The Top 10 Risks to the Stock Market (EP. 419)

25:47It's a minor change, I would say, on the margins, but it's, yes, you're right, it's going in the wrong direction. Here's the counterargument from our friend Jake at Economic. He says the average college grad is now 24 years old, up from 22 in the 1980s. 40 % of graduates now go into grad school, which is really high to me. I didn't realize that. That's a crazy high number. So he says, thus, the applicable bucket is 25 to 29, where unemployment is near a record low. Thoughts? I think that's a pretty good counterargument. Like, what if people are just waiting longer? Okay. So, okay. Okay. You know what?

26:26Seems like a fair rebuttal. I don't want to, like, knee-jerk reaction. But it is true that it's not easy for new grads, and I've heard this from numerous people saying, Like we've paused. So this is a real thing. I also kind of think that, fine, Jake's counter seems valid. But this is the type of thing that I trust, like my senses and instincts here, that there is something happening. And it's not like, why is this? We can't explain. No, we know exactly what's happening. We know exactly what's happening. There's a mega trend of productivity of AI that is doing things that these people otherwise would have been hired to do.

27:03This is not, you don't have to do mental gymnastics to come up with an explanation. It's right in your face. Also, there was just, there was way too much overhiring in the past three to four years, right? It was the strongest labor market we've ever seen in our lifetime. And that was part of it too. So yeah, no, it's, I think it's gonna get worse, but this is not my beat. Okay, somebody showed us this chart. It's fast food price inflation since 2014. And I'm going to just take this at face value and just say that this data is accurate. I'm calling fake news on this and I'll tell you why. Okay, please do.

27:37Because I mean, that was like... Well, at least for McDonald's. Okay, so they show McDonald's having the highest national inflation rate at 100 % since 2014. I have the inflation hedge here. You have to have the app because if you have the app and you spend more than$10, you get 20 % off of your entire order. Okay, how about this? Let's just agree that perhaps these numbers are a bit inflated. See what I did there? but let's say that even if they are inflated by 40%, even by 60%, the increase in fast food prices and all food prices is absolutely bonkers. I don't know what Chipotle is these days because I haven't had it in a long time.

28:14Is it$14 per bowl? You know, I got a veggie bowl the other day for$9.99, but that's a veggie bowl. Okay. Well, anyway, this just goes back to the underlying mood of the country, which is social media and politics and why the bull market is not appreciated to the extent that it is. So I do think that it's a real thing that in the 2010s, companies were really scared of raising prices because economic growth was slow and employment coming out of the great financial crisis, employment and hiring was slow. And I think that the 2022-2021 inflation finally gave these companies an excuse to raise prices.

28:55And I think, yes, there was inflation in some of the inputs, but the fact that margins kept going up, I think means that a lot of these companies finally said, oh, yes, we have our chance. Let's do it. And I think that is really part of what happened. So I think they were suppressed in the 2010s, and then they finally got their chance in the 2020s. Did you see the picture? Well, it doesn't matter. I was about to say a social media thing. Who cares? The Peter Thiel with that girl. I don't know what was going on. No, I don't know. But I linked to the Peter Thiel interview here on the New York Times.

29:29And it is kind of weird because he did say he didn't know for sure if humanity should survive, which is an odd take, I guess. That's what you want one of the most powerful people in the world saying. That's cool. He wants our consciousness uploaded into AI or something. I don't know. That's going to be a movie theme for a while. I can't remember. It was already in a movie somewhere or a TV show. But that will be a big movie theme in the years ahead. Like our consciousness living forever in a machine. It's the new rich people are the anime. It's in everything these days. Yeah, it is. All right, so he was asked, what is the impact on AI going to be?

30:01He said, my placeholder is that it's roughly on the scale of the internet in the late 1990s. I'm not sure it's enough to really end stagnation. It might be enough to create some great companies and the internet added maybe a few percentage points to GDP, maybe 1 % to GDP growth every 10, 15 years. It added some productivity. So that's roughly my placeholder for AI. So what if, because the internet changed our lives forever. The way that we interact with each other, the way that we communicate, the way that we work, everything about the internet completely changed our life, right? We can agree upon that.

30:32It didn't completely change the economy. It changed the companies there are. I don't know about that. No, in terms of growth, it didn't, the internet didn't add this insane growth to GDP, right? So what if AI is the same thing where it's going to completely change our lives? It's going to change the way we work. It's going to change the way we communicate. It's going to change the way we plan for things. It's going to change our efficiency. What if the impact on the economy is just kind of like, eh, it added some productivity. It didn't really like completely change because people are probably throwing out weird numbers.

