The Wobbly House of Cards (EP. 483)

14:44Ben Carlson:Like, okay, you've done this. Now, where are the agents that give you the moat to keep people there? Yeah, I feel like the switching costs of this

14:53Michael Batnick:or like nothing. Going between, if you go from Instinct, which by the way, is Instinct one of these companies that raised a couple hundred million dollars that might be out of business overnight? I know nothing, so this is pure conjecture, but just again, the thing about how fast things are moving, how narrow the moats are, because I don't see why I can't switch from one to the other or back to Anthropic if they do something for me. Well, but his point was,

15:17Ben Carlson:once you get your own agent and it starts knowing you and you have it locked into your inbox and your accounts and your apps and all this stuff, it creates more of a moat. I don't know if that's true. I don't know how hard it is to switch. It's hooked into your Delta account, and it knows all of your preferences for Delta. You're right. He's saying that does create some sort of moat, maybe. Maybe you're right that it's easy to switch from one to the other. I would imagine once you have your own agent, it's going to be hard to switch. It's like having a dentist. Who wants to switch their dentist?

15:45Ben Carlson:That's a strange analogy. Dentist. Have you ever tried to switch a dentist before? It's not easy.

15:50Michael Batnick:Confession.

15:51Ben Carlson:I got to send your x-rays to the other one.

15:53Michael Batnick:So my father is a periodontist, or he was, he's retired, a periodontist.

15:58Ben Carlson:Which is, sorry, someone said when I said braces are a racket and you defended them. No, no, no. That's an ortho. I have no allegiance to orthos.

16:06Michael Batnick:It's all in the same mouth area. So I am a terrible dental patient. I have very sensitive gums, which is probably not a great thing. So I don't get my teeth cleaned nearly as often as I should. And when I say nearly as often as I should, it's probably been two years. I do floss. Michael. Multiple times a day. But I hate going to the dentist. Well, no one likes going to the dentist. No, I hate it.

16:30Ben Carlson:I'm sweating right now thinking about it, just talking about it. I didn't, the first three years of my job, I had no health insurance, no retirement plan, and no dental insurance. I was like on my own. It was a very small company. And I didn't get my teeth cleaned for like three years. And the first teeth cleaning afterwards when I got a new job was horrendous. All right, let's move. Different topic. I can't take it. Although, Ben, you saw me squeamish at Future Proof. That's true. There was a booth at Future Proof that gave IVs for energy boost or pain. And someone said, you guys have to get an IV.

17:03Ben Carlson:It's magical. And you were doing this, looking away, because you couldn't see the needle go in. And I got to tell you, I'm someone who, this is going to sound very odd to say, I feel like medicine doesn't have an effect on me. like minor medicine. Like if I would take ibuprofen or Tylenol, I feel it doesn't, I never feel better or worse. I feel the same. You know, that's an interesting take. I feel like it doesn't impact me.

17:27Michael Batnick:So I wouldn't go as far to say as medicine doesn't impact me because that's a bold claim, Cotton. But I always feel the same too. Like I, so I was, I was a pothead for a long time and I no longer am. And it's been several years, but it was just part of my life. self-medicate, I suppose. Not a great thing. But I was talking about with somebody recently, I said, do you feel different? And I said, I don't know. I don't think so. I think I feel same. That can't possibly be true because marijuana is terrible for your overall everything. But I kind of feel like I always feel the same. Not to steal your thunder, but I'm the same guy.

18:07Ben Carlson:Yeah. If it's like big medicine, then yes. But cold flu medicine, none of that. I feel like none of it touches me. But the guy at the IV, because people said, hey, get an IV. We're in the sun all day. We're drinking at night. You know, we're eating like we're kind of tired. We're doing a lot on our feet. Yeah. It was a very busy time for us. And someone said, get an IV. It'll make you feel better. And so we did the B12 one. And the guy said, give it an hour and it'll kick in. And honestly, an hour later, I felt invigorated. It actually worked. I couldn't believe it. We hopped in the Osh. Yeah.

18:36Ben Carlson:Maybe that was part of it too. Nature.

18:38Michael Batnick:All right. Can we move off this AI topic for now? I think 15 minutes is plenty. I'm full. Anything else?

18:44Ben Carlson:No, not for now. Okay. I just, my, my, sorry, my conclusion is just, what if, what if these companies are so big that all of the worries about being a house of cards are just not going to come to fruition?

18:59Michael Batnick:Most of the worries don't come to fruition. It's a beautiful thing. What, uh, uh, not William Bernstein. Duh, who is like Mason, uh, my guy on my brain. Bill Miller. Bill Miller, thank you. So Bill Miller had such a great quote one time when he was asked what worries you about the stock market. And he said, nothing. He said, the market does plenty of worrying for me. I think that's such a great way to look at it. Whatever you, we, all of us are concerned about, that's why NVIDIA is 16 times forward earnings. All of the worries in the price. And it doesn't mean that the worry is always the appropriate amount of worry.

19:40Michael Batnick:It could be under worry or over worry. but whatever you're worried about, just assume that the market's worried too. That's a great way of looking at things. Okay.

19:48Ben Carlson:If anyone should be worried, it should be your son who's having a second tryout. I can't believe we put kids through this. Two tryouts for one sport?

19:56Michael Batnick:Dude, it's crazy town. It really is, right? Yeah. All right. One of the things that we've been discussing on this show a lot lately is just how perhaps the most important variable in all of this discussion around the stock market and the economy is just how much money there is in the system and how difficult it is to quantify that impact. So for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that household net worth hit$186 trillion in the second quarter of this year, which is up$26 trillion from just the fourth quarter of 2024. $186 trillion? What does it even mean? Ben, how many times do we go back and forth to the moon with dollar stacking?

20:47Ben Carlson:So I had ChartKid look at this for me last week. At the end of 2019, so I'm looking at just the 2020s alone, we were at$109 trillion for total U.S. household net worth. Today it's$186 trillion. It's effectively almost doubled this decade. Household net worth. And we broke it down by all these, the Fed has all these different cohorts, The top 1%, the remaining top 1%, the next 9%, the next 40%, and the bottom 50%. And every single group has seen at least a 60 % rise in net worth. It's kind of funny. The biggest gain on a relative basis is the bottom 50 % who's seen their net worth more than double, off of a low base, obviously.

21:25Ben Carlson:But this is not just the kind of thing where the rich are getting richer. Everyone has seen their net worth increase this decade, every group, the low end to the high end. And you're right. This is the simple, why is the economy, why is the economy powering through another rate hike? Because everyone has more money. That's why.

21:45Michael Batnick:This next chart shows one of my favorite formats of charting. It shows the cumulative flows by year. So January through December, going back to 2021, which was a bubblicious year. And that looks like Barry Bonds pre-steroids compared to 2026. Right? It's just a completely different slope of line. There's so much freaking money in the system. Now, every time I talk about the assets, I always do mention that it's not permanent. We have not reached a permanently high plateau. These numbers can fall 30 % in a bear market or more. But it's powering so much. It's unbelievable.

