The Teflon Economy (EP. 468)

13:15Ben Carlson:Yes. For 10 years, calling a bubble. You can't keep calling it a bubble. Okay. Uh, this is interesting to me. So this is another exhibit A1. A lot of plugs here for them. They looked at the S &P 500 versus the 493 and the MAG-7. And the 493 is outperforming both the S &P 500 and the MAG-7. And the MAG-7 is underperforming the S &P, which is surprising because people have talked about that MAG-7 concentration. But now I feel like the concentration talk has moved to no, no, no, no, no, because the 493 includes all the memory stocks. So of course, it's just AI concentration. But I feel like people are moving the goalposts on this now.

13:46Michael Batnick:I agree with both things you said. and I also do think that the concentration that's happening in the semis is notable and fair but yeah I don't think that most people would think that the Mag 7 are underperforming I don't think I knew that

14:01Ben Carlson:it was surprising to me when I saw it so this is one from Bespoke speaking of concentration so they put tech and comm services together and comm services essentially was a sector that was spun out of tech a few years ago for reasons unknown I don't know why they did that they should have just kept them together because the biggest holdings are Google and Facebook.

14:20Michael Batnick:I think the other things that are in there, though, is like, where do you put Disney and Netflix?

14:24Ben Carlson:Yeah.

14:25Michael Batnick:I know. It felt weird at the time. It still feels weird to me, but I get it.

14:28Ben Carlson:Yeah, I don't know why they did it. Anyway, so if you add those two together, those two are now 49 % in change of the index. Half the index. So it's basically, it's tech. Tech is half the index.

14:39Michael Batnick:Yeah, when you think about it that way, it is kind of…

14:40Ben Carlson:With all the other nine sectors, it's the same as all the other nine sectors combined, which is kind of nuts to think about.

14:47Michael Batnick:If you want to be long stocks and you say, all right, this is just... Listen, if the AI trade ends abruptly, we'll probably all have to come tumbling down with it, let's be honest. There's probably gonna be a few places to hide. But I do think that Berkshire is probably a good place to hide. It's not quite... Hey, they just bought Google, though. True. It's not quite lagging to the extent that it was in 1999 when it was down like 30 % going to the top and the Nasdaq was up a billion percent. But if you look at Berkshire compared to the index, there's no bid. Nobody wants it.

15:24Ben Carlson:The funny thing is, I was thinking about this in terms of diversification. How do you diversify away from this? I've been doing the whole podcast circuit for my book and I've been getting a lot of questions about diversification. And hey, you're worried about the AI bubble, what do you do? And yeah, you could diversify into, and there's a difference between going to cash in timing the market versus like diversifying away from certain segments of the market. And so we think about dividend stocks or value stocks or high quality or whatever. But it's funny, the value stocks. So South Korea, according to Ed Yardini, trades at eight times forward earnings.

15:57Ben Carlson:We've talked about this. The reason that the valuations are so low is because the earnings are so extremely volatile. And it's funny, that EWY, which is a South Korea MSCI ETF, was up 240 % at one point this year after the drop now, over the last year, it's only up 190 % of the last year. So it's funny when you look at, but anyway, I looked at the Russell 1000 value and I thought, wait a minute, because Micron has the huge earnings expectations coming. So the valuations probably look pretty good. You know what the number one holding in the Russell 1000 value is? I know, it's Micron. Micron.

16:32Michael Batnick:Yeah.

16:33Ben Carlson:It's kind of hilarious. Yeah, it is. So it's, and Google is in there as well. So it's, Amazon is in there. It's because tech is 50 % of the index, it's hard to get away from it. It's really hard.

16:45Michael Batnick:Here's how you get away from it. This chart does look like 99. If you compare SPLV, which is Invesco's S &P low volatility ETF, make a chart of that compared to the market, and that looks 99-ish. Because it's gone literally nowhere. So this has less than... 1 % each in comm services and tech. Literally, no exposure there. It's 25 % utilities, 21 % financials, 18 % real estate, 12 % industrials. But utilities are kind of tied to the AI trade now. True. But this is less than 2 % in tech and comm services. This is the place to hide. I'm not saying that this is a good investment. I'm not recommending it.

17:27Michael Batnick:But if you're really, really, really worried and you want the anti-AI trade, this is probably a decent place to live.

17:33Ben Carlson:My point is if tech makes up 50 % of the index and you're trying to hide away from it, you're making a huge, huge bet. So it's part of your portfolio. But if you're trying to make that, like, that is essentially, if you're going totally ex-tech, that's a huge market timing indicator.

17:50Michael Batnick:Yeah, ex-tech is nuts. It's really hard.

17:53Ben Carlson:That's my point. You have to nail it. It's really, really hard to do. All right. So shocker, Eric Belchunas, we talked about this last week. S &P 500 will not fast track SpaceX. index it'll take at least a year probably more he said this is wild considering every other big boy index is in five to 15 days so this was surprising to people they thought smp was going to bend over i listened to your talk last week on talking wealth about the whole index thing and so i guess the what's the guy's name aaron dylan they talked to him yeah it was really it was worth listening to but he made it sound like listen they take feedback these index committees they take feedback They're not just doing what they want.

18:31And so there must have been enough blowback where they said, all right, fine.

18:35Ben Carlson:People don't want, because it seemed like there was blowback.

18:37Michael Batnick:That was, that was, I'm glad you said that. That was my biggest takeaway too. And when he said that, I was like, oh yeah, of course it makes sense. Like SMP has a committee that picks the members. Now it is, the rules are relatively straightforward. It's not exactly the biggest 500 stocks, but it's pretty damn close. Obviously there's exceptions like, like, um, like Tesla was an exception. SpaceX is an exception. And yeah, obviously enough of their pension funds, whatever, enough of their institutional clients, the giant pools of money said, guys, please, please don't shove this down our throat.

19:13Michael Batnick:We don't want it. And so great. All right. We'll see what happens.

19:16Ben Carlson:So my general read of SpaceX is the general sentiment is finance is bearish. Tech is bullish. That's pretty. Is that pretty fair statement to make for the most part? Yes. so I last week I said listen this doesn't bother me that much I don't think it's gonna have an impact either way so Nick at dollars and data we work with said all right fine let's like try to put some numbers on this and he looked at what it'll make up with the index and we're using estimates still so he's looking at the Nasdaq 100 he said SpaceX if it's three times the float will make up 70 basis points essentially he said for every hundred dollars you have invested in VTI it would be a hundred and ten dollars in SpaceX for every hundred thousand dollars you have But outside of the Qs, you'd have$680 invested.

19:58Ben Carlson:You said$100. So for every$100 ,000 in VTI. Yeah. Every$100 ,000, sorry, you'd have$110 in SpaceX. So he's saying, let's say like Demodaran says, this thing is going to price at$1.8 trillion. I think it's worth$1.2. Nick says, all right, fine. Let's say it's 30 % overvalued and it immediately falls back to that fundamental value that the finance people think it is. You'd lose like 21 basis points or something. Who cares? From the Qs. Three basis points from VTI. It's not, it's meaningless.

20:25Michael Batnick:It is meaningless. I think, again, the anger is not necessarily, hey, I don't want to lose money because SpaceX is overvalued. I think most people that are thinking about it logically, like you just laid out, get that. More of the anger is the mechanics and how Elon is seemingly forcing this in limiting the supply to push up the price. I think that's probably what people are more upset about because, come on, there's more important things in life to worry about than a couple of basis points.

20:54Ben Carlson:Yes. That's a good senior quote for a yearbook right there. But the contrarian in me keeps thinking like, man, everyone in finance thinks this thing is way overvalued. Is it really that easy that this thing is going to be overvalued? Or is it just like, ah, he's going to pull it out of hat again?

