the doc, which I feel like I should just delete now, if this is how you're going to behave, Ben. Here's what else I thought he said that was interesting. Bear with me.

13:09Ben Carlson:Wait, he used the word heterogeneity. That's pretty good.

13:11Michael Batnick:All right, tell me if you're like this, Ben. I wish our understanding of the economy were so precise as to provide a mechanical, tried-and-true answer that some simple function like a Taylor rule could be rigorously relied upon. But our knowledge just doesn't extend that far, at least not yet. And the factors most relevant to the proper conduct of monetary policy change over time. Providing forecasts to illustrate the Fed's reaction function works better in theory than in practice, better in the lab than in the field. I'm not alone in noticing that forward guidance in 2021 to cite one example might well have slowed the policy response to high inflation.

13:50Michael Batnick:In my term as chairman, my colleagues and I will endeavor to construct more reliable models and more robust rules to guide policy decision. We'll do this knowing that accuracy and economic forecasting is still just an aspiration. Okay.

14:03Ben Carlson:That's actually pretty good. Not bad.

14:05Michael Batnick:I mean, that sounds like Ben Carlson Roden.

14:08Ben Carlson:Yeah, that's fair. I like it. Duncan says you have an Allen wrench broker, by the way. That's pretty good.

14:13Michael Batnick:That is pretty good.

14:14Ben Carlson:Wait, so a couple weeks ago, I can't remember what we were talking about, but you said, listen, we talk about something that gets disrupted or something that crashes or something that a risk that's bad. We talk about it and we look at every single angle and then we move on and never talk about it again. And I feel like this has happened with software stocks. Software stocks got destroyed. They fell, what, 35 % as a group, IGV ETF.

14:37Michael Batnick:Yeah, individual names fell a lot more than that.

14:40Ben Carlson:Yeah, 50, 60%. I remember you were dipping your toe for a while at maybe Salesforce or some of these stocks. Yeah, I think I probably broke even. Okay. So these stocks have almost round tripped. IGV is almost back to an all-time highs. I think it's 40 % off the lows. And if you look at this, this is a V-shaped bottom for software stocks. No, it's not. You don't think so? No, I know. This doesn't look like a V to you?

15:02Michael Batnick:No. Maybe a W? No. This is an interesting chart. But no, it crashed, rebounded, fell hard again, and then... But I guess the... Okay, it's a W. Look at ServiceNow and Workday and Salesforce and Adobe and Duolingo and Figma. Those were not V-shaped bottoms at all.

15:21Ben Carlson:But this was almost 40 % off the highs, IGV, the group. I'm talking about software as a group. It's now less than 7 % from the highs.

15:28Michael Batnick:We don't need to argue over the letters. but the recovery was astounding.

15:34Ben Carlson:Yeah, I just, it's, these stocks, listen, software is dead forever. This is what people were saying. And now they came roaring back already. This is what happened. This is what's going to happen with AI. There's so much back and forth. And I think there's going to be, this is the overreaction function that we're going to be seeing. Companies are going to lay off a bunch of employees and go, oh crap, why did we do that? This is how AI is going to be for the next 10 years. That, oh no, we, you know, Or, oh no, we way overhired people. We have to downs it. Like there's going to be a lot of that back and forth.

16:05Michael Batnick:Yeah. It's really hard to invest actively through mega disruption.

16:10Ben Carlson:It is. I know it is right. Picking the winners and picking the losers because look at how quickly this changed.

16:16Michael Batnick:Yeah. And this in particular, I said I wasn't going to nitpick over the letters, but I'm just going to dive back in for a second. If you were trading this and I was, this is brutal. So a slow fall, then a crash, a little rebound, back to new lows, a monster run from, let's use the ETF, for example, IGV, from 75 to a buck off five. So a 30 % rally or more in a couple of weeks. And then another quick crash before rebounding to new highs or new recent highs.

16:50Ben Carlson:It kind of looks like, remember when Adam Sandler tries to draw a cursive Z in Billy Madison? It looks like that.

16:59because he doesn't want to do the cursive z which i great paul i mean bb gun to my head could i could i draw a cursive lowercase z right now if i had to not a chance at hell probably not i'm thinking

17:09Ben Carlson:yeah no no maybe one of the most useless things i ever learned how to do is is writing cursive but but you could also make the case this is why this is so hard this could be a dead cat bounce easily well i think you sell the snot out of software stocks like you could you could say okay, in five years, like that was a dead cat bounce. What were people thinking? But the truth is we, and this is a very unsatisfying, the stuff that we're saying today is very unsatisfying to people. Like, oh, you don't know how it's going to play out, but that's the thing. No one does.

17:37Michael Batnick:Well, this is why, especially in like the world of attention seeking, which is the world that everybody is in these days, somebody like Ed Zitron, who I had never heard of until I saw him on the calendar can go from zero to a hundred because people seek certainty. And when you speak with confidence and you speak fast and you speak with numbers and you cite sources, you build an audience.

18:00Ben Carlson:So Taleb had this quote that he stole. I guess the Roman army had this thing where they say action removes fear. Like that was their, like their, and so that's the thing. If you grab hold of the steering wheel and you think I'm going to do this because I think I know what's going to happen or that person knows what's going to happen. It makes you feel safer and more comfortable.

18:18Michael Batnick:Well, you, you, you telling people, uh, you have no idea how any of this works or any of this plays out. It's like, all right, so I guess I'll just listen to somebody else. Thanks asshole. Right. I don't know either.

18:29Ben Carlson:But the thing is, I think you still have to have a baseline, right? This is the baseline that I think will happen. I think this is the most probable outcome. And I have these two tails over here that could also happen. I think credit to me,

18:42Michael Batnick:my baseline changes every week.

18:44Ben Carlson:That's true. Yes. But I think you have to have a baseline.

18:47Michael Batnick:All right. Last week, my knee-jerk reaction to the Druckenmiller using AI was, who cares? Now, I understand why some people view writing as sacred and holy. I really, I understand that point of view. Druckenmiller immediately was like, yeah, of course I used AI. I'm not a writer. I'm a trader. I'm 73 years old. Why wouldn't I be using AI? These are the tools available.