22:31Ben Carlson:The one thing I noticed from this chart, look at how every year for tax time, when people get their refunds, how it increases. There's a spike every year on tax time. Well, a dip and a spike. Yeah. Right. The payment and then that. But you're right. 2021 was way higher than 2022 or 2023 because that was a speculative year. And this year, it just puts 2021 to shame. And last year.

22:53Michael Batnick:So I'm really proud of investors. There is a record pace of money flows into bonds through August. $600 plus billion into fixed income. And the worst thing an investor can do in general in the stock market is add to losers, right? That is a very, very bad strategy. If that is your strategy, trust me, you will eventually stop.

23:23Ben Carlson:Wait, why is that a bad strategy? This is the Warren Buffett strategy.

23:26Michael Batnick:No, it's not. Adding to losers? No, that is not a Warren Buffett strategy. What? Buying stocks that are down? No, that's different. Okay. Buying stocks that might be down versus adding to losers is not the same thing. If you have a negative return on a stock and you consistently average down, you will lose a lot of money. That is a fact. That is not an opinion. That is a fact.

23:55Ben Carlson:Stop stealing Duncan's investment strategy. He's a big time average down guy.

24:00Michael Batnick:The bond market is not exactly the reverse because there are variables involved. But we are now staring at a 5 % 10-year. That is, in my opinion, an attractive investment. And I think that investors are rightly taking advantage of it. I bought bonds last week. I bought bonds two weeks ago. This is literally the first time in my entire - By the way, that felt like a real weird one-up. I just, I meant to say like, I'm with you. Not trying to say I bought bonds before you did. I'm with you. And I don't care if bonds go to 5.5 % more or because guess what? I will add to my loser.

24:40Ben Carlson:So I guess other than maybe a target date fund for my kid's 529 plan, this is the first time I've ever bought, personally bought bonds in my entire career.

24:50Yeah.

24:53Ben Carlson:5 % yield. It just seems prudent. We haven't seen 5 % yields since before the great financial crisis. It just seems prudent. It does. Okay, you put this one in here from Golden Sacks. Equities relative to bonds. So this is equities have enjoyed a near record period of outperformance relative to bonds. So this is both the U.S. and world portfolio. It shows the spread between stocks and bonds. And it was the highest in the 1950s, 1960s, which makes sense because that was also coming off of very low. And this is what, 10-year rolling returns.

25:28Michael Batnick:So as a result of this, people are severely underweight bonds. Just for natural drift, complacency, stocks have given you 14 % a year, bonds have given you a flat real return. Why would you own bonds? 2022, PTSD, I get all of it. But if you are even a little bit worried about the stock market, or you don't think that the 14 % will persist, you have 5%. Finally, finally, for our entire career, it was like, well, I can't own bonds, 2%, 1.5%, what's left?

26:02Ben Carlson:So in the early part of this decade, we showed a chart to our clients where we looked at different yield levels. And we said, this is what your stock portfolio needs to do to hit like a 6%, 7%, 8 % bogey. right? If you have a 60-40 portfolio, but bonds are only yielding one or 2%, you need much more lifting from the stock market. So you might need to go from a 60-40 portfolio to an 80-20. And everyone did. And in fact, a lot of people did that. Our advisors were telling people, you either lower your expectations or you increase your equity allocation. And lo and behold, the stock market actually came through.

26:37Ben Carlson:Really did. Son of a bitch. It was kind of like the stock market needs to return like 11 or 12 % per year to hit this return bogey for a 60-40 portfolio. And God damn it, it did. Can you believe it? No. So now I had Sean, our research analyst, create this for us, showing with a 5 % yield, you need, so before in the early 2020s, you probably needed like 11 % in stocks to get a 7 % return in a 60-40 portfolio. Now you only need 8 % from stocks with your 5 % with bonds. It's much better. So this is much more in alignment in the people who did take more risk, now can hopefully think, oh, I went from, I should have been 60-40, I went 70-30 or 80-20 or 90-10.

27:21Ben Carlson:Now I can maybe get back to 70-30 or 60-40 because these things are more in alignment. The world is healing or has healed. Even if yields keep going up, to your point. One more thing from Mike Sicardi. I feel like, I like this. This is another one from Goldman. They look at all these different scenarios for the next 10 years. I like this because I feel like every return scenario that we've looked at for the past 15 years has been awful. Here's why the returns are going to be lower going forward. Goldman looked at all these different scenarios. He looked at stagflation, stagnation, Goldilocks, which I think is just a strong economy.

27:57Ben Carlson:And then they looked at the best case, like Goldilocks plus a continued AI boom. And they say if we get a Goldilocks plus an AI boom that doesn't falter, we could be seeing 14 % annual returns in the S &P for the next 10 years. so that the economy still powers higher and the AI boom continues 14 % per year, which would give us literally the greatest bull market of all time. What probability, if you're a betting man, you're a FanDuel guy or whatever, or DraftKings, what probability would you put that? Like, what odds would you have to have to say, okay, we're going to do this Goldilocks and AI boom for 10 years, 10 more years of double-digit returns.

28:36Michael Batnick:But talk about switching costs. So theoretically, and I don't think this is necessarily unique to me. Theoretically, it is super duper, not theoretically, it is incredibly easy for me to use DraftKings or Fanatics or one of the prediction market sites to do my sports betting. But FanDuel, which I've been on since the beginning, has all of my data. So I actually am not going to switch because that's my scorecard. Just like your dentist, it's inertia. I don't go to the dentist. We've been through this. All right. So what percentage probably? I don't know. How would I even know where to begin?

29:17Ben Carlson:11%. I was going to say 10 % probability of that. But I honestly think that it's kind of funny because there's a 10 % chance robots will wipe us out and a 10 % chance we could just see the greatest bull market of all time. Continue.

29:32Michael Batnick:So I'm talking about this with Josh Knighton. What are your thoughts? the reason why I said so emphatically, sometimes I hedge or not a hedge. Sometimes I say I think when in fact I know. So earlier in the conversation, I said emphatically that adding to losers is a terrible strategy. And that is not an opinion. That is an empirical, quantifiable, backed by data fact. So Josh and I are going to be talking about a piece that Adam Parker at Trivariate Research wrote. The title of the piece is Buy and Hold Doesn't Work. And Adam showed the percentage of stocks beating the S &P 500 over the last three years and over the last 10 years.