31:00AI is going to add 3 % to GDP growth. What if it just, in the numbers, it doesn't change much and it's more a stock market thing than it is an economy thing? But the stock market drives the economy in a lot of ways, even if it doesn't show up in like raw GDP numbers. Okay. But I'm saying, what if the impact of AI is more, it helps profit margins for the stock market more than it does totally, completely reforms the economy. I think that's a pretty decent baseline. Yeah, I think a lot of my, I don't really have a ton of high conviction takes here because literally who knows? Yeah. But I think that's a pretty good baseline as opposed to like, it's going to reshape things that it's going to be.

31:42All right. You, two or three weeks ago, called me one morning, and you were very concerned. No, no, no. I'm not concerned. I was concerned. This is the wrong adjective. You were deep in thought. How's that? Deep in thought. Very deep in thought. You said, I had a crazy thought this week, and I have to run it by you. I think it's possible AI is going to replace financial advisors. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tap your brakes. And you said, I got to talk about this. I'm going to bring Dave Nautic on the UDLOK. I'm going to talk to him about it. I listened to that. And I think you kind of had some time to sit and consider and think about it.

32:22And I think I'm more on Dave's side of this thing. I think that AI will probably help a lot of DIY investors and maybe create some more DIY investors. But I don't think AI is going to replace financial advisors. All right. So I spoke with Dave at the Unlock, talking about this show. I'm talking to Jason Wang tomorrow about the custodian advisor relationship and what that's going to look like in the future. So if you're an advisor and you want to hop on board, we're doing a weekly show there. Where I land on this, I think, is I'm talking like far into the future. I think that the lines between what's real and fake will be completely blurred.

33:01And I think that the next generation will not necessarily think about AI as AI. They will just think about it as something that exists. uh so i at that point it's a commodity and it's in what what differentiators and what what rich person is going to say i'll just do the commodity just like everyone else okay well uh when you say rich yeah sure people with five million dollars will probably i don't i don't hate to say these to to say always because i'm talking far into the future okay i think the biggest i'm gonna be dead far into the future the biggest hurdle here is regulation because advisors need to be certified and all that sort of stuff.

33:37And there's going to be lobbyists and all that sort of stuff. But I just think that a lot of what we do - Have they given the CFA to AI yet to see if they could pass? I mean, I'm sure they can in two seconds. It's not that hard. The thing that advisors bring to the table that computers don't is empathy and personalization and people skills and all that sort of stuff. All of the technical chops that we have, if they can't be answered entirely accurately today with AI, they will be able to very shortly. And I suspect you've seen the - Okay, but you can do the same thing on Google, though. Google didn't replace financial advisors.

34:09If you think about it, here's my - Wait a minute, stop, stop. My point is this. It's not going to be for the technical aspect of it, of which you can get a lot of that on ChatGBT. Dave made a good counterpoint that a lot of it is wrong, but fine. But let's just say that eventually it's 100 % accurate. You've seen, and we are in the first inning of AI products and what they look like. You've seen the videos that you can generate and the people look just like you and me. They have hair. They can be bald. They look just like us. And far into the future, they will be able to empathize and learn with you.

34:41And it will be the same air quote person on the other side of the screen every single time. And you will be able to get access to this quote person at eight basis points. And they will be able to know you and empathize. And again, I don't know if that's 30 years in the future or never, but that's where my thought was happening. Here's where I think AI will help. the internet definitely helped a lot of DIY investors because now there's asset allocation models and risk reward things and efficient frontiers and historical data and all these different, you know, the bobbleheads and Reddit and all these different places you can talk to people.

35:15And there's a lot of DIY people who have that information has helped them a lot and they've done it on their own. And a lot of those people still eventually go to an advisor. So I think there's going to be a lot of that where the people just starting out will be helped. And the other thing is, it's kind of funny because in the last five or 10 years, the big worry has been, listen, The majority of financial advisors are gray-haired people. The average age is like 60 years old. Like what happens when all the advisors retire? Who's going to help them? Who's going to help all these people? And there's also just a bigger group of people who need financial advice.

35:43Think about it. In 1983-ish, there was 19 % of the U.S. households were invested in the stock market in any form. Today it's 60%. So there's just more people who need advice now because more people are invested. So I think AI is going to help all those people who haven't been getting a lot of help. I'm not talking about these people. I'm talking deep into the future. Yeah, but that's not a prediction. That's a, oh, what, you know. No, I'm saying, I don't, I'll say, let's say 27 years, 26.9 years. Yeah, I still think people are going to want to talk to people, but I think the DIY people are going to find really helpful stuff out of AI.