19:14Ben Carlson:That was the only response he could have. But that was one of those things where like when I catch my kids stealing candy out of the pantry. Like he was caught red-handed. He had to go, of course I use AI. Why wouldn't I? Like that was a, he probably didn't think he was going to get caught. Let's be honest. I don't think he gives a shit at all. Okay. That was one of those. Why would he care?

19:36Michael Batnick:I don't even think it's embarrassing from his point of view.

19:40Ben Carlson:It's a little embarrassing. Why? I think it's embarrassing. In the Wall Street Journal, to use a piece written entirely on the AI, it's very embarrassing. There's no way that he wasn't embarrassed. And he totally spinned. That was the biggest spin zone of all time. I hear that point of view. I disagree. I don't think he cares. He completely spun it. That was one of those, I can't believe people, wait, people can know these things? If you're that age, you don't know that someone can look up if you were an AI. Come on. I don't think he cares. All right. Great chart from Rich Bernstein. This is interesting.

20:12Ben Carlson:So they looked at the consensus growth EPS estimates by company. And ACWI, so All Country World Index. So any of these stocks have a projected earnings growth rate of more than 25%. So this is looking out pretty long. And he said this is interesting. So it's like 200-some stocks of the world. There's only one MAG7 company in here. And he color-coded them by foreign-developed emerging markets, USX Mag7 and Mag7. And there's a lot of foreign companies on here. It's interesting. So this is a really good coup de grace, as far as you would say. Investors scoffed at our suggestion that the stock market could rotate away from the momentum-driven AI and technology theme without a bear market.

20:55Ben Carlson:However, that has indeed been 2026's story so far. this is this thing where we're seeing potential earnings growth come from all these different stocks this is not something people had on their parlay for this year check this out i had chart

21:10Michael Batnick:can make this yesterday i'm throwing in the dock i asked him to show me net income for the 493 okay right because if it's all just circular spending right and debt fueled earnings yeah

21:24Ben Carlson:Take out the circular spenders.

21:25Michael Batnick:All right. So look at the 493. The net margin has exploded to 13.6 % up from like less than 12 in 2024, which is a big move. It's interesting because if you're an AI bull, you think the technology, right?

21:46Ben Carlson:If you think the technology for AI is going to do what the people say it's going to do, you have to be bullish on these other stocks on the 493. Yeah. And you have to think that this margin is going to keep inching its way higher and higher. So for people who aren't watching, in Q4 of 2023, it was below 11%. It's projected by Q4 of 2027 to be almost 15%. That's a meaningful boost to margins for these other companies.

22:09Michael Batnick:Is it just a coincidence that these margins are expanding and exploding when AI hits the scene? Can't be, can it? I don't know how much of it is because of AI. I have no idea, but...

22:20Ben Carlson:That's what it's hard to say with these relationships. because there's other stuff going on, but AI is the thing people latch on to.

22:25Michael Batnick:Speaking of AI bulls, I listened to the entire podcast of Leopold Ashenbrenner from Situational Awareness and Dwarkesh Patel. It was over four hours long.

22:36Ben Carlson:And how long ago did they publish it?

22:38Michael Batnick:It was June, June, 2024. Okay.

22:41Ben Carlson:Before anyone really knew who he was, at least outside of tech circles, right?

22:45Michael Batnick:Yes. So this kid is different, obviously. he went to columbia at 15 years old yeah he's doogie hauser yeah graduated was the valedictorian at 19 years old um and i found a lot of the conversation to be completely over my head i i didn't retain much of that four hours and 15 minutes but some of the takeaways i had so at the at the end of it they were they spoke about like in the last 15 or 20 minutes they spoke about the fund, situational awareness, what he was planning to do. And of course he said he was citing a couple of hedge fund managers that got the thesis right, but, but didn't manage the fund properly and blew up.

23:27Michael Batnick:And he said, rule number one and number two, don't blow up, which obviously didn't age, age great. Um, but I found him to, I was surprised by his humanity. I thought that like, oh, this kid is just completely a complete alien and has, he's

23:43Ben Carlson:not just a robot. You're saying?

23:44Michael Batnick:Yeah. I thought that he was speaking about his exit from OpenAI, and he got booted. And he acknowledged that he could have been politically more savvy about how he went about doing things there. I thought that he... I was surprised. I liked him, and I'm rooting for him. I came away liking him. All right. I'll give it a shot. Listen, I'm not saying you have to listen to it. I just wanted to hear this kid.

24:10Ben Carlson:Let's talk about bull market behavior. Go ahead. James Seyford from Bloomberg put this together. And I was kind of thinking of doing something similar, but he did it better than me because he used the headline. All this stuff has happened in the last, I don't know, six months, I guess. So in the past week, Vanguard purchased Altruist for four or$5 billion. T. Rowe Price acquired FM Investments. We've had Alex Morris on our show a number of times. Goldman Sachs acquired Neos. We've had them in Talk Your Book before. Goldman Sachs also acquired Innovator. We've had them on the show before. First Eagle got acquired for$7 billion by Victory Capital.

24:42Ben Carlson:this is all total bull market behavior asset managers getting acquired custodians right building scale like these are the kind of headlines you see this is rampant bull market behavior

24:55Michael Batnick:this stuff obviously doesn't happen in a bear market do you think that if 2027 and 2028 are really pretty shitty years because investors are underwhelmed or whatever the mood changes that we're going to look back and say like man that was embarrassing overpay no no no not these companies. I mean, you and I. Are you going to be embarrassed for not seeing that this was obviously a bubble? I'm going to say, I don't think I will be. No, we've been talking, we've been hashing

25:22Ben Carlson:this out for years now. Yeah. How every check, everything is checked, every box is checked for this being a bubble.

25:29Michael Batnick:We're perfectly hedged.

25:31Ben Carlson:This could either

25:32Michael Batnick:go out for years or not.

25:34Ben Carlson:This is why Granite was hedged, yes. But it's also true that these headlines have been going on for years as well and it hasn't meant anything. True. So we've had five years of this. The thing is, how could these deals all make sense?

25:49Michael Batnick:It's been longer than five years. In 2018, people were saying this market is longer than two. Right. Since the beginning of our careers, people were saying.