30:17Michael Batnick:And it is just down and to the right. The number of stocks that are outperforming over a three-year and a 10-year period, and not just in the S &P, and then what's in 2002. And then he breaks it down into one-year, three-year, five-year, 10-year periods. And the best chance you have at picking a stock that's going to beat the market is over a one-year period. Because in the short term, there is a lot of potential dislocation where a stock can get oversold and it can bounce for a year and it could still be a terrible stock over a 10-year period of time. But over a 10-year period of time, which is what the Goldman analysis is doing, you have literally zero clarity, absolutely zero.

30:52Michael Batnick:Nobody knows anything in any field about what the world will look like in 10 years. Nobody.

30:58Ben Carlson:My, so my reading of that would be that it probably used to be easier to be an individual stock buy and hold investor. And a lot of people in the past did it in like the thirties, forties, and fifties did it for dividends. But I think things change so much faster now that it is harder to be an individual stock buy and hold investor. It's impossible.

31:18Michael Batnick:So Adam says only 23 % of the top 500 us stocks held for 10 years, beat the index and the latest observation, Wow. 23%. That's a wild stat. The thing is - For three-year holdings, the hit rate is 27.7%.

31:31Ben Carlson:But everyone would look at NVIDIA and Apple and all the tech stocks and go, no, no, no, you guys are wrong. But those are the outliers.

31:39Michael Batnick:Those are the outliers. Hello? But it's, again, I repeat, because people, I could say, I could hear people say, concentration is just a max seven, you idiots. It's the same exact thing in the top 2000 stocks.

31:53Ben Carlson:That's a wild stat. So 10 years, 23 % of stocks. Wow. Which is another reason why it's so hard to beat the index for active managers. You have to be more actively traded. Interesting.

32:08Michael Batnick:So, all right. Ben, this is really random. I don't know exactly why I threw this in here or why this popped into my brain. But it did. And I was thinking about Taxi Cab Confessions. And Taxi Cab Confessions was a show in the, I guess, mid to late 90s. It was a show that I watched when my parents went to sleep that I shouldn't have been watching. I guess only my dad's house because my mom didn't have HBO. So I watched it at my dad's house. And Taxi Cab Confessions was exactly what it says. It was basically like a confession in a taxi cab. People were going to church in a taxi cab. It was, I think it was in New York and Las Vegas.

32:53Michael Batnick:late night riders drunk in a piscines to the wind and they would just share crazy stories with the taxi cab driver why was I thinking about the show I have no freaking idea but if you showed this to somebody today there would be a lot of questions that this was such a such a provocative show back in the day right

33:16Ben Carlson:if you did this show today people are so much more used to cameras and talking and you would get people be way more performative about it. It wouldn't be as real.

33:27Michael Batnick:Correct. But, and also if an Uber driver started talking to you, although I suppose maybe at 2 a.m. anybody talks, but for the most part, people don't want to talk to their drivers.

33:36Ben Carlson:It's kind of like how reality TV was actually kind of real when it first started. And then people realize like, oh, if I am more performative, I can become a star. And then it became fake. Totally. Interesting. All right. Let's talk about the Fed. Can I both give the Fed credit for raising rates last week and also question why we had to raise rates? Go ahead. Okay. So first of all, this chart from Deutsche Bank shows the average 10-year yield versus the average nominal GDP growth. And it tracks it pretty darn closely. And it's saying so rates where they are make sense given nominal GDP growth.

34:09Ben Carlson:But also, Raul Sharma tweeted this. We've used all this. So he talks about Wells Fargo and Capital One saying, listen, the consumer is strong. There's all these quotes. We see similar spending strength across all our credit spectrum, including some of our lowest income customers. Overall, the consumer continues to show a lot of strength, even in the face of a lot of uncertainty out there. These are the same quotes we've been reading for four years. Right? So everyone's staying strong. So my question is, why does the Fed feel like they need to slow the economy if we have a 4 % unemployment rate and, yeah, inflation's 3.5 %?

34:45Ben Carlson:They want to get it. Why? The economy is doing fine. Why do they feel the need to have to slow it down? That's a good question.

34:55Michael Batnick:My knee-jerk reaction is that they are worried, and I could be way, way, way off, that they are worried about the AI build-out fueling more inflation. And the hyperscalers are borrowing a lot of money. And maybe if you increase the cost of capital, it will slow them down a little bit. because to your point, I don't know that they think that this is going to do anything to energy prices because for example, CPI without energy is up 2.5 % year over year, which is pretty damn close to their target. CPI with energy is 3.4%. So all of the increase we've seen is coming from the Iran war essentially.

35:39Michael Batnick:Well, a lot of it, but the other side of that is the Wall Street Journal ran a piece weeks before the midterms, almost everything is getting more expensive. So consumer prices in the aggregate are up 27 % since January 2021. But there's a lot of things that we pay for on a daily basis that are up 40%, 60%.

36:03Ben Carlson:My question is, why are we harming consumers? Because tech companies are spending a lot of money. And because we went to war with Iran, why do we have to harm households because of that?

36:17Ben Carlson:which, how is this harming households? It's making it much harder to borrow than we're trying to slow the economy. So we're harming households, potentially, because we went to war with Iran and we have an AI build-out going on. The Fed can't stop those things.

36:36Ben Carlson:Do you really think the hyperscale, if the Fed raised rates even another 50 basis points, is that really going to slow down the AI build-out? You think those, Mark Zuckerberg is going to say, yeah, okay, now we'll slow down. No way.

36:49Michael Batnick:Maybe not the hyperscalers, but - Is it a drop in a bucket? I don't know. I'm not the Fed. What do you want from me?

36:55Ben Carlson:But this is a fact. But here's the thing. I do get, because everyone said, Warsh is a puppet. He's doing whatever Trump wants him to. So I give the guy credit because everyone said, he actually raised rates because that's what the committee wanted to do.

37:10Michael Batnick:So this is not weighted, but this is just like, if you look at the individual items within the basket, All right. Some some items are obviously more important than others. Energy, for example, more important than others. But a third of the consumer basket is still rising at more than four percent year over year. There are still a lot of things that are going up way faster than is comfortable.

37:34Ben Carlson:I'm surprised that's not higher because the average is three and a half percent almost. This is interesting because lower income households need this. So Mike Zaccardi showing that the I think the K shaped economy was always kind of bunk. like we've talked about how it's always been rich people have always just spent more uh in august

37:51Michael Batnick:hold on be careful because people get really annoyed about this i don't think that we've

37:55Ben Carlson:said that there was never anything that was there was never anything in the shape of a k like they people say k-shaped economy because it's a good narrative but no chart ever actually

38:04Michael Batnick:looked like a k yeah i think we we i think we agree with the premise that there are always winners and losers and that the upper the upper class of the economy has always done better than the lower class.

38:16Ben Carlson:Right. So here's the thing that stinks because right now it says in August, after tax wage growth for lower income households continued to outpace that of higher income households. So lower income households are seeing higher wage growth than middle income and higher income right now. This is flipped. So it's flipped a couple of times. In the early 2020s, it was lower. Then it flipped. Now it's back. The thing that stinks though is that there's a way bigger consumption of energy prices in a budget for lower income households. So they need this raise. But this raise for them effectively is going to pay higher gas prices.