36:19Hang on. I guess what I'm saying is this option will exist. I'm not saying that 100 % of people are going to use this option, but I think the option of - Some people, some people will, you're right. But I don't think it's going to replace financial advisors. Well, you could also say, and let's move off because this is enough already, but robo-advisors didn't replace financial advisors. Guess what? They took a lot of assets. They definitely made us compete harder. How much money does Vanguard manage in their, quote, robo? How much money is in Schwab? It's not insignificant. And they also forced those types of capabilities onto advisors to use, right?

36:52Automatic rebalancing and tax loss harvesting, all these things. And I think that's what AI will do too, is just be integrated. All right. Let's talk about crypto for a second. There was the Genius Act. Is this the Genius Act? Genius Act. Or is this in the Genius? I don't know. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The head of the FHA, I believe, said that banks are now able to look at crypto assets as assets, where in the past, they weren't able to loan against that. It's like, listen, I have$10 million of Bitcoin. The bank would say, so what? You have no other assets. That's not real assets. So Dip Wheeler tweeted, loan underwriters at Freddie Mac determining if an unemployed teenager has enough fart coin to secure a mortgage.

37:35And it's a picture of Ben Affleck in the account. Pretty good. Pretty good tweet. Did you watch number two yet? I didn't. I'm not excited about number two. I'll get to it. All right. All right. Institutional Fi tweeted a table of 60 companies that are adopting the Bitcoin treasury. And of course, it's MicroStrategy or now just strategy that has 600 ,000 almost Bitcoin and second place is a long way away. It's Mara at almost 50 ,000. But what are all these companies doing? I guess what is the, aside from juicing their stock price, which is a goal in and of itself, what is the actual, and I'm not talking about strategy because their strategy is Bitcoin.

38:18So I understand that. But if you are, let's say, who is this company? I don't know any of these companies. um company xyz for example what is the strategy to buy bitcoin is it for like to get more cash in your balance sheet like is are you going to sell the bitcoin i isn't it to get more shareholders but isn't this the the bear case for micro strategy though that all these other companies do it too no i don't i don't i don't i don't buy that strategy i don't buy that line of thinking in fact i think i hate it why because they're the they're well why can't why can't there just be another bitcoin but this is different this is micro strategy is given a premium yes and the idea that it's going to be taken away by who by pro cap btc by gamestop by kango inc if micro strategy shareholders decide like hey this one is trading at a discount i'm going to invest in that instead of micro strategy i mean are you assuming they're going to do that I'm laying out a case that like, why wouldn't that be the case?

39:19Why are we paying a 3x premium? Because they're, I don't know that they're the only one, but let's just say they're the gold standard of premium. I'm not saying it's permanent. I'm not saying that, but I think that why wouldn't they buy any of these others? It's just like, it's sort of a lazy rebuttal. Okay. No offense. Getting spicy on animal spirits today. All right, let's talk about real estate. Is there housing correction coming potentially? To me, this is the first time that I can actually see a decent little housing correction coming because rates continue to stay so high. So Case-Shiller Home Price National Index is 68 basis points off the highs.

39:5768. Not nice. And this is, I think they use like a three-month moving average for the prices on this one, so it's a little dated. But the fact that rates keep staying at 6.5%, 7 % for so long, and buyers are just kind of like, no way, man, I'm out. I think you could make the case the housing market needs a slowing economy because a lot of people are saying, listen, who cares if the Fed cuts rates? Last time they cut rates, mortgage rates went up. But I think that the reason for the Fed cutting rates matters. If it's because a slowing labor market and the economy is slowing, then that would be a good thing for mortgage rates.

40:34And I think you could honestly make the case the housing market needs a slowing economy because guess what? So let's say housing prices nationwide fell 3 % to 5%, which doesn't happen very often. It's very rare. I think it could happen. Are you seeing any price cuts in your neighborhood? Not really, but I mean, you see all the stories in Florida and Texas and these places. I think there's still not much supply here. But I mean, I've seen a few houses where they took the house off the market. It was for sale for six months. They took the house off the market. But if there was a 5 % correction in housing prices, a lot of people would be freaking out like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it.

41:13The solution would just be lower mortgage rates and then demand comes back. I think that's the – if you put together a 5 % correction in housing prices and mortgage rates go to 5%, boom, housing mini crisis solved. So I do think if housing prices fall, the same people who've been screaming about housing affordability are going to be screaming, there's a crisis happening. Yeah. Well, the people that scream always scream. You're right. True. Okay. This is interesting. So the rate thing, rates have been high for so long now. This is from Odetta Cushy on Twitter. She says 20 % of mortgages still have a rate of less than 3%, which is so insane to me.