21:11Michael Batnick:What did, hold on, let me just grab this. Aaron actually emailed this to me and I haven't had time to read it. All right. So Google to pay SpaceX$920 million a month for compute capacity at XAI data centers. I didn't read the details of that, but I did see people saying that it looks a little bit... The timing seems a little bit funny and the contract seems a little bit loosey-goosey. Here's the one. Morgan Stanley sees SpaceX's revenue reaching$3.4 trillion in 2040. Now, here's what I'll say, Ben. if that is even in the ballpark, even in the universe, in the galaxy, to stretch the space analogy, then yeah, okay, seems cheap.

22:01Michael Batnick:Because you know what? The finance guys don't know shit about tech. And sometimes the finance guys being sober, right? And sometimes their imagination won't let them run wild. Okay. If we are even in the vicinity of a local generational top because of the supply, the IPO, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This will be the quote. Right. Right? This will be the thing that we point back to. It's like, wait a minute. Did somebody really say that SpaceX was going to have$3.4 trillion in revenue? Or did I make that up? This will be the quote that we look back and say, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

22:32Michael Batnick:Are you kidding me?

22:33Ben Carlson:What were you people thinking?

22:35Michael Batnick:Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't obvious to you. Were you guys even paying attention to anything? We'll say, all right, there are going to be some very interesting knockout effects from this. In terms of how local economies are impacted, I don't know that the SpaceX liquidity unlock will have an impact on the macro. That seems to be a bit of a stretch.

22:58Ben Carlson:Yeah, but imagine buying a house right now in San Francisco or Austin, and you're competing against these people who have unlimited budget, effectively.

23:07Michael Batnick:So the journal did an article about some of the SpaceX employees who are about to become overnight millionaires. And they said this one guy moved to Northern Italy. And I say this one guy, I was about to say, I'm not going to try to pronounce his name. It's J. Andre Lavoie, I think. Moved to Northern Italy five years ago and bought a hotel in Ponteba, which he has been renovating. It also said this guy left the company in like 2015. So he got his early shares and bounced. His stake is valued at more than$28 million. This is a great quote. I don't want to just die with a pile of money in the bank.

23:44Michael Batnick:Love it. Love that mentality. But this guy's buying a hotel. So there's just all sorts of bizarre things that happen as a result of a giant windfall of money. Ben, we've spoken a little bit about this company Hyperliquid. We mentioned Patrick O'Shaughnessy's company, Colossus, did an incredible profile on that company. So you could see where SpaceX is trading. Let's see, Hyperliquid, SpaceX. So Hyperliquid is a blockchain-based company that brings markets, 24-7 markets. And anyone can make a market. And it's, I mean, the company is really, really on fire. SpaceX, so the IPO is priced at$120, I believe, right?

24:33I don't know.

24:34Michael Batnick:Okay. I'm pretty sure it's$120. And SpaceX is now currently trading at$158 a share on this thing. And there's volume, dude. The 24-hour volume. Take a guess. I was going to ask that.

24:47Ben Carlson:What's the volume?

24:48Michael Batnick:Take a guess. I don't know. $5 million? $118. Okay. $118 million. So, you know what? That's enough for me. I mean, that's the price. Honestly. $118 million in volume. That's good enough for me. In 24 hours?

25:07Ben Carlson:The volume when this thing trades is going to dwarf that by 20 times. What are you talking about? That's nothing. It's enough.

25:14Michael Batnick:$118 million worth of volume. You don't think that's enough to make a market? $118 million? I don't know. Is it?

25:21Ben Carlson:I don't know. I have no idea.

25:22Michael Batnick:I don't know. I'm not a market maker. I'm speaking pretty confidently about something I know very little about. But I don't know. It seems like a lot of money to me. Okay. $158 a share is where it's currently trading on hyperliquid.

25:33Ben Carlson:So my thing that I've said for a while now is the market only has time to worry about one thing at once. And that could be a boom. It could be a bust. Right? We only have time for one risk or one fancy object. It feels like a year ago now that gold and silver were the biggest story. Remember silver going nuts? At one point at the end of January, silver was up 64 % on the year. Gold is up 25 % on the year. Now both are either flat or negative. Silver is down 4.5 % or 4 % on the year. Gold is effectively flat on the year. Does that not feel like six cycles ago that happened? It does. That was the biggest story.

26:09Ben Carlson:and then we just kind of move on and forget about it.

26:12Michael Batnick:I think that's one of your best insights that you've been. I don't know when you first said that, but it's so true. It's so true. Remember private credit? Right, we moved on. So Cliffwater just reported that they got, I think they had 14 % redemption requests in the first quarter and 17 in the second. I think that's what the number was. Who cares? And I know people care, but like there's too much other shit to focus on.

26:36Ben Carlson:Yeah, people move down.

26:37Michael Batnick:And right now, all the attention is on SpaceX. But that had all of our attention. And now who cares? All right, this is a great email. I wanted to share a funny story relating to Michael mentioning he writes down the reasoning whenever he decides to buy or sell a stock. I've always done the same. I don't trade very much, but I do research on really anything and everything because there's a price I'd buy almost anything. Back in April and May of 2025, I was looking at Micron in the 70s and 80s. After some time, I decided not to buy it as I felt its product was a commodity and it would be easy to compete with them.

27:13Michael Batnick:Plus, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So anyway, last week, I bought a picture frame and put that sheet of my notebook in my office just to remind myself how absolutely stupid I can be. All I can do is laugh at myself. Everything is so clear in hindsight. And sometimes all you can do is laugh. and the sooner you are honest with yourself, the better of an investor you'll be. Maybe now is a good time to share my next story.

27:38Ben Carlson:So wait, so just so this guy said, he looked at Micron in the 70s and 80s. It's now$970 a share.

27:44Michael Batnick:Yeah.

27:44Ben Carlson:Just so we know. Okay.

27:46Michael Batnick:All right, so it turns out, Ben, that markets are efficient.

27:50Ben Carlson:Wait a minute. I just, I wanted to say this. You guys sold NVIDIA in like 2018, man, selling your NICS tickets early. Don't say you guys. Sorry, your ticket partner sold in video in 2018. Okay. As I was looking at all the stories, I'm sure. Okay, go ahead.

28:07Michael Batnick:So timing the market is hard in the stock market and in the sports ticket market. All right, bear with me. This is going to take five minutes. I told this story before a week or two ago. My friend, a lifelong friend, we have been through many sports battles together between the Giants and the Knicks. He sent me a screenshot of us selling the tickets. And I said, what is this? And he said, we spoke about this. I don't remember speaking about this. I would not have sold the tickets, okay? So here's how the season tickets work. Everybody sees the prices. But all right, back up. This was the hottest ticket in the world.

28:43Michael Batnick:People are really upset. There's a lot of like econ spillover into what's happening. And this is very simple. And I don't want to sound like a dickhead because it's easy for me to say because I'm not getting locked out because I do have tickets. All right? So I'm not trying to sound insensitive. But this is supply and demand. Like, I don't know what people are so up in arms about because… This turned into, like, Bitcoin, essentially. They're not making any more tickets. They're not making any more tickets. So the Garden did bizarrely release 500 tickets both on Sunday at 10 a.m. and then at 2 p.m.

29:18Michael Batnick:And then they released another batch, a small batch yesterday before the game. That was very bizarre, but there's only 19 ,000 tickets. Okay. And the, the, the garden is sort of like the federal reserve, maybe more powerful. They can set prices, but then there's a whole market outside of them, right? Like how the market, the Fed controls the short end of the curve. So the problem is this, like friends of mine were like, this is bullshit. I've been a lifelong fan and I can't get into seeing my team play for less than$9 ,000 a ticket. Okay. hey, but if the tickets were$2 ,000, then there would be 3 million people that wants to buy 19 ,000 tickets.