38:46Ben Carlson:That's what stinks. Right? It's a great thing that the lower-income households now have higher wage growth, but most of those gains are being eaten up right now.

38:57Michael Batnick:All right. One of the interesting things about the economy right now is the continued... Is strength the right word in the labor market?

39:06Ben Carlson:It's picking up again. Yes, there is increased strength in the labor market. I would characterize that. How about this?

39:12Michael Batnick:How about this? a lack of weakness, maybe not the same thing as strength.

39:16Ben Carlson:But initial unemployment claims are down 10 % in the past year.

39:19Michael Batnick:And continuing claims, meaning people that have been uninsured for a while. It's falling.

39:23Ben Carlson:Yeah. How do you reconcile this with AI is going to take all the jobs? The labor market is getting stronger.

39:29Michael Batnick:Well, I feel like we keep having this conversation. I don't think anybody thinks AI jobs are all going to come overnight.

39:37Ben Carlson:Okay. That sounds like you're moving the goalposts.

39:40Michael Batnick:I'm not moving the goalposts. I think that's a ridiculous... You're spiking the football?

39:44Ben Carlson:I'm not spiking the football. I'm saying it's a good thing that we're reassessing this. Because there were some people were giving forecasts for six months from now.

39:55Michael Batnick:No, but that's not true. That's not true. Nobody said in six months, all the jobs are going away. You're literally making that up. Who said that?

40:01Ben Carlson:Dario from Anthropic said in six months, half of all entry-level white-collar jobs will be gone. I don't believe you said that.

40:06Michael Batnick:That was an actual quote. All right, well, he was actually wrong. Either way, do you think that AI is not going to impact the economy? I mean, is that what you're saying?

40:15Ben Carlson:Here's, so I have, this is a good lead in. So John Arnold posted, West Coast, we're approaching an economic transformation unlike anything in modern history. East Coast, we're looking at three more years of 2.1 % GDP growth. I'm just throwing it out there. What if AI gives us a little bit of boost in productivity? It makes our lives demonstrably easier and more efficient. But it does, like the internet, there's no huge change to GDP. I think that's a very reasonable outcome we could see. Because I think the tech people think we're going to have like 4 % growth, 6 % growth. It's going to be this magical utopia of growth.

40:51Ben Carlson:And I really think that there's a much higher likelihood that growth is just 2%, 2.5%.

40:57Michael Batnick:Perhaps. But is GDP the right measure? That's what the tech person would say. But it's true. What does that really capture? The total output of our country? Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. I don't think it's the right metric. What is the right metric?

41:13Ben Carlson:Vibes. Okay. I don't know what the right metric is. Well, AI is not helping with vibes right now either. Everyone hates it. Well, that's definitely true. But I'm just saying, I really do think that this is a more likely outcome, that GDP could increase a little bit. And that would be a huge thing over the long term because the economy is so big. But the tech people go, wait, what?

41:34Michael Batnick:So if GDP does increase a little bit and the stock market doesn't crash, then Buffett's indicator, which is something that he doesn't really care about anymore, is going to get extremely even more lopsided. The size of the stock market versus GDP is going to continue to make bears insane. I think it's, and Munger even said,

41:59Ben Carlson:like, Buffett doesn't believe this anymore. Get out of here. I think, why wouldn't the stock market be a bigger percentage of the GDP over time? the claim that it has to be a certain level because it was in the past. Why?

42:12Michael Batnick:No, corporate America is more powerful than everything else. And more people invest in the stock market. Of course it's bigger.

42:18Ben Carlson:There's more money in the stock market than it was in the past.

42:20Michael Batnick:But one piece of our output, but it's the biggest piece. I don't want to let this, I don't know why. Just things pop into my brain all the time. Popping guy. You know what just popped in? You singing your karaoke song. So every year, is it every year at this point? is it a tradition can we call it that for what for your karaoke well the last two years i've done it okay so so it's a thing now so ben's go-to song is ben's a big tc guy it's is it lost that loving

42:56Ben Carlson:feeling or that you've lost that loving feeling it's funny my kids we were talking last night what's your favorite movie and i said it's probably top gun did you show them the video

43:06Michael Batnick:No, I didn't. Would you? No. You did very well. I mean, you're an introvert, but on the mic, my God, you're like Britney Spears out there. I gave it my best.

43:18Ben Carlson:Obviously, I had some liquid courage going, so that helped. It was very impressive. Yes. Vibes were very high. Everyone was doing karaoke. There were some friends in low places and all the small things. Good times. So it's funny. Everyone always says that Twitter is like the biggest cesspool in the world of social media. And obviously, in a lot of ways, it's true. But have you ever waited into LinkedIn before? No. So I post some stuff on there on occasion.

43:47Michael Batnick:Well, I mean, not no, but what do you mean by waited in?

43:49Ben Carlson:Just like done a scroll of the posts on LinkedIn. Not really. Okay, everyone says the biggest psychopaths in the world are on Twitter. I think they're on LinkedIn. but I saw a hashtag like a big long post and it said hashtag written without AI I think that's I don't know how long that's going to last for because no one I feel like people are going to stop caring about that like people have really strong feelings about that now I think it's going to go away

44:16Michael Batnick:hashtags were always for dweebs

44:20Ben Carlson:yes that's true okay let's talk about Bitcoin a little bit Bitcoin's had a massive massive comeback So at one point in the end of July, Bitcoin was down 33 % a year. This is Ibit. And now it is essentially flat on a year after a massive, massive comeback in the last couple of weeks because of regulation and I don't know. No, no, no.

44:43Michael Batnick:Not because of regulation. The Clarity Act failed.

44:45Ben Carlson:The hopes for regulation. No, the Clarity Act failed. I know. I guess the hope is that it's going to pass. I don't know. So explain this to me.

44:54Michael Batnick:I will try. A couple months ago, we did a show with Grayscale. And we were asking, is Bitcoin dead? I mean, what is the catalyst? And we weren't asking that rhetorically. We're like, literally, what can it possibly be? And sentiment was very, very low. And I believe I said, I don't know. I think price is a catalyst. I don't know that there has to be one. People can get back in the boat really quickly. Is it just software? I don't know. Software is bouncing. Bitcoin is bouncing. Is it that simple? Why overcomplicate it?

45:22Ben Carlson:remember Bitcoin really flew on risks of the end of human extinction or human extinction fears I don't know it really is it's an asset that has always sort of defied logic but it's moving with software still I still think this is the best long term bull case that every time it feels like it's just deader than dead it comes back it's always the undertaker meme yeah and it's back at what 86 ,000 Yep. All right, speaking of inflation, Connerstown's got a new substack called the Housing Frame, which is very good. And he's talking, I feel like I'm probably guilty of this. Like we talk about the housing crisis, the supply crisis, and we're obviously like, obviously the solution dummies is build more housing.

46:10Ben Carlson:The question is, what would that actually look like if we did build more housing? And so he pulled some quotes from home builders. So the guy from Lennar said, labor availability has started to become more of an issue. Immigration enforcement and enthusiastic data center construction continue to create tightness in certain geographies. We've been able to offset labor increases with efficiencies of scale, but the pressure on costs is certainly building. Another guy from the department read said the same thing. We're probably at the point where construction costs are the lowest they're going to go.

46:38So it's hard to find people who work in construction right now because we're immigration enforcement.

46:44Ben Carlson:We're locking down on immigration, and all the construction people are going towards data centers. So if we said, if we did this moratorium on housing and the federal government waved a magic wand and said, we're going to make it, we're taking away all the red tape, build as many houses as you want, we're going to incentivize it. If that was the thing, people would think that would solve a lot of problems. But what that would also do is it would cause a really huge increase in inflation because you have to pay for more people to come to construction work. And housing would be way more expensive because of this.

47:15Ben Carlson:My point is, we're probably not going to solve the housing crisis. without creating another add-on something. If we really were to fill in the hole with those three to four million houses we're missing, if we could somehow do it, it would just cause another crisis.

47:33Michael Batnick:What literally happens to people that are growing up and having babies and need more space, need to move out of the apartment into a house and they just cannot afford it, which has got to be at this point, most people.

47:49Ben Carlson:No, it's not most people. It's got to be most people.

47:52Michael Batnick:It's got to be. How can it be? Houses are so expensive. You tap the bank of mom and dad. That's how you do it. Okay. Not everybody can do that. True. I don't know. I really do think it's a crisis. I think it's a national emergency.

48:08Ben Carlson:And my point is, it doesn't seem like anyone wants to fix this national emergency. And even if we could, what would it lead to? And how would it happen? that's the hard part well out of my depth i have no idea tents for all gen z that's my platform what is it tents yurts tents yeah tent cities i got no i i it's it's it sounds like a simple problem just build more houses i think it's way more complicated than it sounds at face value

48:41Michael Batnick:unfortunately well also where to build them i mean are we talking about making new towns i don't even know what that means, but just build more houses. Right.

48:51Ben Carlson:Let's talk about fraud a little bit. Travis Kelsey was in a Ponzi scheme. I saw this in the Detroit News. Also, Tim Hardaway Jr., Gary Harris, Mason Plumlee. There was this SwiftArc LLC. The guy took in tens of millions of dollars. I think he promised to do some sort of venture capital something. It's kind of funny. It says he put all the money in Philip Morris, Pakistan, which I did not know was a thing. and basically took the rest of the money, spent it on himself, and then started paying back new investors or old investors with new investors. Huge Ponzi scheme.

49:29Ben Carlson:It's obviously not all private investments, but it's so much easier to commit fraud in private investments. You can have the whole aura of black box and anything illiquid. It's so much easier to do. The Wall Street Journal had a story about -

49:43Michael Batnick:Also, when people say, hey, I want my money back. Like, I can't, it's illiquid.

49:47Ben Carlson:Right, yes. The Wall Street Journal had a story about Mark Walter, the guy who had to sell the Lakers. And it was showing the huge increase in money going into annuities and saying how kind of easy it was for him to use this. And they interviewed a few people, this guy saying, I bought annuities from this company for decades. And then I realized that this guy is investing it in other stuff. And you'd think that insurance would be one of the most regulated industries that there is. and I think it is. It is. It was still easy for this guy to do this. I just think that the sheer size of private markets and illiquid markets now, illiquid investments, means that there's probably so much more fraud going on than we even know.

50:28Ben Carlson:True. And you probably don't hear, what I researched don't fall for it. What I found was a lot of fraud you never hear about unless it goes to court because people don't want to admit that they got taken advantage of.

50:39Michael Batnick:Yeah, it's humiliating.

50:40Ben Carlson:Yes. Okay, this is interesting. pilots rich you know this good the wall street journal had a stop it makes yeah this is one of the things i don't want my pilot making sixty thousand dollars a year so it's interesting they interviewed this pilot and he says he's got a brokerage account of three and a half million dollar 401k once he starts taking his required minimum distributions his income will be well over three hundred thousand dollars a year including social security which is more than he earned most years while working uh this is crazy united delta and american and southwest now make 18 % non-elective retirement contributions to pilot 401ks.

51:17Ben Carlson:Love that. Holy smokes. So that non-elective means like they put that in your 401k, whether you put anything in or not. Pretty crazy, right? It said pilots with seniority can make as much as$100 ,000 in a month if they live near a hub, find the biggest planes, and can pick up overtime rates due to weather-related events. Wow. I've heard of this before of there's, I think that there's an advisor in Atlanta who his only clients are Delta airline pilots.

51:45Michael Batnick:Shout out to Delta. You know what? I meant to wear my... So they sent us a care package, which was very nice.

51:51Ben Carlson:Yes.

51:52Michael Batnick:I am a hardcore Delta stan loyalist. Me too. At Future Proof, we had to fly to... We had to fly United because we flew to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, which is near where our event is. and what did I watch on United? Garbage. Garbage, garbage, garbage. You're right. Delta does have the best movies too. What the hell did I watch? Man, I watched some pieces of shit. I genuinely don't even remember. And matter of fact, didn't we get an email from the person at Delta that runs their movie selection?

52:29Ben Carlson:Yes. If you're still listening

52:30Michael Batnick:and you're still in that role, salute to you, sir. Because not only is Delta just the best for a million different reasons, by far the best movie selection. By far, by far. Delta, I miss you. Thank you.

52:45Ben Carlson:You're right. They sent us a really nice care package. My son loves, it's like a little model airplane. He put it on his nightstand right next to his desk. Very cool. All right. We got to talk about this tech person who put out her non-negotiables for finding a mate. You saw this? No. Okay. She's 29. She works for Corgi. She's in Silicon Valley. And she said, non-negotiable. Wait, does she work for Corgi, the investment company? Yes. Huh, okay. And the one, so if you read through these, a lot of people said, oh gosh, she's got way too high of standards. But the one, the best one here. Wait, wait, wait, read it.

53:21Ben Carlson:I didn't see this. Okay. 35 to 32. Healthy, masculine. 35 to 42. Or 42. Smart, funny, lighthearted. Provider, protector mentality. This is the greatest one here. Post-economic. Parentheses, still hardworking. What the f*** does that mean? post-economic means you have more than enough money for financial freedom, but you still like to work. So you sold a startup or you got a stock options. And so this is the one that people latched onto. And I love it. Post-economic. Can you imagine?

53:52Michael Batnick:Is there anything else on the list? Fit and sober? Fit and sober because you care about it.

53:57Ben Carlson:Yeah, that's a lot of people. On a healing path, history of serious commitment, ex-therapist, books, retreats. So anyway, a lot of people, this thing went wildly viral. I'm sorry. I love that phrase because can you imagine how hard it would be to be a young person in San Francisco? I cannot even imagine how difficult it would be with the sheer amount of money that some young people make and how expensive it is to live there. Like, her saying this sounds absolutely insane to 99.9 % of the country. But if you live in San Francisco, you probably know so many people who are post-economic. I don't know.

54:37Ben Carlson:For some reason, I love that term.

54:39Michael Batnick:Can meet anywhere, but will not date unless live in this. Okay. On the healing path. This is weird. History of serious commitment, ex-therapist books, retreats. I'm sorry. I hate the healing path. I cannot stand that whole genre of life, of grinders of, ooh, I just, I hate it. The thing is, can we just be a normal human being?

55:09Ben Carlson:But do you know how many weirdos in San Francisco probably fit this description she's putting out here?

55:14Michael Batnick:No kids yet decidedly want kids. But why did you bring this to my life? I don't need to know about this. I just, I love the phrase post-economic. I love it. I hate it. All right, let's talk about what's going on in the world of sports, entertainment, and finance. The Wall Street Journal was writing about Thrive and Iger's purchase of the Lakers, and they say that they are telling prospective investors they expect to nearly triple the basketball team's valuation within 10 years to$30 billion at least. Wow. And would they buy it for 12? Yeah, and more favorable assumptions would be at$62 billion.

55:52Michael Batnick:So they said that the Lakers are on track to generate$681 million in revenue in 2026. Under their plans, they said revenue would hit at least$1.6 billion by the end of 2037. And they show the cost, the revenue and cost. And this is a nice little visual. But am I taking drugs? $30 billion on$1.6 billion in revenue? That's what we're doing now?

56:20Ben Carlson:This is one of those, you can't value it like on a spreadsheet though. This is one of those assets that it's your, it's what a rich guy is willing to pay for it.

56:30Michael Batnick:$30 billion on one and a half billion in revenue. So do you know what? If the Lakers sell for$30 billion or if the Lakers are worth$30 billion in a decade, then we're all going to be very rich.

56:43Ben Carlson:So hey, going from -

56:45Michael Batnick:That means that everything went right. All of our fears were misplaced. The Lakers were$30 billion. Your 401k is$2.9 million. we're good.

56:55Ben Carlson:What do you think a reasonable - We're all post-economic, Ben. What do you think a reasonable annual rate of return is for a professional sports team? How much should it go up? Should it follow inflation? Should it go up more? Okay. So in real life, in real life, I would say six to 8%. Okay.

57:13Michael Batnick:Like in economic reality. In reality, reality, is it 12 to 14? I don't know.

57:21Ben Carlson:So going from$12 billion to$30 billion in 10 years sounds like an insane increase in price. I think it's actually like a return of 10 % per year. Isn't that about right? No. No?

57:36Michael Batnick:No. Am I way off? A triple in 10 years? No, that's way higher. Because a double in 10 years is 7%. No.

57:45Ben Carlson:Do your math again.

57:46Michael Batnick:A double in 10 years is a rule of 72.

57:48Ben Carlson:12 to 30 is going from 12 to...

57:50Michael Batnick:No, I'm saying a double in 10 years. I know we're not supposed to be doing math on the show, but a double in 10 years is 7.2%. Yeah. Didn't you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Have you learned nothing from Robert Kiyosaki? Do the math right now. I'm not doing the math. That's the only math I'm doing.

58:06Ben Carlson:Going from 12 to 30 is a 10 % annual return. Okay. Over 10 years. All right. Well, you obviously just used a calculator, so I'm not going to let you get me. Of course I did. I wanted to make sure, but it's not as high as you think. All right, fine. Maybe it's not. Listen, rich guys are going to compound their wealth at the stock market. If the stock market is up 100 % per year. So it kind of makes sense, actually. So this is kind of not. Josh Kushner in this picture looks like Adam Brody.

58:33Michael Batnick:Very handsome man. They said that part of their increase in revenue projections is taking 6 ,000 broker-held season ticket sales for single-game sales, which would raise average ticket prices from$217 to$360. That is freaking crazy. An average ticket sale? Now, I know Los Angeles is a place with a lot of money. An average ticket sale of$360? What do you think the average is for the Knicks?

59:04Michael Batnick:The average for the Knicks is, I'm going to guess, $145.

59:10Ben Carlson:Think about just a scenario where AI doesn't rule, like destroy the world. How much money is AI going to create in the next 10 years? And how much wider is wealth inequality going to be? 30 billion, mark it down. These guys are right.

59:28Michael Batnick:Okay, finally, after an hour, you're taking a stand. That's right. Okay. In the same vein,

59:39Michael Batnick:and I don't get this. So Apollo is buying 60 % of the Yankees. Okay. Are they putting it into a private credit fund? Here's probably. Well, yeah, because there's debt involved. Here's the part that I don't understand. So the debt piece, okay, I'm sure they're getting a nice return for lending money to the Yankees. That's money good. But the equity,$12 billion, significantly more than$12 billion. This is a report from Charles Gasparino at the New York Post. How do equity investors in the Yankees make an attractive return? From the point of view of a rich person, if you're Iger and Kushner, I get it.

1:00:17Michael Batnick:I totally get it. The Lakers are the prize of all prizes. There are no bigger bragging rights. But if you are merely -

1:00:25Ben Carlson:It's an ego purchase.

1:00:26Michael Batnick:If you are a passive equity investor in the Yankees, is that attractive? I'd rather buy Facebook. I don't know.

1:00:35Ben Carlson:That's true. I'd like to see the spreadsheet on this.

1:00:38Michael Batnick:This also made me laugh.

1:00:43Michael Batnick:Uh, Gasparino said PE firms are currently barred from owning more than 15 % of any team, according to MLB rules, though the league is expected to waive the cap. Okay. All right. So here are the rules. Ah, f*** it. Who cares?

1:00:57Ben Carlson:It's the purge for one day. All right. There was a story in the cut. My husband has no friends. And it says for some wives, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes managing their spouse's social life. I have a question for you. Go ahead. Your social life, how much is planned by you and how much is planned by Robin in terms of like stuff you guys do together with other people?

1:01:18Michael Batnick:I'm pretty sure you know the answer to this. Okay.

1:01:20Ben Carlson:I think this is the way it is for almost everyone I know. That the wife is in charge of the social calendar when it comes to people. And this woman, she was like kind of poking fun at her husband, but also like writing about it and how like you go to school events and the husband is kind of over in the corner, but the wives are all talking to her because they know each other. like I think this is just the natural way of life. Correct. I don't think this is a problem.