41:57One fifth. But it's now 19 % have a rate of over 6%. And 10 % have a rate over 5%. So we're getting, it's getting a little more balanced. It's still, you know, 80 % have one less than 6%. But that's a way higher, it's much like, we're slowly but surely churning those low mortgages. Where the 6 % and up are having a bigger proportion of it. This is a good email. His in-laws live in a wealthy area of San Diego. He said, however, they are by no means wealthy other than the house that they own. I think that this anecdote is representative of a decently large number of people. They bought their house 45 years ago for something insane like$36 ,000, owned and out, right?

42:43And it's now worth well over$4 million. They are in their 80s and don't want to sell because they don't want to pay tax on the massive gains they have and take away the step-up basis that their kids would get once they pass. The house is way too big and way too much upkeep, but they have the mentality that if they sell, they are screwing over the next generation by taking 600 grand out of it. So they feel trapped. That's pretty common here. There's a large aging population who essentially waiting to die rather than selling, which has a large trickle down effects to the overall real estate market.

43:07I imagine this is a big issue, especially in wealthy coastal areas. That makes sense. I mean, this is like getting down to like housing nobility where this doesn't seem fair, right? Because plus you're getting the step up. If I was the kids, I would tell them, sell it. Who cares? Right? It's still a massive, massive gain. Or take out a huge home equity line of credit or something. Spend the money. Enjoy it. Don't worry about us. It's interesting, though. All right. From Bloomberg, a tidal wave of alts coming that we've been talking about. So there's a survey that shows 80 % of alt managers plan to launch retail-friendly products and structures nearly double from three years ago.

43:46Morgan Stanley just filed for a multi-asset vehicle designed to provide exposure to everything from venture capital to private debt, real estate infrastructure on one fund. So this stuff is still, it's coming. They see, they're chomping at the bit here. My only big takeaway here is that, so this is Bank of America. Number of retail clients holding alt assets has more than doubled since 2020 and the firm adds 50 new funds to its platform each year. Returns just have to fall if this is the case. I would think so. That's the only, like, I'm not predicting a crisis from this, but this is just, if this stuff becomes commoditized, it just returns half to fall.

44:23Yep. Or there's going to be a fund that's going to receive some serious markdowns as managers get over their skis, and then investors can't get out. And that's when people start freaking out a little bit. Like, holy crap, this thing fell 30 % and I can't get out. Do you think the industry will have like a washout? because I think it's, I'm not saying there's not going to be hiccups, but I think I see it being mostly up and to the right. Probably. Okay. I wouldn't bet against the trend of trying to get, listen, all of our fees have been wrung out of the stock market because everyone's investing in index funds and ETFs and free trades.

45:02We need to get our fees somehow. That's the active manager solution. We spoke about investor positioning this chart from JP Morgan's guide to alternatives. And I forgot to mention the chart on the right. So just within the context of the conversation of Yale dumping$6 billion in a secondary, which is something that they've done not infrequently in the past. And also there's regulatory reasons why they might be doing this. So they did a survey, long-term alternative asset allocation plans. And they asked the share of institutional investors that plan to increase, maintain, or decrease their allocation by different verticals in alternative asset management.

45:41And in private equity, 46 % plan to maintain their allocation, 48 % plan to increase their allocation, and only 6 % plan to decrease their allocation. So this idea that institutional investors are dumping their alts, their private equity, onto the unsuspecting bag holders of retail. At least according to this, it's 6 % plan to decrease their allocation. It's just, I just don't buy that argument. And a lot of them are held hostage because if you get into a good fund that you want to stay with, listen, I invested in fund four. If you want to invest in, if you want to stay with us, invest in fund five and six, pony up some money now.

46:21So a lot of these institutions feel trapped. I'm not saying that we're not going to hear horror stories of bags being dumped on retail, but just this idea that it is a mega trend of nefarious behavior, that's not happening. I also think the bag thing is more, they're stuck in these companies that are not having exits. So we just need more money to invest. And that's where the bag holder thing comes from, is that we need you to pony up more so we can invest in more companies because we're not having the exits we did in the past. We're not giving the distributions. S &P Global has a post out called Look Forward, Future of Capital Markets.

47:01And there's a lot of good stuff in there. But one thing that caught my eye was how wealthy the United States is. So we have over$21 trillion in investable assets among the mass affluent middle markets representing more than 40 million households. So this is like the wealth management cohort. Right. So let's start here. That we'll be using fake AI video in the future to manage the money. So let's start here. 284 ,000 households have more than$20 million. Does that melt your face? A little bit. 284 ,000? How's that possible? Okay. Another 487 ,000 are worth between$10 and$20 million in investable assets.