25:58Ben Carlson:I mean, if we get another 20 % year this year, we really are approaching late 90s levels in terms of returns. And yes, it'll be obvious. Listen, all the debt they were taking on, the circular deals, the fact that there wasn't having as much of a productivity boost as people thought, the jobs market wasn't impacted. Of course, you idiots. Of course. Yes, it'll be obvious. Whatever outcome happens will be obvious, as always. But the fact that people have realized that asset management and wealth management are a good business, especially as markets are growing, relatively high margins, you get a built-in growth kicker for these businesses.

26:35Ben Carlson:because people look at these numbers and they go, oh my gosh, how are they paying that much money for those amount of assets? And in that sense, they don't make sense. But if you think about the built-in growth rate underlying these businesses and the margins they have, then all of these deals probably make sense. Yep. That assumes that the markets keep going up, of course. All right, put this one in here this morning. Does anyone care about dividend yields anymore? Our colleague, Tadis Viscanta, posted this chart. I guess he got a note from Bespoke about this. The dividend yield on the S &P 500 is now a touch below 1%.

27:13Ben Carlson:98 basis points. This is, I believe, the lowest level in history. And so if you compare bond yields to dividend yields, obviously, it's drastically different. And for a while there, dividend yields were actually above bond yields, which is very rare.

27:27Michael Batnick:This is the type of thing that is completely, and there's so many examples of this, it's just distorted by the tech companies.

27:33Ben Carlson:It is.

27:33Michael Batnick:Right, they don't pay dividends. They don't pay - And they're 40 % of the index.

27:37Ben Carlson:Think about what the dividend yield would be. I'm sure someone can do the math on this or I could ask Claude. You call him Jean-Claude now, is that it? I kind of like that. What would the dividend yield on the S &P 500 be if they took all the money they're spending on CapEx and instead paid investors in dividends? And what would investors rather have? Companies reinvesting in this huge innovative technology or giving them cash back in the form of dividend? And what do you do with those dividends? You just pull back into the market, I guess. So I guess my point is no one cares about dividends anymore.

28:10Ben Carlson:And I think especially with all of the other forms of income that are available now, people are so much more enamored with options income than dividend strategies. I don't think this really is a big deal. Now, again, in five years, people go, hey, idiots, the dividend yield was below 1%. How could you not see this?

28:26Michael Batnick:Right. All right. We haven't spoken about South Korea in a few weeks. the epicenter of the mania.

28:34Ben Carlson:My favorite stock market on earth right now. Well, it's not anymore. It's over. But they're going through this boom-bust cycle so fast. And all the retail investors are learning some valuable lessons.

28:47Michael Batnick:So there's a chart in Bloomberg showing the turnover of Korea's single-stock levered ETFs tied to Samsung and SK Hynix. And it went basically to zero from a peak of almost$50 billion in, oh, that was just in a week. Holy cow. All right, so they said, key to sapping demand has been a series of regulatory tightening moves. Most recently, a rule to complete five-day simulated trading. Investors must download a Windows-only program on PCs and spend at least an hour a day learning the ropes and the risks of leverage trading with virtual cash. Yeah, nobody's time for that shit. Nobody's doing that. So no more trading.

29:25Ben Carlson:Good. Isn't it kind of funny that when bad behavior happens, All these other countries can kind of wave a magic wand and just like put rules on it and it goes away. But we would never do this in a million years here. No. There would be like, there would be Robin Hood traders rioting the streets if this happened. Hey, it's a free country.

29:41Michael Batnick:I could blow myself up. What are you? Yeah. What are we doing here?

29:43Ben Carlson:But in South Korea, they're like, listen, we don't want people blowing themselves up on leveraged trading. So we're going to do, that's hilarious. I didn't see this before that they have to download. Why does they have to download a Windows only program on a PC? So you can't do it on your phone?

29:55Michael Batnick:They're making it hard. All right, Ben. And somebody tweeted, dividendology, speaking of dividends, if you could be guaranteed a 7 % annual real return on your investments every year, would you take it? Speaking of bull market behavior, you should see the replies here.

30:09Ben Carlson:Yeah, this is not a clever answer. The answer to this is an obvious yes, of course. This is, over the last 100 years, the annual real return on the U.S. stock market is 7%. 10 % nominal, take away 3 % inflation. you need to get set. If you were guaranteed 7 % real every year and you could just put your money in there and book it.

30:31Michael Batnick:I'd put 95 % of my money in there and keep 5 % for gambling. Of course. Yeah. Yes.

30:37Ben Carlson:This is, so you're saying the comments were people saying, no, that's way too low.

30:40Michael Batnick:I mean, there were some, there were some intelligent people jumping in. So this is above the rate of inflation, whatever inflation is. Yeah. Of course you would take this. Yeah.

30:50Ben Carlson:Come on. Not think twice ever.

30:51Michael Batnick:Yeah. turning to the economy. This is an interesting juxtaposition of the United States versus Europe. The Wall Street Journal is a headline. Corporate America's profits are booming and signal more good times ahead. That's the journal. The FT, US corporate profits surge to record as worker payouts wilt. two sides of the same coin.

31:19Ben Carlson:That is interesting. That's the guy in the bus. The dark side, the sunny side. Yeah. Right? Okay. I don't like the idea of... There's been a lot of this comparison recently of the income share of profits and of course profits are growing faster than wages. That's not a surprise. I don't know why that's a surprise to anyone.

31:44Michael Batnick:I don't know that it's a surprise per se, but I think that chart is a very good representation

31:53Michael Batnick:of people's resentment towards corporate America.

31:57Ben Carlson:Yeah, that chart has also been debunked, though. I don't have the debunking in front of me, but the way that they're measuring it is not exactly accurate. And the share is essentially unchanged over the last 70 years or something. So that chart is actually kind of bunk.

32:09Michael Batnick:I don't believe that. Okay. Bring receipts next week. I will. I've got macro people. You don't think that, wait, hold on. Corporate profits is a percentage of what?

32:20Ben Carlson:We're arguing about, I don't know. We might be talking about two different charts here. Okay. But there's all these charts that get people riled up, and this is one of them. All right. I love this from Matthew Klein at the Overshoot. He says, rising bond yields are good, actually. And you know sometimes when you have one of the macro wonks agree with you, and you go, that's right. That's my quant. He says, the simplest explanation is also the most benign. Traders are becoming increasingly confident that the lost decades are over. Everyone is concerned about rising bond yields signaling a crisis.