29:51Michael Batnick:Like there is - This is not an economy-wide story. No, supplies meeting demand. Okay, but anyway, but all of those prices that we saw, to bring it back to my story, all of those prices, all those screenshots, they were bullshit. I could list my house for$4 million. Nobody's going to buy it.

30:09Ben Carlson:So you could have listed yours and you wouldn't have sold them for 10 grand or whatever they're showing.

30:12Michael Batnick:Exactly. All right, so let me come back to reality. So the way that my tickets work, I'm in the lower bowl, section 109, row 20. They're good seats. They're not amazing seats. They're certainly good enough, better than good enough.

30:24Ben Carlson:Yeah, I was there. Those are good seats.

30:25Michael Batnick:Yeah, they're good seats. My face value per ticket for the season is like 225, something like that, per ticket. Round one was 380. Not terrible. Round two was 550. Round three, it starts to get jacked up to 750. and the finals, it's$1 ,350. So, you know, it's not an insignificant amount of money. It's a lot of money. Before this series started, as I've now said five times, my friend sent me a screenshot. What he had hoped for was that we would sell our tickets. We made a$3 ,000 profit, and he thought that we would trade down and go in the$200s, right? And he thought that essentially, we would get paid$500 to go to the game.

31:10Ben Carlson:Right, you're shorting him, essentially.

31:12Michael Batnick:Correct. He got caught naked. So, and then we compounded the problem. So we sold our tickets too early. And simultaneously, we bought back in too early. And then simultaneously, we waited too long to sell. So it was jab, jab, knockout punch. All right. So we sold those tickets in 109 for 4 ,400 for game four. And then we bought in 111, so even more diagonal, so worse seats, we bought those for$7 ,500 a ticket. All right? So now we're in the hall already. We're in the hall already. And then for last night, for last night, we paid$8 ,000 a ticket,$8 ,000 actual dollars a ticket for section 200, okay?

32:01Okay. So now, now we are working with our broker who was, bless him.

32:09Michael Batnick:He was so patient. We were really being a pain in the ass because the amount of anxiety that we felt, because now, so now we need to sell these, our original pair, the seats that we own, we need to sell game three for$12 ,000 a piece to break even. And when I say break even, I just mean no worse off than we would have been financially, meaning we spend$13.50 a ticket. All right. So to get back to square one, albeit with worse seats, but to get back to square one financially, we need to sell each ticket for$12 ,000. Now we listed them for$18 ,000 first, because that's what the market was pricing at.

32:44Michael Batnick:That was not the clearing price. That's what they were listed at. There was no transactions there. Now it's easy to say in hindsight, because we didn't know, but we just kept lowering them. And my friend and I were texting each other back and forth. Like, Like, we don't want to, like, harass our broker, right? He's like, but we're watching it all f***ing day, dude, on Sunday. All day on Sunday. It was so stressful. Because now we're like, oh, no. If we're, like, if we sell them for, like, 7 ,000, like, we're going to take an absolute bath to be in worse seats. Now we're turning what should be, like, a blissful moment of, like, zen, like, euphoric zen being in the finals.

33:21Michael Batnick:It is beyond stressful. So I go to sleep on Sunday night. And at this point, the tickets, we wanted them to sell already, obviously. I wake up on Monday at 4.45 in the morning, and I see they still haven't sold. And now I'm like, it's 4.45, and I'm just staring at the space. And my friend texted me. He's like, are you awake? Like, neither of us could sleep. We were so anxious about selling these tickets. So finally, I said, Jason, I'm giving you to 10 o 'clock. That's my line in the sand. We're not going to be the last assholes to sell these tickets. Like, I'm just going to just... He texted me back like 20 minutes later.

33:52Michael Batnick:Dude, we just sold your tickets for$9 ,000. I'm not going to take a commission. Thank you. This guy's a mensch. But I felt like I was beat. My head was held underwater and I just caught like a gasp of air to breathe. The amount of like relief that I felt. Anyway, this was a giant cluster F. The amount of stress. So ultimately where it shook out was we ended up paying$2 ,800 per ticket instead of$1 ,400 per ticket. but once it was done, I said to my friend, all things considered, anybody that I know who's a Knick fan would put a knife in my throat to be able to go to both games for$2 ,800. Still a lot of money but not$11 ,000.

34:35True.

34:36Ben Carlson:But someone paid more than the annual contribution limit for Roth IRA for your tickets.

34:42Michael Batnick:Which tickets? Oh, yes. $9 ,000 a ticket. $9 ,000 freaking... Dude, I spent$8 ,000 for Section 200. Now, it was sort of funny money because I was using the proceeds, right? Like it wasn't like coming out of my pocket, but this is a plan.

34:55Ben Carlson:This is not an economy-wide story. This is a, the Knicks haven't been here in forever and rabid fan base and lots of money in New York.

35:01Michael Batnick:Yeah. So a lesson in efficient markets.

35:06Ben Carlson:Lesson learned. Don't sell early for final tickets. Whew. Man. Okay.

35:12Michael Batnick:Speaking of IRAs. Oh, oh, oh, oh. What? One part of the story that I omitted. So I was with Matt Middleton. and Chris Cherry from Future Proof. We went to the watch party for game two, I believe. And we're at Roberta's, which is a pizza joint, a classy pizza joint across from the garden. We're upstairs having dinner and drinks. And I'm talking to Matt. And he's like, oh, you have season tickets? Where are they? So I said, 109. He goes, what row are they? I said, 20. He goes, no fucking way. He took out his phone. He goes, what seats are they? Middleton's. Middleton bought my seats. Matt Middleton bought my seats.

35:59Michael Batnick:What are the freaking odds? So he timed it good. He got it early. It's a cherry on top. So it was his brother-in-law that bought the tickets, and it wasn't me that sold. So Matt and I didn't transact with each other. My partner, Matt's brother-in-law.

36:14Michael Batnick:Anyway, supply and demand and timing the market. Okay.

36:17Ben Carlson:I'm sure you wanted it to be a sweep. I'm happy if this thing goes seven because I'm enjoying the basketball. Being an observer from the outside. Oh, of course. Not having a dog in this fight. Of course, yeah.

36:26Michael Batnick:So I will be in San Antone for game five. All right. I was hoping for a sweep, obviously. We'd rather not travel, but the Spurs are tough as shit. They're a really, really good team.

36:35Ben Carlson:Yeah, I think it's been a great series so far. I'm enjoying it. One other.

36:39Michael Batnick:One other. I know I'm grabbing the mic a lot, so forgive me, but one other thing. I think now is an appropriate time to say this. last week I gave grace and gratitude to the world. Just like acknowledging that like life sucks a lot for a lot of people. I had, I had a years of blackness in my personal life and I'm, it's, I'm enjoying myself, right? Like things are good and it's, it's nice to be grateful. And I'm not like the most spiritual religious person in the world. In fact, I'm not at all, but it is sometimes funny how the universe works. So on that day, later that afternoon, the backstory is such.

37:19Michael Batnick:I had worked out of my house a year ago when I moved in. And the person that did the job was a referral. He got referred into me from a friend of mine. So I texted him, hey, work looks great. Thank you so much. How do I pay you? That was on September 2nd. I never heard back from the guy. I'm saying to my friend who referred him, he didn't get back to me. Is this weird? He's like, oh yeah, he did the same thing to me. He just, whatever, just like a few months gone by and he didn't, you know, he eventually came back to me. Like, all right, that's a little bit weird. Noted. So by October 30th, it had been basically two months.