47:51And then between five - This isn't houses or business interests or this is like - Oh, yeah, I believe it's investable assets. Okay. And then 5 to 10 is 1.578 million. And affluent, which is 2 to 5, is 3.9 million. We have a very rich country. Whew. But this is why the pitchforks are coming out, though. Right? Part of it, yeah. Yeah, the distribution is certainly uneven. That's capitalism. All right, this one surprised me. Did you look at this Uber thing yet? How many people actually tip? What percentage of people tip their Uber drivers? Because I would have thought it's like restaurants where just everyone does it.

48:38What percentage of people currently tip their Uber drivers? What's your guess? I just saw the number. Okay. I would have thought it would have been way higher. I would have said 80%. It's 20%. I thought that it was assumed that almost everyone tipped. Isn't that you want to keep your star rating high so you tip? I've assumed everyone tipped an Uber driver. This is shocking to me. If I take a draw. I don't take them very often. I almost always tip. The only time I don't is if I forget, but I almost always tip. Okay. I tip every time. I assume that's what I guess. Maybe if you're in a city and you use it all the time, you think like, wait, that really adds up because I use it when I travel.

49:16That's about it. Occasionally, we'll use one in town if we go out or something. and we're drinking. But this number surprises me. We got a few emails from people that ditched the second car. We spoke about this last week and just went full Uber. But they all said that it was cheaper. I have a few car stories. So I have many flaws, but this isn't one of them. I'm a very courteous driver. I respect those around me. I follow the rules of the road. I do the right thing. and it really grinds my gears when people don't. I turn into the Hulk. So two things happen. I think 80 % of drivers are terrible.

49:56That's my take. So I'm driving down Merrick Avenue. There's a dairy barn on the right that has the exit. So it's one lane that goes straight, right? Goes over the main road. And then the lane right next to it is the turning only lane, the left turn only. So I'm coming in the straight lane. Ooh, I'm getting worked up just talking about this, Ben. I'm coming in the straight lane and I slow down because I see this woman is exiting the dairy barn and she wants to get in. So no problem. I slow down, give her the wave. She doesn't wave back. But then she doesn't go straight. She goes into the left lane, but the left lane, because it's turning lane, it's backed up a little bit.

50:31So she's now diagonal. Oh, she has her butt sticking out, right? Yeah, so now I can't get by her. I'm just like, you... Oh, that's a bad one. Are you... You don't behave, people. Yeah. One more. We're coming to the beach club and we are, there's a bunch of cars parked. This is sort of hard to describe, but like we're coming around the turn, okay? So we're coming around the turn and there's all of these people waiting to get in. There's a valet parker and this lady just stops a hundred feet in front of where she should have. And I'm watching this and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She gets out of her car and just starts emptying it.

51:13And there's two, I don't know, males in their 20s that just start getting out of the car and just taking their stuff. And I'm looking at Rob and I'm like, is this really happening? She goes, don't, don't. So I blast the horn because it's just - That's what the horn's for. It is the rudest, one of the rudest acts I've seen in a long time. Because now traffic is piling up and people can't see because there's a turn, like I said. So there's just cars just piling up because the chutzpah of this lady to think, f*** you. You're behind me. Nothing matters. I'm doing my own thing. People are so inconsiderate.

51:47It's unbelievable. So I blast the horn. She looks at me. She goes, like what? Don't even realize it, right? That was a valid honk. Unbelievable. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. All right. All right. So Bill Art sent me this. This is a thing that I'm unaware of, but apparently it's a thing that exists. So AMC does these, I don't even know how to describe them there. You buy a ticket and it's like a lottery. It's like a random, you don't know what movie you're going to see. And it's a movie that's not in the theaters yet. Oh, okay. So it's like a grab bag. So anyway, the movie that he saw was, it was Jurassic World and he walked out.

52:32Now that is, that is much more of a remark on Bill Arts's movie preferences. He's a real sicko. He's not a Jurassic guy. he likes the gnarliest horror movies like I do. Boy, I can see doing that when you're younger. Like, I'm going to roll the dice and see what week comes up. I would never do that at our age. Yeah, I don't know that I would. That's a serious dice roll. I don't know that I would do it either. No way. All right, sticking with the theme of they're just remaking everything, The Strangers Chapter 2, which is the original Strangers. What year was that? Like the turn of the century? Was that like 2000?

53:05You're asking me like I've ever heard of this before. You never saw The Strangers? Come on, man. Look at this poster. No, of course I didn't see it. So The Strangers is with Liv Tyler. Who's the main guy? And it was a very, very... 2008, okay. It was a very scary movie. Liv Tyler and... Who's the main guy? Uh, don't know him. Do you just not become desensitized to it after watching a million of these? I get scared. That's why I go. I go for the adrenaline. Social Network 2 is just gonna... There's no way that's gonna be good. So Social Network 2, why? That's, yeah. Can I tell you this? For your guy, Denis, he's doing the new James Bond.