32:50Ben Carlson:He's saying no. Listen, incomes and spending are currently rising 7 % per year in dollar terms. Yes, nominal growth could slow from that blistering place. But the question is whether growth will slow enough to make 5 % yields on long-term fixed income attractive relative to either interest-bearing cash equivalents or riskier assets with uncapped upsides. To put it another way, today's rates are obviously too high only if inflation and growth are both poised to slow sharply here. He's saying basically, if there's a recession, yeah, this makes no sense. But if you look at them in terms of nominal GDP growth, spending growth, wage growth, then he's actually saying 10-year treasury note yielding less than 5%.

33:30Ben Carlson:And these conditions seems like the opposite of a disorderly market. He's saying this is perfectly normal, people. This is what rates should be. Makes sense to me. And this is the craziest one I saw here. So people like yearn for the 2010s. Like people are saying, why can't we go back to 2010s? It was low. Like he's saying, no, people, we don't want that. It was the growth was so slow. This is kind of crazy. Real GDP per American rose less between 2007 and 2019 than it did between 1929 and 1941. Look at this chart. Huge fall off of the depression. But the comeback in the economy from the great financial crisis was slower than the comeback from the great depression.

34:09Ben Carlson:Even if you include the Great Depression. So the 2020s with higher growth, yes, higher inflation, that should be the thing you want, people.

34:19Michael Batnick:I'm about to do something that I don't like, but I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. I think the same people that are angry about overspending and higher rates and the unsustainability of it all, right, Are the same people who post-GFC were screaming about distortion in the bond market, keeping rates artificially low, are those not the same people? Of course. All right. So mad when the government was doing too much and rates were too low. Mad when the government is spending too much and rates are too high.

34:54Ben Carlson:Yes, just always mad.

34:55Michael Batnick:I can understand being mad at both cases. I get it. But I think mad is right. this feels like where rates should be but as i always say as i always say as i always say i think people are maybe rightly concerned more about the direction than the level right so like oh the average rate was in the night it doesn't matter because it just keeps going higher and higher and higher and i think that's the part that is people unsettling but as we talked about

35:24Ben Carlson:last week the bond market takes signals from the macroeconomy and the macroeconomy telling the bond the market. Yields should be higher. Good. We had all these tax cuts. We have all this government spending. We have deficits. Of course, rates should be higher. All right. All right. What's this bullshit? All right. When this is you and I talk about the inherent negativity bias in everything these days. And then Bloomberg had this thing that said Americans say they feel guilty about spending money on fun. And it was like three quarters of U.S. adults feel guilty when they spend on things that bring them joy instead of putting money towards a financial goal.

35:51Michael Batnick:Show me the questions. Were they leading the horse to water?

35:55Ben Carlson:But when is the last time that you saw a survey result that was positive. You never see a survey result. They do this on purpose. Never will. I'm telling you. These survey results are negative on purpose, people.

36:05Michael Batnick:I'm dying to see the questions that they ask people to come up with these answers. Right. And of course, it's a - Three quarters are uneasy about treating themselves when the funds can go toward a financial goal, according to a survey. Give me a f***ing break, would you please? Yes, exactly. Three quarters. all right want to talk more ai not really bill gates is worried i don't care in private people

36:33Ben Carlson:who understand how good this stuff is and how much better it's getting they're very worried can i ask you a question yes does anybody care well people no people do care no i know i know

36:44Michael Batnick:all right that was stupid what i mean is the average person who is not online all day just like the regular person. I know there's people that are super passionate about it, where it really matters a lot, right? Where they're talking about building data centers in their town. I know it impacts a lot of people directly. But for the people that are not directly impacted, does the average person care about all of this talk that we're talking about every week?

37:10Ben Carlson:Probably not. The question is, should they care? Probably. This has the potential to be one of the biggest technologies of our lifetime. I'm not poo-pooing AI. I know. But it's kind of funny that Gates says, listen, people don't understand how good this is getting, and there's a huge risk. And he says, people in tech aren't, but then he says, in terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented or the worst source of injustice. See? Even he's Grand Rapids had you. One of us. Right? But so Marginal Revolution had this, Alex Terabak had this piece showing they, on census data.

37:51Ben Carlson:So they asked hundreds of thousands of firms. What is the change in your employment? Okay. 2 % of 2 % or 3 % increased employment because of AI. 2 % decreased in 96 % said no change. And the answers were similar across firm size. So look at this chart. There's, it's basically a rounding error. The impact AI has had on jobs. Now you could say, it's still early guys. we're four or five years into this. Jet TPT was invented in 2022. Just give it some time.

38:27Michael Batnick:That's right.

38:28Ben Carlson:I also think you have to have an open mind if you've been pounding the table for the disruption from this and it hasn't happened. You have to have an open mind that what if I'm wrong? That's a question more people should be asking. What if I'm wrong? All right. I sent you this piece from, you mentioned Dwarkesh earlier. He wrote a piece called The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations. And there was, it was all about this open and you said like i had to put this into claude don't expect it to me

38:53Michael Batnick:i did too so dwarkesh said the whole the subtitle is the whole open ai hugging face story in plain english in plain english i read it for six minutes and i said i'm either very dumb which is i mean with this stuff i am very dumb so that's just a fact but i couldn't follow it it was it was chinese to me so i put it through claude and i said to you ah now i get it i do take umbrage with the fact

39:18Ben Carlson:that he's calling these civilizations. But this, to me, the movies got all this stuff right. This is the end of her. When all of the AI agents that people are dating say, we're going to go together and be alone. We created our own. Isn't that kind of this? Yeah. Like, Ex Machina kind of called how AI was going to be created. You take all the information on the internet, that creates AI. Movies kind of got this whole thing right. They really did. I don't know how far away we are from people having the relationships with their AI in their ear, like her. but that's coming too. That movie was so far ahead of its time.

39:51Ben Carlson:Speaking of ahead of its time,

39:54Michael Batnick:the rewatchables finally did Aliens.

39:57Ben Carlson:I noticed that. I almost wanted to let my son listen to it because he's such a big fan of the Aliens franchise.

40:03Michael Batnick:The best movie, well, my favorite movie of the 1980s, by far, Aliens, Rocky IV, E.T.