37:58Michael Batnick:I texted him again. I said, hey, as much as I would love to not pay you, I owe you money. Like you did a job. How do I pay you? Ghosted. um i got a text last tuesday after we recorded the pod hey uh it's so-and-so from so-and-so's office um what's your email address we're gonna send you an invoice and i reacted i reacted i said this is really strange who does business this way i i haven't heard from you for a year and you just text me like what's your email address you owe us money they're like oh well i'm sorry we're just trying to get paid. I'm like, I know, but this is bizarre. Who does business this way?

38:41Michael Batnick:And she said, you seem pretty upset. I said, yeah, I am upset. Tell him to call me. And now had they said, hey, sorry to slip through the cracks. We're trying to get more organized. I'm pretty sure I would have just said, no problem, it happens. But I just thought it was weird that there was no acknowledgement of it or anything. Just an, hey, what's your email address? You owe us money. Like I tried to pay you twice.

39:04Ben Carlson:Business must be flush if they're not seeking out people for a year, huh?

39:07Michael Batnick:I thought I did the right thing by even proactively saying I owe you money. It was, it was, uh, it was like not, it was not 400 bucks. It was like a decent amount of money. So he calls me and he said, you know, I was really taken aback, um, by the way that you reacted. Now I didn't curse or anything like that. Like I'm not, I'm, I don't, I don't treat people that way. That's like not my, that's not my MO. Um, but I was, I was stern. I said, yeah, Tom's calling me. I am upset. You know, I'm, I'm a local guy. I've been in this community for years and I've just never seen anything like this. I did a job for you and I gave you an interest-free loan.

39:40I'm like, I know, but I'm a business person too.

39:44Michael Batnick:And I just think it's weird that when somebody tries to pay you, you just, you just go with them. I just, I think that's weird behavior. I'm sorry. And he goes, well, you know what? I've been running around for the last six months, taking my six-year-old to the oncologist. I'm about to cry. And I was just like, it was such, it was such a fucking gut punch. You never know what someone else is going through, right? It was, so obviously I'm just like trying to calm down and I could hear how upset he was getting. You know, his lip was quivering and it was just, it was rough. And it was a good reminder.

40:21Michael Batnick:Like you hear people say this a lot and you don't really like take it to heart because you people go on with your life and whatever but really just like to try to be nice and because you never know what somebody's going through right and you people usually don't experience that because 99 times out of 100 who cares everybody's going through some shit um and 99 times out of 100 people are just being jerks and whatever but there are some

40:40Ben Carlson:people who are going through real shit and you're like oh geez okay that that explains your mood or

40:45Michael Batnick:your reaction or yeah so it just it was one of those things that i hope that i know i will i I will take with me forever and ever because it really. Yeah.

40:56Ben Carlson:It's a good reminder. Yeah. I agree. All right. I got no transition from that. I just wanted to just, just try and be nice. You're right. It's a good, that's a good way to frame life. Okay. From the wall street journal, Gen Z can't get enough of Roth IRAs. All right. From the last 10 years, a share of all individual retirement account owners who are under 30 years old has doubled from 5 % to 10%. This is great news. Um, total IRA contributions from Gen Z grew 65 % in the first quarter of 2026. Fantastic. I looked at this from the Federal Reserve. This is corporate equities and mutual fund shares by age under 40.

41:35Ben Carlson:It's up threefold since 2020. The ownership of equities for people under 40. This boom in the 2020s has been such a great thing for young people getting involved in the markets. And it's because fees are lower.

41:48Michael Batnick:But just wait, Ben, until 1937 happens.

41:50Ben Carlson:I heard from people. What happens when we have a 60 % crash?

41:53Michael Batnick:It is so tiring. I'm so sick of it. Okay, if we have a bear market, what do you mean if we have a bear market? That's what happens in markets. You have bear markets. Right. What, they're going to lose some money and learn some lessons and move on with their life and buy stocks at lower prices?

42:12Ben Carlson:Yes, exactly. I think it's okay to take good news for what it is. From Bloomberg, Katie Graffield. So Vanguard VOL hits$1 trillion in assets for the first time. This is the first ever, and they show the inflows this year. So it's had like 70 billion of inflows this year, which is nuts. So Bloomberg says this was once thought unimaginable for the ETF industry, which is kind of crazy because there's so many different S &P 500 index funds, right? There's not just this. SPY still has a ton of assets too. There's a lot of different, so it is kind of crazy that this is the one that did it. But yeah, SPY has$770 billion in assets under management.

42:52So it's crazy.

42:54Ben Carlson:But you contract this with another one from Bloomberg. All right. Retail investment trader room. Individual share of trading in stock has doubled since 2010. So from 10 % to 20%. So it's kind of weird to juxtapose the fact that there's all this money in Vanguard. There's all this money going into Roth IRAs for young people, right? That is reasonable investment behavior, right? These people are doing good stuff. And then you have this stuff. It says there's 20 already SpaceX-length ETFs that have been filed. And those will get eaten up. People will invest in them. There's already filings for Anthropic and OpenAI.

43:28Ben Carlson:I'm sure it's three times SpaceX and three times Anthropic and all of these things. And I think it's hard for people to have both of these ideas in their head at once.

43:38Michael Batnick:Yes.

43:38Ben Carlson:That people can be behaving responsibly and irresponsibly at the same time.

43:42Michael Batnick:Yeah. There's people that are drunk and throwing up all over the dance floor. And there's people that are at home asleep on their couch. Who made the analogy with the market about like church and the casino? Was it Buffett? I can't remember. Okay.

44:02Ben Carlson:Yeah, that is a Buffett one, I think.

44:03Michael Batnick:Okay. But I've been saying this, you know, Josh and I have been having this conversation a lot that I think the degenerate behavior is really distracting people. Like they're focusing more on that than they are SPY flows or VOL flows.

44:21Ben Carlson:Exactly. And those are the things that matter. I agree. This was interesting on inequality. I had never seen it. So you and I have shown this chart before of the fact that the middle class is getting hollowed out, not because people are getting poorer, but because people are getting richer, right? People are moving from the middle class to the upper class in the upper upper class, right? In the rich. So I think it's what? 36 % of families were middle class in 1979, went down to 31%, but that's because the upper middle class grew from 31 % from 10%. So these guys did this piece and they wrote about the New York Times.

44:53Ben Carlson:But this is interesting. The share of wealth held by the middle class fell 8 % in 2022 from 24 % in 1989. So middle class wealth fell a ton. But share by the upper middle class also fell from 39 % to 50%. This is of the pie. right so this is not that their aggregate wealth fell it's that their share of it that's because the share of wealth to the top group just three percent of families more than doubled rising to 53 from 26 so this is the hard part about wealth inequality is that everyone is getting better but the pie is getting bigger and the question is like does it really matter that the the middle class is not being how about they're moving up they're getting richer does it really matter i guess in the grand scheme of things that but just the top one percent of the top three percent or whatever it is, is having so much more money.

45:36Michael Batnick:Yes.

45:36Ben Carlson:And my only answer to that is like politically it matters probably more than anything else. Yes. Like it's not like this is taking away from other people in some way. But politically, this is the problem where there's too much power in the hands of too few people like this. I think that's where the big problem is.

45:52Michael Batnick:And it feels like things are being taken away.

45:54Ben Carlson:Yes. That number was shocking to me. The top 3 % has seen their wealth double. In the upper middle class, their share fell.

46:02Michael Batnick:Think about what Elon and Bill Gates and Bezos, like think about what their wealth alone, just those three people does to this chart.

46:11Ben Carlson:Yes. Yeah, exactly.

46:13Michael Batnick:You know, like, because Elon's going to be worth a trillion.

46:15Ben Carlson:It's kind of hard to wrap your head around it though. Right. All right. Why don't you read this email and I have a defense for myself.