53:43I'm shorting that. He's not a James Bond director. It's not. I also think they've run out of ideas for James Bond. Okay, you're Bill Ackman. I'm Carl Icahn. I will take all of the James Bond stuff. Okay, I'm shorting this. And also, they've done it. There's nothing else they can do for James Bond. I don't think it's, I think it's kind of over. Besides the point. So I want Theo James in the actor's seat. Okay, he'd be good. I was listening to The Big Picture, and the heavy favorite is Aaron Taylor Johnson. but I want to see Theo James. I think one of the Daniel Craig, James Bond movies was good.

54:13The other ones were all way too long and not good. Okay. Well, I'll be seeing it and you'll be wrong. Are you excited? Did you watch the trailer for Project Hail Mary? I sent it to you guys yesterday. I can't wait. I love that book. So are you short that one as well? I'm very long. That's the kind of one where you see that trailer in the theater and you get goosebumps and you're so excited. I don't know how they're going to do the alien in that movie. Yeah. Because the description of the alien. They smartly teased it. That's my only worry. but I loved that book. All right, I have two more quick things.

54:42Do you have an Apple laptop? Nope, I have an Apple map desktop. Okay, well, same thing. You use the messaging, you text on your computer? Sometimes, not very often. This bugs me. I don't know, it seems like an easy fix. So right now I'm looking at my laptop and I've got my text message open and it's on a text message, okay? Okay. Like if I were to type, it would be on a certain text message. But then when new text messages come, your text box stays in the old text message. So it's very easy to see a text, start typing, and then you reply to the person behind them. Why can't they fix that? Your text box, your mouse text box should automatically go to your newest message.

55:26I guess that's why I don't do a lot of texting on my computer. Tim Apple, if you're listening, please fix that. One more thing, Ben. I sent this with you. As somebody who is not just courteous on the road, but courteous in email. This was in my inbox, my LinkedIn inbox. It was a link to an article from a company that we know. I know the founder. And this person, it's a salesperson. Listen, shoot or shoot. So he sent us a link and then said, now mind you, this is a stranger. I've never met this person. Why don't you guys do something with us? What's wrong with you? I mean, that's how I took it.

56:00Very aggressive. I don't like that. I don't talk to people that way. I don't like being spoken to that way. So I'm on the train. I show it to Chris. I'm like, could you believe this? The gall of this person? Again, the chutzpah, as we say. So I was going to reply, excuse me, but I didn't do that. I just said, I said, does this message usually get a positive response? And then he said, first person I sent it to. So maybe not? Question mark. That's good. This guy made lemonade out of lemons. I'm still not working with him. Well, I said, all right, that got a legit chuckle out of me. And that was it.

56:33He left me alone. that's why it's hard to understand text in a text message. Like maybe he was thinking like, why don't you guys do something with us? And you think it as like, why don't you do something with us? It depends on the tone. Could be. So, all right, what do you do in this scenario? I am on the plane to Chicago and I got two missed calls from a number that I don't recognize, but it's like a local number. And then I get a third missed call. And then I see a calling a third time. So I pick up, it's three calls. You got to assume it's like something relatively, important. Kids or something, maybe.

57:05Yeah. So I pick up and I'm on the plane. I said, hello? He goes, hi, Michael, this is a blank from blank. We, uh, I'm like, whoa, hold on, hold on. How did, how did you get my number? Uh, well, we're just reaching out to see. I'm like, we're already a customer of yours. Do you not know that we're already working with you? Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. I just, you know, I'm, I'm kind of new. I'm like, what's your, and he hung up on me. I was about to say, what's your name? And he hung up on me. Now, I thought, what would you do? I know what you would do. You would do nothing. Yeah, I would let it go.

57:38The young person, they don't know what they're doing. Yeah. But three missed calls, that's a lot. So I was thinking like, all right. So by the way, I called him back. Because I'm like, you hung up on me? I called him back right away. He didn't pick up. So we had a guy come to our door the other day. And I'm in the basement. I think I was lifting weights, not to brag. You are looking very swollen these days. Is it swole or swollen? I guess either work. I don't know. I'm an old, I don't know. So I'm in the basement. I got our little workout room down there, and I hear the doorbell ring twice. And my wife's like, can you get it?