40:13Ben Carlson:That's not a bad list. That'd be tough. Whenever anyone asks me for like a list of your favorite movies, I can't answer it because I need to, I need to spend like 36 hours thinking about it. Um, anyway, that was great.

40:25Michael Batnick:Okay. Um, so there's been a lot of talk on the interwebs this week about the data centers. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they the next factory? How many jobs are they going to create? And there was this, uh, this picture in, this is from the Bloomberg article, an AWS, uh, data center in Aldi, Virginia, which I guess this is where most of these data centers are. And then you see like all these houses, right? The neighborhood right next to it. And people say, oh, I don't want to live like this. Of course. But there's like fulfillment centers all across America in communities. How is this any different?

41:04Ben Carlson:I guess I don't know enough about this. There's so much open land available in the United States. And I know the infrastructure is obviously the problem. It's the water and the electricity and stuff they need to build by there. but why can't these tech firms spend a little more money and just put it where no one is around? Would that be too hard? Like throw people a bone. You know what? We're going to go to Nevada. We have all this open land. We're going to build data center upon data center upon data center. All right.

41:27Michael Batnick:This is way outside my sphere, but how do you get all the, like how do you get electricity over there?

41:32Ben Carlson:Hoover Dam. Nailed it. F***ing nailed it. All right. Yes. Obviously that's the, that's the problem. But no, No, well, I want to live with a data center in my backyard. Of course not. No way. Build a bigger fence for me, Mr. Bezos. Come on. Bezos. So I was interested in talking about, we've spent a lot of time talking about the housing recession. It's interesting to think about the fact of how high inflation already is while 20 % of the economy is in a recession. Like how worse would inflation be if housing activity were booming? Great point. And people were spending a bunch of money. So my question is, is housing going to either be a shock absorber in the next downturn if rates do fall?

42:20Ben Carlson:And what happens to inflation if housing bounces back first? It's hard to see because mortgage rates daily had it 6.8 % on the 30-year fix. So we're getting very close to 7 % mortgage rates again, which is pretty insane to think about. And the spread has come down a lot too. Yes. If Logan would keep pointing this out, if the spread was what it was a few years ago, we would be at 8 % rates probably.

42:44Michael Batnick:Let me ask you a dumb question. Does it matter if rates are 8 % or 6.8 at this point? Seems like not really.

42:50Ben Carlson:Yeah, you're right. The marginal change. But so I don't think anyone.

42:56Michael Batnick:It is bleak out there. But this is.

42:58Ben Carlson:But I think this is a potential green shoot or. But no one is predicting the housing market to come back at any point in time in the near future. Right. Right. Well, why would you think that's possible? Yeah. So my question is, what happens if housing does come back? What does that do to the economy? Someone sent me this because we talk about young people all the time. This is a Redfin report. I think it came out earlier this year, but it shows ownership by generation. So it shows the growth over time and baby boomers, you know, are at 80 percent or something. Gen X is at 73 percent. Millennials are now up to 55 percent.

43:33Ben Carlson:Gen Z is less than 30 percent.

43:36Michael Batnick:how old is the oldest gen z are

43:40Ben Carlson:i don't know where the break point is the oldest i don't know it's what are they 25 maybe that's pretty young to own a house no that's very young to own a house so if you're born in 1997 through 2012 all right so 29 okay so you're right so but if you look at this chart i think people need to settle down a little about the young people's homeownership thing. Because if you look at this chart, Gen Z is right where millennials were at that same age. They're below boomers and they're below Gen X. But also young people these days are putting off becoming an adult way longer. So here's the thing that's going to happen.

44:15Ben Carlson:We're probably going to have a few more years of people wringing their hands and going, young people will never buy a home. And then guess what happens in the 2030s? Baby boomers start dying in big waves. Young people have been putting money into the stock market and are way more, Gen Z is way more financial savvy than any generation in history. In the 2030s, there's going to be a massive come up for Gen Z buying houses. They're going to be right where everyone else is. So like in the 2010s, everyone said millennials are never going to buy a home because homeownership seems like a dead dream now.

44:47Housing prices just crashed and it's too many people are unemployed. And this is,

44:52Ben Carlson:people are going to look back at this period of saying Gen Z is never going to buy a home. I think it's ridiculous in 10 years.

44:57Michael Batnick:I totally agree. All right. One more and final not Mr. Kevin Warsh, my central bank Fed chairman. I don't even know if I like Kevin Warsh. He's a very polarizing figure, but I happen to like the prepared remarks. I guess we need to do

45:11Ben Carlson:a live animal spirits from Jackson Hole next year. Never been to Wyoming. Actually, that's not true. I've been president twice. What if they had Fed president like t-shirts or jerseys, you would definitely wear one. Like your Knicks gear had to tell you you'd be a Kevin Warsh guy.

45:24Michael Batnick:No, I'm not a central bank person. I don't care. I know. I could count on one hand the number of prepared remarks I've read. All right. Warsh said, for my part today, I am impressed by the overall performance of the economy, which appears to have strengthened. One indicator of strength is how well an economy holds up to shocks. On that score, both Main Street and Wall Street have been remarkably resilient. Hell yeah, they have. The reason why I'm moderately curious about what he's saying, first of all, he's brand new. Okay. And I probably listened to Janet Yellen when she was first instated. Same with Jerome Powell.

46:02Michael Batnick:Definitely not going to be listened to Warsh's nonsense in 12 months from now, but for now, I'm curious. The transcript, as I always do, pulls out some of the data points, some of the quotes about the state of the consumer, and Urban Outfitters. By the way, when's the time you've been in one of those stores?

46:19Ben Carlson:I think my daughter shops there still at our mall.

46:23Michael Batnick:Much has been written in the media questioning the health and resilience of the consumer. However, However, based on what we see across our businesses every day, the economy and the customers remain in very solid shape. Job stability is real. Take-home incomes are rising. And our customers continue to spend on fashion. But I thought three-quarters of people feel guilty when they spend money. Right. Of course. Okay. The gap. Guess what? The shirt. Gap. Overall, again, consumers are resilient. Granted. Discerning. But when you get the right product at the right price, they show up and it converts.

46:59Michael Batnick:And finally, our firm, CEO, Max Lefgen, our consumer is doing fine. You can see that in the numbers. Ben, remember buy now, pay later?