1:01:45Michael Batnick:This is not a reflection of modern society. This is the way it's always been for men.

1:01:50Ben Carlson:I think men find their friends at a certain age and they rarely find new friends. So here's what happens.

1:01:56Michael Batnick:And I like my dad friends. I happen to enjoy their company for the most part. But when we get together in somebody's backyard, for example, the women are all talking about God knows what forever and ever. And after five minutes, we sort of want to have things to talk about. And it's mostly like, oh, you know, sports, whatever. And then we're done. That's how it is for every guy.

1:02:15Ben Carlson:Yes.

1:02:16Michael Batnick:Then we just watch the wives and say,

1:02:17Ben Carlson:what are they talking about? What are they even talking about? They look so happy. My wife has so many new friends from the moms at school and working the playground and stuff. Like she has this whole group of new friends. And she's always like, go talk to more of the dads at the games and stuff. I'm like, I don't want new friends. But guess what? They don't want to be friends with me either.

1:02:32Michael Batnick:No. It's mutually, we're all happy here. So here's been my routine thus far. I've been very tired lately. I don't know if this is like a new thing or if I'm just a tired sort of person. But at the end of the day, I'm very tired. We do a lot, right? Our brains are very active. Then the kids come home, like I'm just, at nine o 'clock, I'm done. I know you're a night owl, which is very nice for you. So I put the kids down, whatever, 9.15. And then I go straight up to bed, straight to bed. And Robin is a night owl like you. But it's annoying because I get a little bit, I get sort of like, anxious is the wrong word, but like, I can't really fall asleep until she comes in.

1:03:12Michael Batnick:So I'm like sort of half sleeping. And the other night she comes in and then I'm just kind of annoyed because I was tired and not able to fall asleep the next morning. I said, what the hell were you talking about for an hour and a half? And she says, Kobe's tryouts. And I said, you got to be kidding me. How could you, how is there 90 minutes of conversation? He goes, she goes, well, you don't want to talk about it. I'll talk about it. Let's talk about it. Tell me the conversation that you just had. So she's breaking it down for me. She's like, I'm like, and you gotta be kidding me that you, you squeezed 90 minutes out of that.

1:03:44Michael Batnick:You and I could have had this conversation in four minutes. We would have been over. I'm happy to have this conversation four minutes done, but they, they talk, they like to talk.

1:03:52Ben Carlson:That's why they need each other. Right. It's, I think it works. My point is that this is not a problem that needs to be solved. Everyone is happy in this arrangement. This just is.

1:03:59Michael Batnick:So it works. I mentioned this a few weeks ago, But because my bed, my kids' bedtimes is now creeping up a little bit higher, converging with my bedtime, I am really struggling to get through TV shows. It took me eight months to get through Friends and Neighbors. So I want to, I want to watch Mobland is back and The Gentleman is back, which are basically the same show. I can't even, I don't know which is which. Jon Hamm has another new show as well. Guys everywhere. There's too many good, there's too much. I feel like TV is having a moment. There's a lot of shows that I want to watch that I just will not get to.

1:04:30Michael Batnick:It's taking me a long time to get through shows as well. These damn kids.

1:04:33Ben Carlson:Am I right? Let's talk some future-proof thoughts. I got a few thoughts on future-proof. Go ahead. And we recorded live from there last week. It was really fun. Great to see a bunch of people. We had an animal spirits happy hour. A bunch of people came. We had a live animal spirits. We saw a million people at the conference. It was so much fun. This is not a novel observation, but I think this is just something that has been more deeply ingrained at us since the pandemic, that people just want to be around other people. Like the whole point of this conference, there's a lot of really good content and a lot of like stuff, but it's more just being around other people that had made this conference grow to like 5 ,600 people or whatever it was.

1:05:10Ben Carlson:I can't believe the amount of people that were there and just wanted to be around other people and socialize and get that one-on-one that you can't get over Zoom. You can't get digitally.

1:05:20Michael Batnick:You're right. So I'm not, I don't like small talk in almost any form, but I do love being in the mix. I just love being around so many people.

1:05:30Ben Carlson:Yes, it's very energizing. It sure is. I continue to think we have a very young audience at Future Proof. I don't know what the average age is, probably mid-30s-ish, 40, at the highest probably. I'm sure that Future Proof people have these numbers. It's a young crowd. I continue to think as much angst as there is about young people, I think young people are going to be fine.

1:05:53Michael Batnick:It's older than that, but there are a lot of young people there.

1:05:56Ben Carlson:And I had a bunch of, we have this thing where we allow college students to come. I think, I don't think even free tickets are cheaper, but I had all these college kids coming up to me talking about how they're into this stuff and they're asking questions. And can you imagine when you were in college going to an industry event and being excited about it and asking people questions about your career path?

1:06:15Michael Batnick:I never did that. From our purview, which is a narrow one, obviously, there does seem to be a big disconnect between young people are miserable versus the young people that we interact with.

1:06:25Ben Carlson:And the young people at our firm, we have a whole Gen Z cohort now that works with us. They're happy-go-lucky. They all really want to have a good time. They have a good time with each other.

1:06:35Michael Batnick:Well, credit to us. We have a great work environment, and we select great people. So that's not an accident. True.

1:06:42Ben Carlson:One other thing. I feel like the AI shift, like the Future Proof in Miami six months ago was all about AI. I feel like there's already been a massive shift from that six months ago to now.

1:06:55Michael Batnick:You're right. Six months ago, it was a lot of like just conjecture as to what is the world going to look like in six months. And six months later, we have Claude making the announcement that they're integrating with financial advisors. Not replacing, integrating.

1:07:10Ben Carlson:But that was the thing. It was like, what are the AI tools you're going to be using? There's a million of these smaller AI companies that, hey, we can do this for you. We can do this for you. And now it's like, no, we have Claude and we have Hazel. And these are the big ones. And it felt like there's a huge change. All right, one more story for you. For years, we talked about the line on your TV, right? You had this line on your TV and you kept it for how long?

1:07:33Michael Batnick:Ever.

1:07:33Ben Carlson:Forever? And you finally got a new TV.

1:07:35Michael Batnick:Well, I was taking a stand. That was a new TV, damn it. Oh, it turned a year and a week old. And I tried to bring it back to Best Buy. There was a pretty thick green line. And they said, sorry, your warranty expired. And I said, you got to be kidding me. So I spite kept it.

1:07:52Ben Carlson:I got a new TV last year. I don't know, it's like a big 80-inch whatever. I finally got a really big TV in our basement. And we just have like a big, long wall in our basement. And so I have nothing in front of this TV. It's just a TV on a wall. There's no TV stand. There's no nothing in front of it. So it's not that tall. And for some reason, my son, because little boys are like psychotic in many ways, and they just get something in their head, he decided in the last month, he really wants to perfect a handstand. So all day, every day, this kid is doing handstands.

1:08:20Michael Batnick:Hold on, against the wall or naked?

1:08:22Ben Carlson:it both both he goes against the wall and he tries to do straight up push-ups like upside down push-ups all right he's been watching way too much rocky i don't know what we actually did watch rocky for and it it really you're right that's probably the best movie the 80s so he's been doing a million of these and he he's got bruises all over his legs because he keeps doing and then he falls over on stuff so he does one in front of my tv my brand new tv on the wall and his heel goes into the TV and immediately scroll to the picture.

1:08:56Michael Batnick:I see it, I see it, I see it.

1:08:58Ben Carlson:There's 25 lines like a rainbow in my TV because his heel hit the TV so hard. And I just get a, George, ugh! And I couldn't be mad at him, but I'm like, what are you, ugh! But to your point, I'm like, well, we can't watch TV in this room anymore. It's ruined. That's way worse than mine was. I mean, that's - Okay, I was going to ask if it's worse. But last night, my daughter and I were in the basement, and I'm like, let's watch a movie. And I'm like, oh, shoot, the stupid lines on the TV. And you know what we did? We powered through and we watched it with lines on the TV. But I have to get, I already ordered a new TV.

1:09:30Ben Carlson:But yeah, because little boys have so much energy, I have lines on my TV. Can I show you something? Speaking of Rocky IV.

1:09:47Michael Batnick:so we got a new office i'm going to be spending time in so i needed to get some things to the back of my wall wow a lot of glare but still alone and drago and uh well rocky and drago

1:10:07Ben Carlson:Wow. So I showed my kids last week the movie. I think I sent you a picture of it as we were watching it. Why didn't Dolph Lundgren have a bigger career? He's not a good actor. Was he He-Man? I think so. They tried, but I still got chills at the end. My kids were so, so into it, but I got chills at the end. All right. Recommendation time. So you, I think you told me, you said George is going to love the end of Oak Street and it came out on, you watched it in the theater and it came out on on demand so we watched it this weekend and my kids watched it three times in two days so it's a dinosaur movie the other great thing i think it was 97 minutes so it was it just the movie got into it and it went and that's just an entertaining movie just quality entertainment a lot of fun it was like a spielberg 80s movie yes it did the the fact that they really went in all in the 80s the other thing at some point in the movie they played the song valerie by Steve Winwood.

1:11:05Michael Batnick:I don't think I know that. Sing it for me. Valerie, Valerie, Valerie. Oh, of course. Of course. Same.

1:11:13Ben Carlson:Good job. So, for the last week now, my kids have been listening to Valerie and singing it and it's stuck in my head on a loop. They keep, every time I walk in the room, the kids are going,

1:11:22Michael Batnick:Valerie.

1:11:23Ben Carlson:And they're singing. Next,

1:11:25Michael Batnick:I want to do Burning Heart,

1:11:26Ben Carlson:please. But who's more 80s than Steve Winwood with like the synthesizer and just nailed it. All right.

1:11:32Michael Batnick:what do you got uh pretty dry pretty dry i i'm trying to see uh trying to get to resident evil but i have not made it yet i'm taking my kids to see uh end game is being re-released for one night so we're going on friday excited about that what's end game avengers ah everyone dies but then magically they're all alive again exactly you know how it works um all right this is the this is you You know, Father Time is undefeated, Ben. I was watching. So, you know, I'm a big, big fan of animal attack movies, right? Yes. Crocodiles eating people or a shark.

1:12:12Ben Carlson:Have you seen the preview for the guy who gets eaten by a whale?

1:12:15Michael Batnick:Yeah, I can't wait. But that's a legit film. So, there's a movie on Netflix called Deep Water starring Ben freaking Kingsley. Academy Award winner, Ben Kingsley. and Aaron Eckert. Sounds like a straight-to-streaming movie to me. Ben Kinsley played a pilot. He was in the movie for 11 minutes. Isn't it unbelievable? And I thought Aaron Eckert was a fine actor. I thought he was great in Thank You for Smoking. But I guess his career just completely unraveled. Anyway, deeply bad movie. More just a commentary on.

1:12:56Ben Carlson:I would read a book about how actor and actresses go from being in very good movies to, oh, now you're doing these now. Mark Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg now.

1:13:08Michael Batnick:Guy used to do good movies. There's a lot of people like that. No matter how much money people make, you always need money is one of the takeaways. And lastly, I've been returning to some of the elder horror films that I haven't seen in a long time, like a long, long time. for example Texas Chainsaw Massacre have you ever seen the original

1:13:32Ben Carlson:what year are we talking here

1:13:34Michael Batnick:77

1:13:36Ben Carlson:I don't even know so you're saying the one that came on the 1990s is not the original no I don't think I did like the one

1:13:41Michael Batnick:with Jessica Biel um let's see Texas Chainsaw original uh 1974 wow wow that is

1:13:52Ben Carlson:I mean that it's just the only thing I think it's a very sweaty movie Right?

1:13:57Michael Batnick:Everyone's hot and spying. That's deer hunter old. So anyway, the original Texas Chainsaw, listen, it's 50 years old. Obviously, it feels like an old movie. Quality movie. On the other hand, Friday the 13th, 1980, big piece of shit. Horrible movie. Did you know, and this is, I suppose I'm spoiling a 45-year-old movie if it's possible. Jason Voorhees is not even in the movie. Now, I remember from Scream that I was his mom. And I did see it when I was a child, but I just totally forget. Jason's not even in the movie.

1:14:35Ben Carlson:I got to be honest. I've never seen any of the Friday the 13th movies.

1:14:39Michael Batnick:Not surprising.

1:14:39Ben Carlson:I know who Jason is. That's all I got though.

1:14:42Michael Batnick:Yeah. Terrible movie. I'm watching the second one. He's in the second one. And apparently, he doesn't take out the hockey mask until the third one. That might be the end of my journey. But I've seen all the recent ones. Jason Goes to Hell, which by the way, we're old, Ben. That's not even recent, but to me, that's recent because I was in the 90s. Unbelievable. Your dad took when you were six. Probably at 12. All right. All right. We said it all. We're maybe we'll not talk as much about AI next week.

1:15:09Ben Carlson:Of course we will. We don't have to keep prefacing this. We don't have to apologize for it.

1:15:14Michael Batnick:Yeah.

1:15:14Ben Carlson:It's the biggest story of the decade. Fine. The global pandemic.

1:15:18Michael Batnick:I just I would like for the news flow to slow down for a second. It can't. Can't stop, won't stop. Probably right, Ben. All right, Animal Spirits pod. No. AnimalSpirits at the compoundnews.com. Personal emails, personal responses. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.

1:15:48Michael Batnick:push your limits train with precision see the results at equinox that's high performance loving everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at equinox start today at equinox.com