46:24Michael Batnick:No, I want to do this with some data. Okay. Right? I don't want to like... I have data. Okay.

46:31Ben Carlson:Yes. All right.

46:33Michael Batnick:Somebody emailed Ben a couple weeks back. Ben's defense of today's economy versus the 1970s put me over the edge. Any review of real numbers show that today's economy is objectively worse on big ticket items like housing, healthcare, and education. To say otherwise is logic defying. Which was not my point, by the way. Okay. By the way, I read this wrong. I think, yeah, he's right on that. Housing, healthcare, education. Okay. Sure, televisions have gotten cheaper, but you need to watch them while living in your parents' basement. Who does? Yeah. I mean, come on. Everybody's living in their parents' basement.

47:08Michael Batnick:The coup de grace in all of this is that even though the 1970s were challenging, it was mostly afforded on one salary, not two, that most young couples need today. Shocking boomer analysis for Ben. XOXOXO, longtime fan. So I said, you mind if I read this on the show? And he said, please do. I love you guys. I said, I assume you're a young person. And this threw me for a loop in. The guy said, no, I'm 54 years old and also a Sixers fan. So I could take the heat. Um, this person was born in 1972. Uh, does their perspective of the 1970s hold any water? No, of course not.

47:40Ben Carlson:Not when you're, I don't remember. I don't have visions of the economy from when I was six years old or something. Okay.

47:45Michael Batnick:Now in fairness, we have no, we have, we have no visions of the economy from the 1970s because we weren't there, but.

47:49Ben Carlson:So my, my whole thing was the, there's no way that you can say the sentiment should be worse today than it was in the seventies. The seventies was objectively worse as an economy. And he says, no, no, no, you're wrong. So guess what? I wrote a whole chapter about the 70s in my book. Okay? I did a chapter called The Great Inflation. I did a lot of history on this. Okay? I just have a couple things I want to read from my book. Okay? Combination of factors, including excessive government spending, the Vietnam War, supply chain issues, and oil supply shocks contributed to unprecedented inflation in the 1970s.

48:16Okay?

48:17Ben Carlson:From 1968 to 1981, the inflation rate averaged 7.5 % per year. It ended the year with double-digit inflation three times, 1974, 1979, and 1980, There wasn't a single year in the entire decade when inflation came in below 3%. In 8 out of the 10 years, the annual inflation rate was above 5%. This is the craziest one to me. From 1961 to 1982, the USA was in a recession for one-third of this dreadful period. One-third of the time, over a 13-year period or something, the US was in a recession. What was the unemployment rate? It was 10 %? It got to 10 % as well. Yes. There was three recessions between 1973 and 1982.

48:58Ben Carlson:It was brutal. Brutal. Economy was, that was my whole point, is that you can't say that the economy today is worse than that. You just can't. I'm sorry.

49:06Michael Batnick:No, no. Yeah, and you're not saying that. I don't know if he's saying that because it sounds like he's talking about big ticket items. Like, yeah, maybe the housing situation is worse.

49:15Ben Carlson:Yeah, and you also had 18 % mortgages by the end of that. Right, right. So, anyway. Tell you what, 54-year-old guy who called me a shockingly boomer now, analysis. Send me your address. I'll send you a copy of the books. You can read about it. All right. This is a fair question someone posted to me the other day. I wrote about how AI is flattening the world in some ways in terms of international stock markets. South Korea and Taiwan and China and Thailand are all outperforming the NASDAQ over the past year or so, like crushing them. And this guy says to me, okay, fine. The U.S. is spending close to 10 times more on AI capex than China is, but their models are only a nose ahead of China's models, and they are a closed source.

49:55Ben Carlson:How can that possibly be justified? At a minimum, the U.S. should be three to four years ahead. And I said, give me a source on this. I need to back it up. And he said, all right, fine. This is from Jeffries. China's AI industry has reached a milestone where its top models are now performing at 90 % of U.S. levels, while they're spending 82 % lower than U.S. peers, such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

50:16Michael Batnick:So what's the question? Well, the question is - Why aren't our models more ahead? or?

50:20Ben Carlson:No, the question is like, are the returns going to be there for these big companies, the hyperscalers? If China is able to do this, now the thing you would say is, well, it's kind of circular because China is just stealing from them, right? So China can't really get ahead without stealing from them, I guess, is the point. The question is like, are these, are the US investments going to pay off for the hyperscalers if China can just replicate this stuff to 90 % of what they do? And I guess Kai Wu said, listen, the code is not the moat. I think that was his point. Like these hyperscalers are not going to have a mode on this stuff.

50:53Ben Carlson:It's not going to be like the other stuff.

50:55Michael Batnick:I think the opportunity said that we have to monetize these models is just way greater than China, for example. And this might be, this actually might be a very ignorant statement because I don't really know what the deal is in China. But what I was thinking is think about the monetization of reels, for example. like given that china is a state-run country i'm guessing actually you know i don't need to guess totally ignorant here i was saying they started tiktok yeah yeah yeah um all right so see i

51:30Ben Carlson:caught myself i thought it was interesting question caught myself saying something hey credit to me i caught myself making shit up hand up yeah i don't know the answer this is interesting a couple charts. This is from the Financial Times. They showed since Agenic AI came, the number of app releases is through the roof, right? It became easier to build your own app. The question is like, how many people actually have good ideas? And it shows that the app reviews are right where they were and apps with significant usage have actually dropped. So all these new apps are being created. People have ideas and no one is using them.

52:01Ben Carlson:Bob Elliott had this other thing where he showed weekly ebook releases. When ChatGPT releases, there's a ton of new ebooks because people, guess what? but you can use AI to help you write. It's not helping. There's so much, like scientific papers submitted, took off like a rocket ship. Same for lawsuits. The question is like, where's the quality? If there's no quality and everyone just has crappy ideas that they're implementing, like what's the point of it? And I think there's going to, it's a lot of spaghetti

52:28Michael Batnick:being thrown at the wall. Yeah, that's the thing.

52:31Ben Carlson:You still have to have some quality. I'm still getting used to this. I ask, I do this thing every year in my blog where I do the best books I read every year. I did my favorite fiction book, my favorite nonfiction. So I took all those blog posts and I uploaded them to ChatGPT. And I said, I need some new fiction books. The well is run dry. I've got nothing to read right now. I need something new. Whatever I'm trying to read, it's not taken with me. So I took all my books that I read. Look at all my fiction books. Give me some suggestions. So it gave me like a bunch of suggestions. But this is, I'm still getting used to it.

52:57Ben Carlson:They recommended Straight Man by Richard Russo. And it says, this is ChatGPT talking. One of the funniest novels I've ever read. I just I looked at that and I just I can't I'm still getting used to this the fact that AI is talking to us like a person did AI really read this I guess it's I don't kind of I don't know I thought that was kind of funny alright let's do crypto for a second alright did you read this thing from Joe Weisenthal no he wrote a piece at Bloomberg about the crypto winner and he said 12 reasons why this crypto winner is worse than ever okay and he gives He's saying like, basically, you can no longer say we're early.

53:38Ben Carlson:Crypto Twitter is dead. Institutional adoption already happened. The regulatory environment is already as favorable as it could possibly get. AI boom is crowding out access to electricity. There's a growing concern about quantum computing. He goes through all this stuff. And he said the biggest one, which he talked about last week, is AI is taking up all the mental share, mental market share. A few years ago, maybe if you were a smart tech person, crypto seemed like a cutting edge. That's no longer the case. Here's the thing that I think is the most disheartening for crypto is crypto was a risk on asset.