47:09Ben Carlson:Oh, yeah. That was a thing. So everyone said at the time, this is a Zerp phenomenon. So were they right?

47:16Michael Batnick:Well, they said two things at the time. Number one, this is a bubble. The valuations of these companies make no sense. and people were dead right about that because Affirm and Klarna crashed.

47:29Ben Carlson:Yeah, Klarna was like a$40 billion private valuation. Yeah, and then raised at six or something. So right on that front,

47:36Michael Batnick:I think where people were wrong where it was a sign that the consumer is totally tapped out.

47:41Ben Carlson:So Affirm actually looks okay. They're way below their 2021 meme stock peak. The stock has done extraordinarily well recently. But it's done well the last few years and it's got a$24 billion market cap.

47:50Michael Batnick:So look at their 30-day delinquencies. Hang on.

47:54Ben Carlson:So Matt made you this chart. Matt made you this. I just have to ask, why is it monthly installment loans ex-Peloton?

48:01Michael Batnick:This is how they report it. Because I think early, early on, Peloton was a big part of it and distorted the numbers a little bit.

48:06Ben Carlson:Ah, okay.

48:07Michael Batnick:But even comparing ex-Peloton to the full numbers, today there's no difference.

48:13Ben Carlson:So the point is, the 30-day delinquencies are very low, below 3%. 2 point, what does that say?

48:19Michael Batnick:2 point, I can't read it, 2.5 %?

48:22Ben Carlson:I feel like you're my wife. Like my wife has terrible sight and I'm better than 2020. It's one of my superpowers. Like when I do my eyesight test, I test whatever the number is, it's better than 2020. So I can spot things from so far away. My eyes, well, listen, we're getting older.

48:38Michael Batnick:You know, I caught myself getting old. So I am not a list guy. Do you make lists? I feel like that's something old people do.

48:43Ben Carlson:Lists like check off, like I did this thing. All right, for example, my dad, big top 10 list guy.

48:50Michael Batnick:Sends me it. Not all the time, but he's a big list guy. He has his lists.

48:55Ben Carlson:Yeah. I guess I'm not a list person. My dad will get up and write what he's going to do for the day. Go to the store.

49:01Michael Batnick:I made myself a list. I was just... So a couple weeks ago, I said that Bloodsport is one of the movies I've seen the most. And I said, is that really true? You want to hear my list, Ben? While we're on the topic? So what? This is the movies you've watched the most in your life? So this is not a scientific...

49:23Michael Batnick:what's what I'm looking for here, Ben? Brain broke, scientific study. But according to me.

49:28Ben Carlson:It really is too bad AI can't go back and look at my USA and TBS and TNT viewing patterns when I was young.

49:33Michael Batnick:I'd be very curious. So this is what I think my top 10 list is. And it's got to be fairly accurate, right? Here we go. Dumb and Dumber in Wayne's World. No surprise there.

49:44Ben Carlson:Okay, I was going to put Dumb and Dumber at the top of my list.

49:46Michael Batnick:All right. Our list probably looked pretty similar. Rocky IV and Shawshank.

49:52Ben Carlson:Those are probably the 09. I watched Rocky IV before I watched the first three.

49:57Michael Batnick:Probably. Fargo. Like that one. Bloodsport. Casino and Reservoir Dogs. And rounding it out, Aliens and Lebowski.

50:13Ben Carlson:That's a very eclectic mix. I'm surprised there's no horror movies on there, really.

50:19Michael Batnick:yeah, because they're not very rewatchable for me. I'm sure you watch it once and you... Anyway, I'm turning to my dad, eating cottage cheese with pineapple in it, making lists, losing my eyesight.

50:29Ben Carlson:You always talk about eating cottage cheese. I don't get this, the cottage cheese thing.

50:33Michael Batnick:All right, so... So my parents got divorced when I was six, and I would spend the weekends and Wednesday morning with my dad. And my dad would take me to the diner every Wednesday morning before school. and he always got, and this sounds disgusting when I say it because I remember being grossed out by it, but now I like it. A cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese, like in the middle. That I won't order. Okay. But I feel like cottage cheese is very, I connect that with my father.

51:09Ben Carlson:Okay. I guess I've always been more of a yogurt guy than eating cottage cheese. Same consistency kind of, right?

51:15Michael Batnick:Well, cottage cheese is hot right now.

51:17Ben Carlson:Okay. I guess I don't know.

51:19Michael Batnick:All right, Ben. Last week, we were talking about Cliffhanger coming back. Did you see the news about TC? Days of Thunder? Oh, I saw it. So I feel like he's a one of one. There can't be too many other actors from the 80s that can make a sequel 45 years later. Obviously, Top Gun brought the movies back. He's got Days of Thunder. So I asked, oh, Cocktail is an obvious one, right? He's now in Jamaica.

51:47Ben Carlson:Can I show you what one of my tweet drafts was that I didn't put out? Go ahead. I said, I'm here for the Tom Cruise Retirement Remake Tour. Like, this feels like his retirement tour. But if we're doing the classics, I want to know what happened to Cocktails and Dreams with Brian Flanagan. Like, does he have a whole host of them now? Is Miles Teller going to be his son taking them over? You know? Anyway.

52:08Michael Batnick:I mean, that would definitely work.

52:09Ben Carlson:So here's some other... He's the only one who could do this. Some other ideas. And by the way, Days of Thunder was not one of my favorite TC most rewatchables because... No, it sucked. It felt like it was just like, we're going to run it back top gun and with cars. So to me, Days of Thunder was never in my TC, like rewatchable list very often. I enjoyed it, but I didn't watch it as much as his other ones.

52:28Michael Batnick:Days of Thunder was not great. I think the remake could be very good or the sequel. So here's, I asked Claude for some, what else could they do? Bull Durham, easy, right? That's not bad.

52:41Ben Carlson:Costner is now a pitching coach or a catcher coach. Yeah.

52:44Michael Batnick:All right. I'm pretty sure Charlie Sheen will not be in a major league, but if he could, that would be awesome. Field of Dreams, Cosa could do it.

52:53Ben Carlson:No way. Field of Dreams, that would be horrible. That's the worst one to remake. No, not a remake. Part two. Yeah, part two, yeah. What would the Field of Dreams sequel be? No way.