58:09I don't want to, I'm in PJs or something. I don't want to get it. And I'm like, just ignore it. Ring again. And she's like, can you just get it? And so I walk upstairs, and then the guy knocks. And I open the door, I'm like, what? And it's a young kid, and he stepped all the way back. He's like, he just, he's trying to sell something. And he goes, and he goes dude we're selling house washing I'm gonna wash houses and I wanted to be like dude you gotta work on your delivery a little better but I said appreciate the offer we actually just had it done a couple weeks ago alright thank you sir and he runs off do you wash your own house do you power wash your own house no no I did okay it's hard to get certain spots and our house is white our house is white so we need to have it so you're right it is hard to get certain spots and guess what those certain spots they just sit green in my house.

59:01Can't get to them. So anyway. No, no. The way they do it ours though, we do it once every three years. They spray this. This is really boring middle-aged stuff. They spray this cleaner on it. They don't even power watch. They spray this cleaner. They leave it on there for a minute. Then they just hose it off and the stuff just melts off and it's good for three years. There is something very satisfying about seeing the melt off. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm thinking, do I call this? I mean, I know the founder. Do I just call him? Like, hey, but you know what? I let it go. I mean, that would be very little of me to get this kid fired.

59:30But definitely let it go. Come on. You don't cold call somebody three times in a 35-minute window? Who does that? Hey, always be closing. All right. I got a lot of recommendations. We got to get to these. All right. Take a mic. All right. I saw The Ballad of Wallace Island pop up on Peacock the other day. Oh, new movie. A guy I've seen in a Ricky Gervais show or two. Carey Mulligan, who I really like. And then the same day, someone emailed us and said, you have to watch this. This is a total Ben movie. Okay. So we watched it last weekend. This is my favorite movie I've seen in a long time, you absolutely shouldn't watch it.

1:00:01This is a total Ben movie. I give this a 7.5. It's, so two guys wrote it and star in it. They wrote the movie. One of the guys also wrote the music for the movie and sings all the music in the movie with Carey Mulligan. So this is like, it's a comedy but also has some heart to it. It's got like subtle British humor. I'm a big fan of British humor. Like they don't hold your hand with British humor but the guy in it who also wrote the movie, so here's the premise. A guy lives on this remote island in Wales. He's got a big mansion because he won the lottery. He lives by himself. His wife died. He pays his two favorite folk singers who used to be together in a group to come give a show to just him on the island.

1:00:41Pays him a lot of money. And then hijinks ensues. And it's, this guy is like a poor man's British version of Galifianakis. He was hilarious. So I really like this movie. Total Ben movie. Again, you shouldn't see it. But if you're on the Ben corner, this is a total Ben movie. I love this movie. Can I tell you something? I hovered over the description because I saw the recommendation coming in. I just went, I read it. No. And I even listened to the album. Wow. You even listened to the album. Yeah, it's actually, it's pretty good. So, so this got me thinking. This guy is a poor man's Galifianakis.

1:01:15Whatever happened to him? Because after the hangover. He's still, oh, you know what? You said Galifianakis. I was thinking of, I was thinking of Gaffigan. Oh yeah. Where is Galifianakis? He should have been. I think he maybe didn't want to be so famous, but he should have been Will Ferrell for 10 years. Here's the thing. Here's my take. I mean, they did two Hangover sequels. He did that one movie with Robert Downey Jr. called Due Date, which is okay. But The Hangover came out in 2009. That was a generational top in movie comedies. And we've been underwater in a drawdown ever since then. We're in a 50 % drawdown and it never came back.

1:01:46We're in a Japan of comedy movies. So that's what happened to him. There wasn't any good comedies coming out anymore. You know what's bizarre. I kind of thought that you were right, that Galifian actually disappeared. He got too famous, and that was really not his life that he wanted to live. But I'm at his IMDB, and he's been working this entire time. I'm really surprised at how, because after he did Alan and the Hangover, it's like, okay, this guy is the next Will Ferrell. He's gonna be doing unbelievable comedies for, he's on a few things, but... Well, Between Two Friends was pretty big for...

1:02:16Yeah, but it's like a YouTube show. It's not a real thing. Alright, so finally, The Bear came back for season four. You know I've been a huge fan of The Bear. But you hated last season or two seasons ago? Last season was in May. This season, I hate it. I can't believe it. They should have pulled a flea bag and it should have been two seasons. They should have walked away after season two. Are you going to keep going or are you? We have to. So here's the thing. We watched episodes one through six of the season and honestly, literally nothing happened. They neutered all the characters. There wasn't the same energy and chaos that was in the first two seasons.

1:02:46It's the same guy. I think they just ran out of ideas. It's like there was some painful scenes where my wife and I go, oh my gosh, it's still going. painfully bad. And then they had a really good episode seven, which was a wedding, and they had all these guest stars come on, and it was really good. And now we're two episodes from the end, but they totally botched it, and it's a terrible limping to the finish line. Like, totally limping. Like, they shot the leg off. And anyway, they should have pulled a flea bag and gone on after two seasons. Two more things. Snow White, the recreation. They did the real, they did it.