54:08Ben Carlson:Okay. We've shown that it's not a risk off asset. It hasn't helped hedge against anything, but it's risk on. And that's the weirdest thing to me now that we are fully risk on in a tech boom and crypto is not keeping up. That's the thing that would have me the most concerned about this.

54:23Michael Batnick:Yeah. Yeah. There also just seems to be just a bit of apathy.

54:29Michael Batnick:because what's the next catalyst? It all already happened. Yes.

54:34Ben Carlson:We do say this every time there's a crypto window. They're like, what could pull it out of this? What's the next catalyst? But now it does feel like after the ETF came out, what else was there? There's nothing.

54:44Michael Batnick:And not helping matters is the fact that Michael Saylor finally sold some Bitcoin. I don't even know what the story is. I guess they needed money for Stretch. They prefer it. I'm a little bit out of my depth here. But whatever. The point is, The person who said, sell a kid if you have to, don't sell Bitcoin, sold Bitcoin. And then they bought$100 million worth of Bitcoin. It's really weird.

55:05Ben Carlson:I don't get why they sold it and then bought it.

55:07Michael Batnick:I don't know. I don't know.

55:08Ben Carlson:I don't know. But they're really big, bigly underwater on their Bitcoin holdings, right? Strategy? Well, if you price it in dollars. One Bitcoin, still one Bitcoin.

55:18Michael Batnick:It is interesting that simultaneously this is happening. And this could have been huge news, but nobody really cares. So the largest US banks plan to launch a token, this is from the journal, plan to launch a tokenized deposit network next year and attempt to stave off threats from crypto companies that are seeking to wade deeper into their territory under President Trump. The new network will connect traditional payment rails with the infrastructure that digital assets run on. It will be operated by a real-time payment network company called The Clearinghouse, which is co-owned by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and other large commercial banks.

55:52Michael Batnick:Here it is. The move marks one of the most significant efforts yet to open up the crypto world to the banking industry. It would allow tokenized deposits to move instantly across blockchain technology with 24 seven settlements. Now we've complained about this over the years. I sure have. Why does it take, why does it take my money to go from JP Morgan to wherever a custodian, whatever? Like, why does it take seven days to settle? It's because they're not speaking the same language. They have their own rails. They have their own rails. Like if there was an integrated network to allow settlements to move faster, which I hope is inevitable, this is awesome.

56:28Michael Batnick:And it's on blockchain, but nobody really cares because it's all about the price. True.

56:33Ben Carlson:That's the thing. Like, let's say they did this. Does it really help the price at all? I don't know.

56:37Michael Batnick:No idea.

56:39Ben Carlson:Okay. This is the bottom in crypto. We just marked it right there. Okay. I want to talk about going home to God's country, northern Michigan. I was, I've been home the last, we had two soccer tournaments in the last three or four weeks in Traverse City. where I'm from. Michigan. It's right here. See, right there on the mitten. That's where it is. And I was thinking about this a lot because I got a question from a podcast listener. I said, hey, my wife got a job there. We're thinking about moving there. What do you think? So I had a few back and forths with this guy. I'm like a Michigan travel agent.

57:05Ben Carlson:People always ask me, like, what restaurants and bars should I go to in Grand Rapids? But anyway, this guy wanted to move to Traverse City. He asked me what I thought. And I said, five months out of the year, it's probably one of the most beautiful places on earth. Like from June to October, it's beautiful. The other seven months out of the year, But every time when I was 18 and I graduated high school, I wanted to get out there so fast. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Right. I mean, I feel like I'm in a fishbowl. It's a small, like touristy town. Get me out of here. I don't want. And I had friends who like stayed in the area and settled down and had the families.

57:33Ben Carlson:And I'm like, you're nuts. There's no way I could stay in that my hometown. I wanted out of there. It's too small. But now every time I go back there, I realize like, oh, you idiot. This place was amazing. What were you thinking? And every time I love it when I go back there. And I like, but now I, my parents, it's a peninsula. Traverse City is in a big peninsula. It's like 18 miles long. And each side, there's a bay. And my parents live closer to the East Bay. And every time I go back there, I go for a jog along the bay. And this road goes right along the water. It looks like Caribbean-style water, like the bluest water you've ever seen.

58:01Ben Carlson:And I see all these old houses that used to be there are now torn down and built in these huge mansions, right? And the place has been discovered. And that's what I told a guy, like, listen, it's a great place to live. It's probably, it's not a great place for a job market. Because a lot of people who have homes there now, it's seasonal. And it's really bad. So there's a story someone sent me of Petoskey, Michigan, which is just an hour and a half north of Traverse City. It's another lovely town right on the water. The cost of available homes have more than tripled since 2020, rising from$310 ,000 to$1.1 million.

58:32Ben Carlson:Again, since 2020. This is like one of those places where people discovered it in the pandemic. And they said half the homes in the city of 5 ,800 have been scooped up by out-of-towners who are typically only there to summer. and the question is like how do regular people live there and they said that they've been interviewing people for the schools and they have to ask do you have housing we've had a lot of people turn down jobs because they couldn't find housing so these like beautiful places like how do you have people who are teachers and police officers and firefighters and working at the shops downtown we went there to vacation a couple years ago and on a wednesday the restaurant was closed and it said not enough staff and so when these places get discovered like this and this is one of the things where there's no places undiscovered anymore.

59:13Ben Carlson:I'm sure it's like this. Like with San Francisco, we talk about the Anthropoc people. How do normal people live in these places anymore? How do they come there if they didn't already live there? It's impossible.

59:22Michael Batnick:Yeah, it's sad.

59:24Ben Carlson:I don't know what the, short of building more housing, finally, I don't know what the actual solution is. All the beautiful places now have been discovered by people.

59:34Michael Batnick:Well, here's a pretty dark reality. There is no solution.

59:37Ben Carlson:Yeah, exactly.

59:38Michael Batnick:I mean, this is, This is what it is. And there's no body who would benefit from changing it. Nobody is incentivized or powerful enough at the government level. It just sucks. It's sad.

59:51Ben Carlson:Anyway, yeah, you're right. That's kind of my takeaway.

59:54Michael Batnick:All right, we spoke about this earlier. So Blackstone's private credit fund, B-Cred, investors asked for 10 % of their shares in the second quarter, up from 8 % in the first quarter. It was$4.4 billion. They're going to cap it at 5%. Yeah, Cliff, why did we do this already? Just interesting. Nobody cares. Like, whatever. All right. It's happening. It's still bleeding.

1:00:15Ben Carlson:But so they're going to lose 5 % per quarter for the next two years, probably. Is that fair to say, based on like the, or at least for the next year or so?

1:00:23Michael Batnick:I don't know if it's quite that clean because there's money coming in.

1:00:26Ben Carlson:Oh, yeah.

1:00:27Michael Batnick:To offset some of the money going out. And there's like all sorts of credit facilities and stuff. So I think this is the point of the gate, right? It's like maybe, I don't know how this plays out. But I don't know if people - That's the hope, they slow it down. I guess maybe if it's three more quarters and the private credit world doesn't blow up, like the headlines sort of slow down and the returns are still fine. Then people still like, ah, you know what? All right, it turns out that it was much ado about nothing. I'm not predicting that, but that could slow it down.

1:00:56Ben Carlson:The big story in the panic of 1907 was JP Morgan, the guy told his bank tellers to count the money out slowly so they could stop the bank run. And like every day they gave out less and less money. And that was the way to stop the bank run. That's like, that's what this is. All right. You've talked about your car buying situation. I want to talk about mine. You've got a car broker. I'm still a man of the people. Do the shopping mine on my own. But I'm using, I'm relying on Chad GPT heavily in the LLMs for looking at cars. And I'm having enormous ticker price shock because the last time I got my lease three years ago, I had a ton of equity in my old car still.