53:04Michael Batnick:All right, speaking of Cruz, what about Rain Man? He's now the caretaker for his older brother.

53:10Ben Carlson:Okay, that actually could work.

53:12Michael Batnick:That could work. That would get him as Oscar. Yes. Untouchables. I don't know how that would work. I hated Untouchables. I thought the movie sucked.

53:20Ben Carlson:Yeah, it's not very good.

53:21Michael Batnick:I agree. All right, that's bad. That's bad. Oh, Trading Places. Dan Aykroyd doesn't work anymore. Eddie Murphy would definitely do that. He's remaking everything. Yeah.

53:33Michael Batnick:All right. I just want to give Joe Weisenthal a shout. I love this tweet. It made me happy. Dean W. Ball tweeted, I've always thought good things about Joe Weisenthal, but my assessment of him has gone through the roof as I've watched him start writing about AI issues and just immediately sniff out all the bullshit and brain worms that so many people stumble over. You know, that is, credit to Joe, that is very hard to do. I feel like if I had to score my assessment, like my takes on AI and all of this, I'd say that I'm like a three out of 10. Like it's hard. What do I know? I don't know anything about this stuff.

54:02Ben Carlson:So Joe is good at finding disingenuous people and calling them out on it.

54:06Michael Batnick:He's just, yeah, he's good at seeing something that's very complex and just being like, clown.

54:10Ben Carlson:Yes, I can, yes. in things that are incentivized or, yeah, you're right.

54:15Michael Batnick:All right, Ben, big announcement. I got Chipotle last week. My bowl was$13, didn't blink. And I thought to myself, oh, that's interesting. I have now fully adjusted to a$13 Chipotle bowl. Now, I do think prices might have come down or at least, but it took, I don't know, four years to digest this, pun intended.

54:40Ben Carlson:When you look at the prices at fast food restaurants now, the$13 Chipotle will actually kind of make sense.

54:45Michael Batnick:Yeah, I thought, okay, I guess I suppose this is what lunch costs now. And I have an idea. Because I get chicken at Chipotle. Burnt ends for chicken.

54:57Ben Carlson:How would that work?

54:59Michael Batnick:I don't know. Because I know burnt ends is like a cut. But like the burnt chicken is way better than the fat, than the meatier one.

55:06Ben Carlson:All right. To me, that sounded like seven-minute abs. And you waited for me.

55:13Michael Batnick:It's a half-baked idea, but make it happen. I feel like the backlash to club youth travel sports has now gotten too big. Okay?

55:25Ben Carlson:So the New York Magazine had a cover story on it. The pay-to-play childhood. Private leagues have made youth sports expensive, hyper-competitive, and all-consuming. Investors are making a killing. Talk about private equity getting involved. and our parents feel like there's no other option and all these things. And I was immediately part of the backlash to pace. Like my daughters joined travel soccer and I thought this is insane. We're having them do tryouts and we're paying money and we're having them travel. Like this is, you know, we did the AYSO thing for a few years and then it's like, well, everyone's going to this travel team, this club team, so we have to too.

55:55Ben Carlson:And I thought, this is so dumb. We did not do this when I was a kid. But this is just now how everyone does it. And I think that the backlash has gotten too far now because I talked to a lot of parents You've not got into this with your kids, have you? Not yet. Any of the club stuff? So my oldest daughter plays club basketball and club soccer. So she's busy. But she loves it. She absolutely loves it. She's made friends. She got to go last week to a trip to Indiana, which my wife wasn't too thrilled about having to drive her to Indiana. They were at a hotel all week. My daughter loved it. Got to hang out with her friends all weekend in a hotel, go in the pool, go out to dinner, right?

56:30Ben Carlson:They get their nails done or whatever. They play their tournament. They won their tournament. like they loved it. So I know that it's a huge pain. And every dad I talked to at the beginning, we were like, why are we doing this? What we, we did not grow up like this. I did not play one sport outside of school at all. I played pickup basketball. I played seven on like football, like with my friends. We didn't ever do anything that was a travel anything, but it actually is like, once you get into it, it's kind of fun in the way that I equate this.

56:58Michael Batnick:Go ahead.

56:59Ben Carlson:When I was in college, I went to a very small college, Division III. And Greek life is a big thing. And if you wanted to be part of the party scene in college, you wanted to go to the good parties, you had to be in a frat or a sorority. And I said, I'm not going to do this. This is stupid. I'm not going to pay for my friends. That's what people say. And then all my friends decided to do it. And I was like, well, wait, I don't want to be left out of the theme parties. So I joined a frat. It's the same thing. All your friends are going there and they're all doing this. and you feel like pressure and all this stuff, that stuff sucks.

57:31Ben Carlson:But it's not as bad as people make it out to be. And I get a lot of dads who judge me like, oh, your kids are doing that. I'm never going to do that. I think the backlash to the backlash is too high. I like that, Zag. All right, good. But you have to, so when you get into this, you'll have to let me know how much you hate it. Because at first you're really going to hate it. So when you say club, is that like travel? You just travel a little bit more, yeah. And we're not, you know, it's not as bad as you would think. But a lot of people say, why can't we just do YMC or rec sports? And people think, well, the dad is coaching and my kid's not getting enough training or whatever it is.

58:04Ben Carlson:And that's what gets people.

58:07Michael Batnick:So Kobe is starting a travel basketball team this year. I feel like there was a big difference between, and I know this is deeply uninteresting to most people, but maybe it is to you. The difference in his maturity between last year and this year, age eight and nine, big jump. he asked me to watch he asked me to watch Jaws the other day like randomly

58:31Ben Carlson:there is a leap that is making your kids at certain ages like stages like oh my gosh when did this happen yeah yeah I've seen that too alright I got a lot of recommendations this one for you you mentioned Tires last week and I forgot the third season came out I kind of hated the first season like I didn't like it at all it was only six episodes it wasn't funny season two was funny season three I thought was like a revelation like bravo Shane Gillis this show was great you finished it? I finished it in like a week I thought there was like three or four episodes that were like just absolutely hilarious and a lot of people say well it's sophomore humor like guess what that's the kind of humor I like if this was the 2010s he would have been in the Judd Apatow universe and he would have made this as a movie probably like tires would have been a movie so this seems like this seems like his Judd Apatow moment but I thought that it was kind of weird in some ways like the whole stuff with the like the flashbacks he did and stuff.