1:03:19It's got a two on IMDb, two out of 10. I don't think I've ever seen a movie that big have such low of a score. My kids watched it, and they watched it with two of their friends. So this is 8 to 11 years of age, five kids. They loved it. I came in and out, and there was a few things they changed from the original, but they've never really watched the original much. I couldn't believe my kids actually really liked it because it got terrible reviews. Yeah, maybe my kids aren't the best. Finally, Brad Pitt was on Dex Shepard's podcast, armchair expert. He doesn't do a lot of podcasts. I think he's done one or two in his life.

1:03:54Totally worth a listen. Okay. Great. Okay. I've always been a big Brad Pitt fan. He comes off as just like the coolest guy ever. But it got me thinking because he's on the cover of GQ. And you can tell Brad is, he's aging. Like he's still a very good looking man, obviously. He still has a six pack. Yeah. He's like the best looking person ever, maybe. But he's eight. He's allowing himself to age. He's not doing the Botox or the, and I've seen a lot of them with the fillers and stuff. this is one of the reasons that movies aren't as good anymore. Actors and actresses aren't allowing themselves to age naturally.

1:04:26Like a lot of the actresses look the same at age 50 as they did at 30 almost. It doesn't feel real almost. So I saw F1. Oh yeah, what did you think? Brad Pitt, I did notice like the arm is getting a little bit, there's getting a little bit of loose skin in the elbow area. Which is, that's what happens when you get older. And I was like, yeah good for him he's aging but then yeah yeah but then he takes off his shirt and he's still shredded somehow but what did you think of one I'll get to that in a second real quick so I am I'm out of TV shows right now which is fine I kind of need a break I'm very happy to just be falling asleep and scrolling I watched probably 20 minutes of Superbad and I think for you and I that was I mean that was my peak comedy that's my favorite comedy of all time yeah me too But there's probably a lot of young people who have never seen it or never heard of it.

1:05:22And I implore you, young people, watch Superbad. It is just laugh out loud, even though you know every line of the movie. And then also, I caught 20 minutes the other night of a movie that I plugged pretty aggressively when it came out. And I'm going to do it again. Incoming on Netflix with Studs. Remember that movie? The high school teacher? Oh, yeah. Great high school movie. Oh, yeah. Good party movie. Very good. It's one of those... They don't make any good... They don't make any good party movies anymore. It's one of those comedies that they don't make anymore. Okay. So, F1. This is from IMAX.

1:06:01The film launched in stellar fashion with IMAX riding home with the$28 million in box office and it's open weekend and powering over 90 % of the global box office. The highest global indexing of the year for IMAX. So, I saw it in IMAX and it was Sunday night and it was packed. It was packed. And the movie rules. It was just a ton of fun. It's exactly what you want from a blockbuster. I'm not an F1 guy. Didn't watch the show. I know nothing about it. But I was listening to The Big Picture talk about it. And they filmed on location. So it took them three years. There's maybe 12 different set pieces that they go to.

1:06:41So Brad Pitt talked about this in the interview. They literally filmed the day that they were doing these F1 races. they would have like 10 minutes and they would line the cars up and go on the courses with all the people in the crowd. So he would, he was driving 180 miles an hour in these things. He was taught, he talks about how he's kind of a speed demon it sounds like. So it was two and a half hours. There's a couple of Brad Pitt monologues that felt very long, but that's a nitpick. It was, it was just so much fun. Like I cannot recommend it highly enough. It felt, it felt like Maverick, same director.

1:07:12It just, everything that you want from a summer blockbuster, tons of fun. Good. That's good. Yeah. Great movie. All right. That is, that's it. I'm just picturing you constantly sneaking away at night to go to movies by yourself.

1:07:29I might see Megan too, but I don't know. Well, Kobe's at camp. Robin's, Logan is the easiest to put to bed. And she, I guess she's very happy to get away from me. That's true. You going to the movies by yourself gives her some time to just. Well, you know what? We don't spend a ton of time together at night. She's talking to her friends or whatever. She's watching The Housewives. I'm doing whatever I'm doing. So she's like, I don't care. Go. You know, part of the wives' entertainment is texting each other. They find entertainment value in texting each other. And Robin's a big, she's a yenta. Not a gossiper per se, but I mean, she talks.

1:08:07She's on the phone with her friends all the time. Okay. Yeah. All the time. That's entertainment. them. Yeah. So I'm going to movies. Okay. Leave. Get out of here. I've had enough of you. All right. Thanks to the production team as always. Animal Spirits at the compound news dot com. We're going to have a lovely fourth. See you next time.

1:08:43Thank you.