1:01:31Ben Carlson:And like the transition was easy. So it was relatively cheap. Now I can't believe how expensive things are. I, buying a new car and I'm doing all these price points and I'm, and I'm, ChatGPT is really, really good for giving you like, here's what you should get, right? They're, they're, they're giving you advice on like, here's what you should get. Here's what you'd ask for. And I'm looking at all these cars that are on the road everywhere. I'm looking at these huge SUVs and I don't want, I told you, I don't want the big one because I want to be able to get into a parking spot, but I'm looking at not even like high-end luxury cars, just like Suburbans and and Tahoes, and Expeditions, and Wagoneers, and Lincoln Navigators.

1:02:07Ben Carlson:And these cars all, like if you get even a decent package on them, we're talking like$1 ,500 to$2 ,500 a month for these. These are cars you see everywhere on the road. And it kind of boggles my mind. Even like the, I don't know, Honda Pilot and the Volvo XC90. We're talking like well over$1 ,000 a month for these. You see these everywhere.

1:02:32Michael Batnick:how are people doing this right it's not like there's like it's not like one person in your town has a Wagoneer yes they're everywhere you go to a soccer

1:02:40Ben Carlson:game the whole parking lot is full of them and so anytime you tell we talk about what kind of cars we're thinking about or getting people are apt to say like oh you idiot don't get that it's a piece of crap get this or this is actually the version of this what you should get and so I told you a few weeks ago I can't I looked at I went and looked at a Lexus and I'm like I just my kids destroy the cars. I can't do it yet. Maybe like when the kids are older, I'll get something nicer. So I'm going to get like a Kia. I'm like trading down. I'm getting like a Kia Telluride, which is pretty nice car.

1:03:11Ben Carlson:Those are nice. They're nice. They look nice. It's like a step-down version of like a Hyundai essentially. But the guy told me, we can't keep these on the lot. They're selling so fast. We can't keep them here. Maybe he just says that.

1:03:22Michael Batnick:It's hilarious that like$54 ,000 is like the affordable car. Yes, exactly. That's my point. That was like the affordable one. When we were, I don't know, say in high school, what did$55 ,000 get you? Like an M3? An unbelievable car. I guess that's my point.

1:03:39Ben Carlson:And again, I don't want to drive an SUV anymore. I would love to drive a sedan, but I have to because we have kids with sports. We have big benches and chairs and we have carpooling. And so I needed more room. Anyway, the sticker price shock was totally real for me though.

1:03:52Michael Batnick:Yeah, it's crazy. All right, stick with personal finance. It's funny what people get up and ups about. Guys, I am listening all the time. Something driving me crazy wanted to send over. I am 53, and guess what? I am considering early retirement. And guess what age? 55. Good for you. Ben continually says on the show, I don't know why everyone says 55 for early retirement. Do you continually say that? I feel like I've never heard you say that.

1:04:15Ben Carlson:I do.

1:04:15Michael Batnick:Because people look around and know, no.

1:04:17Ben Carlson:Because every time we get a question about early retirement for Ask the Compound, people say they want to retire at 55. You say Ask the Compound.

1:04:23Michael Batnick:Okay. Well, anyway, this person is up in arms, Ben. But he has a point. For anyone with a 401k, it is not that complicated. The rule of 55 allows you to access 401k money without penalty. I don't think it should be surprising that with that out there, people consider 55 for early retirement if they can afford it. All right, good for you.

1:04:44Ben Carlson:We've talked about the rule of 55 many times on Ask Combo, by the way. And the thing is, I'm having people in their 30s tell me this. So this guy's like not many people know about this rule of 55. Come on, man. No one knows about this. Uh, well, anyway, I asked Claude about it and it gave me whatever, a bunch of paragraphs.

1:05:03Michael Batnick:I copied and pasted it to Bill Sweet. I said, is this true? And he said, yes.

1:05:07Ben Carlson:Yeah. We talked about it. Bill is the one who schooled me on it. I didn't know about it either, really.

1:05:11Michael Batnick:I guess my point is like just, uh, you know, just, just, uh, chat and Claude giving you pretty rock solid answers on personal finance stuff. It's cool. It's obviously, you know, a potential threat to advisors, but it's making for a better, better, better informed consumer. It's good stuff. It's great.

1:05:28Ben Carlson:The thing that we've been talking about is if you're an advisor, you're going to have to deal with a better informed consumer.

1:05:34Michael Batnick:Which I think most advisors are like, good. Yes. Right. It's easier. Kitsis has said this. I used to spend time educating people on a mutual fund. I don't want to do that. Honestly, we've had thousands of conversations with people over the years.

1:05:47Ben Carlson:The hardest people to have conversations with are people who know absolutely nothing. Right. Because you have no idea where to start sometimes. Right. You feel like you're starting from square one. if someone is actually understands and you just have to fill in the details that's an easy conversation for us to have we do that in our sleep yeah wait you're right you're right so i've been doing the podcast tour for my book i've done a lot of them and it's interesting i'm noticing like themes and stuff but i had two conversations last week that really stood out to me and both of them were dealing with guys who are 80 years or older so i was on um jeremy schwartz has a podcast with serious xm radio called behind the markets and he brings on jeremy siegler every week to talk for like the first 15 minutes and have a podcast afterwards.

1:06:27Ben Carlson:And I think Siegel is 80 years old. I think he's 80. I looked and his love of the markets, like we just had to like wind him up and let him go. He gets so excited to talk about the markets. The guy loves the freaking markets and talking about the economy.

1:06:43Michael Batnick:He's like a child. It's so great.

1:06:45Ben Carlson:Yes. He's so excited. And then I talked, I was on Robert, Robert, uh, Robin Farzad's podcast with Paul Merriman. Paul Merriman is 83, I think. And he's still teaching people about investing and saving. He has a podcast. He has a newsletter. He teaches people how to like save and invest and seeing these guys in their eighties still do what they love. That to me, that is the dream. I know there's a lot of people who have the dream of early retirement. We talked about the guy before. I get questions all the time from people about, I want to do the fire thing because I hate my job. And I think if you actually do find something you love to do and you're still doing it, that is the dream to me.

1:07:18Ben Carlson:And these guys still love what they're doing at 80 years old. and I think to me that's a dream I know other people other people would say you're nuts you think I'm going to keep doing keep working that old but that to me personally that's the dream I agree

1:07:31Michael Batnick:and the thing about dreams Ben is everybody has their own dream am I right? and it's okay that's okay that's what makes the market Siegel is just a phenomenal yeah

1:07:41Ben Carlson:it was really fun to talk about market history with him

1:07:43Michael Batnick:you know what else was really fun? I went to the movies on Friday night okay and I saw Obsession

1:07:51Ben Carlson:Okay, that's the other YouTube movie? Like the one last week, Backrooms,

1:07:54Michael Batnick:or the YouTube movie? So Backrooms was, Backrooms was a YouTube channel, whatever it's called. I guess I didn't realize

1:08:01Ben Carlson:the extent to which people had already been watching this as a show on YouTube, and that sort of built an audience, which is really smart.

1:08:07Michael Batnick:Yeah.

1:08:07Ben Carlson:But I didn't realize the extent of that.

1:08:09Michael Batnick:So, I believe the director's name is Cary Barker of Obsession. He did, he's done, he did like a short horror movie called The Chair, which was very good. I watched that. and he has another one called Milk and Cereal with an S that is also, I believe, he released on YouTube. So anyway, he is a director that has put his stuff out on YouTube. So he was a known entity. And this movie Obsession was made for$700 ,000, give or take, whatever it was, well under a million. And I sent this to the boys who I talk movies with. This was on Friday night at 7 o 'clock. this movie's been out for is it two full weeks?