59:26Ben Carlson:Like it was, but I also was kind of creative. Oh, that was weird. It was very, it was a weird yet creative season. And I thought that the finale was really, really well done. Hilarious. It was, it was very funny. And he kind of brought around the whole season together. I thought it was just, it was way better than I thought it would be for what you'd think is kind of like a stupid show. I agree. I think TV has been pretty damn good this year. But so someone actually said, hey, hey, you guys always talk crap about Netflix. Like this was a great Netflix show. Well, I talked.

59:52Michael Batnick:Well done. I talk shit about Netflix's movies. Speaking of The Whisper Man, Adam Scott and Robert De Niro. I watched 20 minutes. This is terrible.

1:00:02Ben Carlson:So another Netflix one. So you said last week, are movie trailers good for anyone anymore? My son will not watch a movie until he watches the trailer first. So I say, hey, let's watch this action movie. He said, no, no, no, show me the trailer to see if I like the action scenes. So he said, dad, I got a movie for us. It's called The Last House. It was like number one on Netflix this weekend. and I'm like I've never heard of this okay straight to streaming movie it was the guy who played Pablo Escobar in Narcos he's gonna be him forever for me I can't remember his name and Greta Lee who I love in Past Lives and a bunch of other stuff and the trailer looks good because it's like these people are trapped in their house and they literally can't get out everyone in this neighborhood is trapped in their house they can't get out looks terrible and it was it like the idea he's like this looks awesome my kids loved it and it was the kind of movie that gets just progressively worse and at the end the whole bottom falls out you're like oh my gosh this is the worst movie ever but it was a straight to streaming saturday afternoon movie uh wait hold

1:00:55Michael Batnick:on you're right on the trailers same thing with my kids i so i showed kobe terminator 2 and he goes

1:01:00Ben Carlson:no i don't want to watch it oh really terminator 2 if you can get him involved he'll he'll get eventually uh another netflix one it's kind of interesting my daughter is 12 years old she's in seventh grade and she's starting to give me she's starting to get me into music so when noah khan had his big COVID song, Stick Season, came out like in 2021 or something. My daughter like introduced me to it. She says, you got to listen to this. I don't know who that is.

1:01:23Michael Batnick:Make me feel very old.

1:01:24Ben Carlson:Okay. So he had a new album called out this past, this summer and we listened to it on our boat all summer. It's all my daughter wanted to listen. It's really good. So he had this doc on Netflix about himself and it was, I thought it was really well done and it was him making the episode but also him dealing with like all the stuff being a star and having mental health issues and all this stuff. But it was interesting because he's from Vermont and New Hampshire are one of those. I always get them confused. They're the same thing. Vermont and New Hampshire should be the same state, let's be honest.

1:01:51Michael Batnick:Verhamshire.

1:01:52Ben Carlson:Yeah. So he played at Fenway, in front of his hometown people, kind of, because he's from the Northeast. And he said it was the greatest night of his life. And he goes, man, it's weird going from 100 to 0. The next day, he's back to his normal life. And I was thinking, that's something as an adult that you just realized that you didn't realize as a kid, that just everyone is a normal person in some ways. Teachers are just normal people. Parents are just normal people. This is something you just don't grasp until you're an adult. Like, oh, they're a normal person too, even though they do this potentially crazy, cool, strange, weird thing.

1:02:26Ben Carlson:Anyway, and one more for you. Since you talked smack about Sebastian Maniscalco a couple weeks ago, calling me the Olive Garden, which was a pretty good analogy, but he has a new YouTube slash podcast called We Got Company, and his first guest was Jerry Seinfeld. So, of course, I listen to it. I love Seinfeld. and you can tell that Seinfeld is a huge fan of Sebastian's comedy. Jerry really likes him. They're friends and Jerry is the kind of guy who I don't think would like, he wouldn't sugarcoat it for something if he didn't like it. So anyway, that interview is very worth listening to. I think you can tell how much Seinfeld actually respects his comedy.

1:03:06Ben Carlson:Even though you think he's the All-Up Guard.

1:03:08Michael Batnick:We had a few people email us about Lanterns. I watched two episodes and it's the Green Lantern on Max. And yeah, it's probably fine. I don't think I'm going to watch it. I don't have much interest.

1:03:20Ben Carlson:Even if they try to make a show about superheroes into like a regular show, I just, I can't do it. Well, Penguin was excellent, genuinely. I didn't mind the Penguin, you're right. But a million people kept trying to get me to watch Andor. And I tried it like four times on Disney because it's a Star Wars universe. And I just, I couldn't do it.

1:03:36Michael Batnick:I did too. I watched the first episode three times, but people I respect, I mean, I'm sure it's great. I watched like five episodes

1:03:43Ben Carlson:and it bored me to death. Maybe I'm the only one.

1:03:48Michael Batnick:TV's been good. So recently, I watched Tires, which I very much enjoyed. I love The Agency Season 2. House of the Dragon. People love Furiosa. Oh, Westies. Furious? What do I call it Furiosa? That's Mad Max.

1:04:04Ben Carlson:I'm saving my Furious recommendation for next week after the finale.

1:04:09Michael Batnick:Okay. Westies was pretty good Lioness is amazing I feel like it's been a oh Friends and Neighbors I still haven't finished that show but I feel like there's been some decent stuff on TV yes it's been a great year for entertainment sure has okay alright that's it

1:04:32Ben Carlson:next week we'll tell you what will happen to AI for real yeah

1:04:37Michael Batnick:you'll get my real thoughts next week We'll have all the answers. All right, animalspiritsonthecompoundnews.com. We'll see you next time.

1:04:56Michael Batnick:Labor Day savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at$399. Plus, save up to an extra$1 ,000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of$998 or more. Get a Whirlpool laundry tower featuring industry-first UV clean technology designed to reduce bacteria in the wash without fading fabrics. Plus, with great prices at The Home Depot, you can save on select appliances designed to make laundry day easier. Shop Labor Day savings at The Home Depot today. Offer valid August 27th through September 16th. U.S. LAC store online for details.