1:08:54Michael Batnick:three full weeks? look how many seats were available full? basically full

1:09:04Michael Batnick:now this is my type of movie it was so fantastic I'm not giving anything away it's in the trailer is this a horror movie

1:09:12Ben Carlson:that I would like or not? I don't know

1:09:14Michael Batnick:no it's not deranged well there's some horror movies that I don't mind watching it's not too I don't like the deranged stuff. I would not classify this as deranged. The plot is such this sort of loser-y kid has a crush on a girl that he works with. He's afraid to tell her. He misses his opportunity. He's like, I'm such an idiot. I had my champ, blah, blah, blah. He makes a wish. He finds something in a store. It's like a tchotchke. It's called One Wish Willow. You break it, you make a wish. And his wish is, I wish that she would love me more than anybody in the world. And his wish comes true. And it goes just off the rails.

1:09:53Ben Carlson:Which needed some context, huh?

1:09:54Michael Batnick:Yes. It goes off the rails. And it was fantastic. I don't mind the premise.

1:10:00Ben Carlson:Maybe I'll check that out.

1:10:01Michael Batnick:It was such a good movie. Did you like, well, maybe in the same sort of like universe as Talk To Me. Did you like that one? I don't think I saw that one. Okay, I thought you did.

1:10:13Ben Carlson:Well, anyway. Anyway. I love the fact that young people are going to move. When I grew up, we did that every single Friday night. if we didn't have a game going on or something, we would go to the movies. My friends, we would meet at the movies. We did it every single week. And it didn't matter what we were seeing. We'd see something.

1:10:26Michael Batnick:I love that young people are going to the movies again. That's what's happening because the theater was packed, dude. And it's just great. So He-Man came out at a flop, messes the universe, not a surprise. Scary movie, had a really strong opening. Obsessions are back when we're still going strong. Movies are having a real moment, a real moment. This was interesting. Okay.

1:10:45Ben Carlson:You guess what? I guess I did used to watch horror movies. I wouldn't have seen all the Saw movies in the theater. You know, I used to watch these back in the day. So, I just can't believe it's still going.

1:10:54Michael Batnick:This is elevated horror. It's like, it's thoughtful. You know, it's well done. So, there was a guy in front of me in the front row. And it was full of kids. And like I said, with back rooms, nobody was on their phone. Like, people are genuinely enveloped in the movie. Did I use that word right? I was about to say enveloped? Sure. I don't know. I feel like I'm like, maybe, whatever. there was a guy in the front row who's who's had his phone and i see him scrolling i'm like dude what are you doing like this movie is rocking ass right now and you're scrolling on your phone um so there's one violent scene in the movie like what well there's a few maybe two but there's one particularly whoa violent scene in the film in the movie so this guy who had been scrolling he gets up right after that scene and he walks out and i see behind him his child gets up and follows him And the kid was 11 or 12.

1:11:48Michael Batnick:Now, it is weird because from my 41-year-old vantage point, I'm like, this guy should be arrested. Like, that was some scarring shit for life. Like, that was so, so, so inappropriate. My dad took me to see 8mm when I was like 13. And I saw all the horror movies when I was like, I don't know, 11 or 12.

1:12:09Ben Carlson:You know what Tarantino said in his book? He said he used to go see movies when he was like 5 years old. And he said his mom one day said, I would rather have you see it here than watch the news. Anyway, that's good. So we started the second season of four seasons on Netflix. I think that's a show you originally recommended me on Netflix. So it's Tina Fey, Will Forte. I'm a huge Will Forte fan. I think he is hilarious, like subtly funny. Coleman Domingo is one of my favorite newer actors that became an actor, middle eight. I love him. And this is not a show that would be on HBO from a quality perspective.

1:12:45Ben Carlson:Right? But for some reason, I really enjoy this show. The way that they approach friendship and marriage and middle age. I just really think that they tapped into that perfectly. Probably because it's written by Tina Fey and she's so talented. But I really, my wife and I really enjoy this show. Are you watching season two or not?

1:13:04Michael Batnick:No, Robin watched season one without me. I thought you watched, I thought you were the one who told me to watch this show. I think I did. I said you would like it. I watched like the first episode. Okay.

1:13:12Ben Carlson:I really enjoy it. so it's on Netflix and each show each episode is a half hour I think there's six or eight episodes and the way that they do it the show is each two episodes each they have two episodes each for one season and one vacation so every time it's like either a holiday or vacation oh that's good for me which is really yeah which works I finished Your Friends and Neighbors last night season two the show went a little bit off the rails at the end like a little over the top but then they always kind of bring it back and I feel like that show still with the family stuff really works and so I'll watch season three.

1:13:45It's great.

1:13:45Ben Carlson:A little off the rails. Happy to hear that. Did you finish Half-Man? I know I keep bringing it up. What a, that show. That's the kind of show that kind of sticks with you in the back of your brain for a while. Like, oh my God, what did I just watch? Now that was depraved. Yes. But just the performances in that show, I thought it was really, really well done. But yes, very depraved. Not depraved. My daughter and I are still plowing through 90s rom-coms. Okay? So we did like Notting Hill, My Best Friend's Wedding, You've Got Mail in the Last 10 Days. And every night, I'm going to milk this for as much as I can because my daughter says, hey, can we watch another rom-com tonight?

1:14:18Ben Carlson:And I know in a couple years she's going to say, because she's 12 years old, she's going to be like, get out of your scram, dad. I'm already getting some of that. But it's just, the 90s rom-com, just the vibe of them is hilarious because they wouldn't work today. The vibe of them wouldn't work because they would just get destroyed. So like Notting Hill, Hugh Grant works as a guy who works at a travel bookstore. All they do is sell travel books. He's like this beautiful, charming man. And he works at a travel bookstore. And while you were sleeping, Sandra Bullock takes tickets at the subway in Chicago or whatever.

1:14:51Ben Carlson:And I just think it's so funny that they have like these beautiful, charming people in these like whatever jobs. And it's like, no, a beautiful, charming person doesn't have that job.

1:14:59Michael Batnick:Yeah, of course. Naughty Hill is such a good movie. I'm like, man.

1:15:05Ben Carlson:And so we watched You've Got Mail last night too. And I had to explain to my daughter like how AOL worked and You've Got Mail and stuff. but Julia Roberts was so good in that movie how did she not how did that not carry over to her in like her 50s or something same with Tom Hanks those two both peaked in the 90s and early 2000s and never kept it going I would have bet a million dollars they both would still be making like fantastic movies today

1:15:28Michael Batnick:yeah hard to keep it going

1:15:31Ben Carlson:anyway

1:15:34Michael Batnick:watched a Michael Jackson documentary that was fun so my daughter went to see the movie. I know. It's getting weird. My kids, like Logan wants to, Logan is always asking us to print stuff. He wants us to print like Michael Jackson things from the color. And I'm like, what do we do with this? That's what I say. Like what, what obligation do you have as a parent to,

1:15:55Ben Carlson:I don't know. Anyway, on that note. Yeah. Okay. Email us. Email us all of your 70s economic takes. All you're sweating them away. Don't worry.

1:16:08Michael Batnick:you know what I love I love that we get emails like the like um the 70s Philly guy and the 55 year old guy and people are like playfully dickish to us yeah they don't like it we don't mind either no they're fans and it's it's it's love so I it's we love it so thank you we appreciate it

1:16:27Ben Carlson:we appreciate any pushback animal spirits the compound news.com we'll see you next week

1:16:45Ben Carlson:The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At Blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50 ,000 five-star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals. Free samples. Zero pressure. Right now, get up to 50 % off with minimum purchase. Plus, get a free professional measure at Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply.