There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett (EP.411)

23:58No, it's, it's opposite. Right. The overreaction is what caused him to back off. Yes, exactly. So I look at this as do you, have you seen the bitter apple spray for, for dogs when you have a puppy? And if the dog's chewing on something or the dog's barking, you spray the apple spray on them once. And it kind of makes them like hit them. And then all you have to do the next time is show them the bottle. You don't even have to spray them. You have to show them the bottle. We do this to my puppy. We have, right. I gave her one little spray to get her to stop chewing on stuff. And now I just pull the bottle out.

24:28You know, Duncan's listening to this, right? Oh, is it? Hey, listen, this stuff is it's, um, it's all natural Duncan. It's organic. Um, but so that's, I think that's what the market, that's one of the reasons I think the market is doing better than anyone could have anticipated, is because we know the spray bottle exists. All we have to do is show it to him next time he keeps pushing and then backs off, right? You didn't need to keep spraying the market over and over. Just had to spray it once. And it already did that. Fair? Yeah. All right. So Luke Kawa looked at what the dip buying looks like.

25:01And he shows that the riskiest stocks are the ones that came back in favor immediately. So it's high volatility stocks, crazy high beta stocks, and then profitability and dividend stocks are lagging. This is since the bottom on April 8th. It's also interesting. I looked at where things are from the bottom. And international stocks are outperforming on the bounce, which I wouldn't have thought. So the IFA is up 18 % from the lows. S &P is up 14, and the NASDAQ is up 17. I would have expected international stocks to lag here. And obviously part of this is the dollar still, I suppose, but this is surprising, no?

25:37Yeah. International stocks were outperforming going into it. Yeah, they were outperforming going into this Liberation Day stuff, and they've been outperforming coming out of it too. That's a shocker to me. Ben, you mentioned this last week, but you tweeted about it, and I think it's just – I want to spend another second on this. You said we've never had an actual recession in the social media era. It's going to be very weird if and when it happens. People freaking out. People saying it's fake. People who enjoy the calamity of it. people taking advantage of others through fear tactics that will be nuts.

26:05You're spot on. It's going to be really, it's going to be a lot of things. I tweeted this out. I didn't realize there's still a whole contingent of people, and it's all political, that think 2022 was a recession still, which is insane to me. That because they thought the GDP fell two quarters, which it was actually revised and only fell one quarter. So people, there's some people who are on the corner of, hey, there was a recession in 2022. Again, these are... Okay, maybe an earnings recession. maybe, but wait, how could there be a recession with 4.1 %? What did unemployment peak at? The unemployment rate literally fell in 2022 from 4 % to 3.5 % or something.

26:40So yeah. Yeah, that's not a recession. But this is not just people being out of practice. Again, 2020, there was so much other stuff going on and it was over so fast. Even a mild recession is going to be very weird to think about because I feel like if, again, if we have like a 1.5 % GDP decline recession or whatever, and it happens to be in the unemployment rate goes to six. It's going to be very mild, but I feel like the way people react to it is going to be very interesting. I think there's just going to be extreme range of how people handle it. Yeah. So, all right. I'm guessing your chart could create this historical 19 % drawdowns.

27:17We spoke about this last week. I pulled a Brent Hatley and pulled a citizen's arrest. That's a Howard reference for you, Ben, who don't know what I'm talking about and listeners. So, 590 % drawdowns. Okay. And I was looking at your Menchies. And it is tricky because you have to draw the line somewhere on what a bear market is. But it's not just the depth of the decline. The duration matters too. But then it's like, all right, well, was 2020 not a bear market because it lasted 23 days? That's absurd. So how do we think about adjusting for time and depth? There's got to be some sort of work that could be done here.

28:00It's funny. A lot of people in my mentions said, who cares? And I said, I do, because it's kind of fun to argue about. Yeah. This is what we do. Yes, I agree. Shorter term. What's the XNVIDIA stuff here? All right, this is wild. Since the bottom in October 2022, Japan and Europe have outperformed the S &P. if you strip out NVIDIA. So this isn't just Mag7. This is just NVIDIA. Huh. Just NVIDIA. That's from the Guide to the Markets. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. Let's talk about like what the hell is this bounce all about and do we buy it or not? Hand up. I don't buy it. I'm not calling bullshit all the way, but let me ask you this, Ben.

28:46Well, the audience has this. Duncan pulled the audience. We are in a bear market rally or a new bull market. Two thirds of the audience. says bear market rally. Let me ask you a two-part question. Number one, was that the low?

29:02I need a decision tree. Yes or no? Yes or no? Was that the low? Do we go into recession? Was that the low? Give me a time horizon. I need - For the rest of the year? Yes. That was the low? I think so. Okay. Does the market close higher or lower from where we are today? by the end of the year? Yeah. Lower. That's my feeling, and I'm probably wrong. Yeah, I think I agree with both of those, which means that we've got to be wrong. All right, so Heisenberg tweeted, this is what Wall Street banks are saying. Goldman Sachs, markets might not have bottomed. Wells Fargo, could we test the lows? Morgan Stanley, we testing the low end of 5 ,000 range is feasible.

29:45JP Morgan, sees S &P 500 falling to 4 ,000. Worst case scenario, Bank of America, sell the rebound in U.S. stocks. So the contrarian play here is to go against everything because the Barons had their big money poll. Their money managers are more bearish today than they've been in nearly 30 years. So they go back to 1997 and they find 32 % of respondents are bearish on the alloc of stocks for the next 12 months. And they said that's higher than it's ever been, even in 2008, which shows how sentiment readings are just so off the charts now. So yes, if you're looking for contrarian magazine indicators, bearish sentiment polls, all that stuff, fade Wall Street, the contrarian play is no, this is actually going to have legs.

30:28And here's another one from Subitrade. 48.5 % of consumers is from the conference board. Now expect stocks to fall over the next 12 months. That's the most pessimism since October 2011. So nobody is really buying it. Who knows? It just seems hard to believe that that was - Except retail investors maybe? like the Robin Hood. I don't know. Is the Robin Hood crowd, does that count as, is that a contingent now? Oh yeah. Okay. Not only is it a contingent, but I haven't listened to the Robin Hood, Robin Hood earnings call yet, which I'm going to get to, but I listened to CME, which is a stock that I bought after being tired of staring at it, go up every single day.

31:08And they were asked on the earnings call about retail. It's a huge part of their story and Robin Hood specifically, huge part of their story. So this is institutions and Wall Street versus retail. That's where we're at with this round, right? There's different parts. There's all sorts of – but within retail, there's all sorts of different cohorts. All right. Here's a good one. Another one from Supertrade. So the S &P 500 was up seven straight days while under the 200-day moving average. Now, I don't know if the numbers change after being up nine straight days. Whatever. Whatever. Point is, if you go out, oh, this is so short term.

31:47My bad. He's looking one day, two days, two weeks, one month later. All right. Disregard. I apologize. That doesn't went out further in time. Results are mixed, but it's only a month. Who cares? So this is from JP Morgan. It said, retail traders on net bought$40 billion in April, surpassing last month and setting a new record for largest monthly inflow ever. Wow. Good for them. Bobo's not so stupid. So remember the Peter Lynch quote, spending, like, spend at least as much time researching a stock as he would a refrigerator? Like he said, most people spend more time researching a refrigerator to buy than they do a stock.

32:19This is from The Wall Street Journal, Mark Hulbert. So median investor, according to these professors at New York University, the median investor spends just six minutes of research before buying a stock. And the bulk of that already short research time is devoted to pursuing a price chart of the stock's recent performance and often just a current day's trading session. So they said that they looked at this data by studying clickstream data, which is like browser history of these. I don't know how they got all this stuff, but several hundred investors. And they looked at the websites they visited and what they looked at and how long, and it was six minutes.

32:54And they said they looked at over 60 ,000 hours of internet use. So I guess that's a lot. Do you think that's in any way accurate? because I feel like for a lot of people, it probably is. Oh, yeah, I buy that. You see the opinion of someone online or on financial television, and you kind of buy into it and do a little quick perusal just to make yourself feel better and buy. I buy that. Yeah. I totally do. All right. Remember three weeks ago, yields were spiking, dollars were dumping, stocks were dumping. It was a pretty scary cocktail. Not a great taste. It was a malort cocktail, if you will. Turns out people start going on bonds.

33:31Bank of America, global research is showing that we just had the biggest four-week inflow to treasuries since 2023. So rates got up to whatever, 4.5%, and people said, all right, that sounds pretty good to me. I'll buy it. That makes sense. I think Matt Klein kind of nailed it. We talked about this a couple weeks ago when he said, what if a lot of this initial movement right now is just offsides positioning and people are getting right-sized? All right, let's talk tariffs. So Taurus and Slack, I don't know where the survey comes from, but they were asked, what are firms going to do in response to higher tariffs?

34:08And the number one response, both from manufacturing and services companies, was they're going to pass a cost increase through to customers. The lowest response was relocating production or services to the US. So - About what you expect, right? It's not going to happen. It's just going to make prices go up. Yeah, and there's going to be a lot of big firms that get carve-outs and a lot of little firms that probably don't. I think that's kind of where I think it's falling. All right, I do think it'll be interesting to see how this period is viewed through the lens of history. Maybe some people don't care, but I do think people are going to look at this and go, I've been saying for a while now that people are going to think about the economy in like 2023, 2024, and be nostalgic for it very quickly if all this stuff keeps happening.

34:54But this is mentioned from the economists. They talk about the golden age. And they say, of all the golden ages, the greatest is here and now. Of all the progress of the past 10 ,000 years in raising human living standards, half of it has occurred since 1990, which is just kind of mind-boggling to think about it. But it actually kind of makes sense when you think about what's happening on the internet and stuff. And they're saying, like, the trade war, you know, is possibly taking some of that back. I don't know how much, obviously, that it seems like a little bit of a stretch. But I just think in some ways, people don't realize how good we have it.

35:29And when you don't have a lot of problems, sometimes you just make them up on your own. Yeah. Duncan polled the audience, Ben. He asked, will the stock market be higher or lower than it is today? Without looking, what do you think the respondents was? Wait, by the end of the year? Over 1 ,000 votes. Over 1 ,000 votes. So pretty healthy. I bet pretty close, like 60 % say lower. that's what i would have thought 65 say higher oh okay that that makes sense that makes sense with history though i guess all right optimistic audience all right we were down in 2022 we're up in 23 and 24 so you'd have to say 2025 and changing my answer is going to be higher because on average three every four years we're up final answer we're up end of the year all right um so i want to talk about the doge stuff a little bit so michael semblis did a piece on the market about Final answer.

36:19You just change your mind just like that, just because you just went with the audience. That was it. I thought I'm going probability based. I'm not I'm not going feelings or trade wars or anything. I'm probability based. We're only down, what, five percent on the year now, six percent. Changed my answer. I didn't I didn't do I didn't stamp it before. Very open minded. Double stamp to triple stamp. All right. So Michael Semblis did this thing on on the Doge cutting of government spending. and he's been kind of all over this from the beginning. And he was one who said initially, listen, unless you cut defense spending or Social Security or Medicare, it's not going to move the needle.

36:55Here's why I think the Doge thing was actually good in some ways. So this is on Polymarket. They have this thing, how much spending will Doge cut in 2025? And it's an 80 or 90 % chance that it'll be less than$50 billion. So a very, very small amount. They were promising$2 trillion in cuts or whatever. Obviously they looked at the books. Here's why I think Doge is actually a good thing and maybe a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. I'm shocked that they didn't find more waste to get rid of. So maybe that's actually a good thing, that there wasn't like this big, huge thing that they could point to and go, can you believe what we're spending money on here?

37:27And obviously they cut some things that made people mad, and they cut some things that maybe should have been cut. That's a good point. The fact that they couldn't, they almost did an audit, I guess, and realized like, actually, we know what we have to do to cut it. It's just, will people allow it? Or will, you know, government officials jump on that grenade or whatever it is? But the fact that they didn't find anything that was like, what have we been doing here? I think that's actually a good sign that, okay, maybe the resources haven't been, we know those big, huge things. How do we fix them?

37:56Or how do we get people to want to fix them? Yeah. Good observation, Ben. All right. Thank you, Michael. Building me up today. Calci had the recession odds this year up to 75 % chance last week. And this is, I think, on the day the GDP report came out as negative. And I think it's down a little since then. I think it was down to 60s or something. I feel like for the betting odds, that's 75%. That's high. That's too high. Three out of every four. I feel like percentage is just people's mind. Like when you see it's going to, you know, there's a 60 % chance of rain here. If you see 60%, you think it's definitely going to rain.

38:3475 % to me. I spent too much time as a cabana boy. If it's not 80%, you're not faking me out. I think 60 % chance. So this is this year. I think 60 % chance is a pretty good way to go. I think that's a pretty good line in the sand for where we are right now. Wait, how would you say there's a 60 % chance of a recession and the markets could be higher by the end of the year? Because I think there's going to be some very confusing results when it comes to the stock market and the economy. I think they're going to be totally – I think sometimes we're going to get economic data and the stock market is going to fall.

39:05Sometimes it's going to rise because they're going to think Fed cuts. And I think we had a 20 % correction like that. and I think there's just going to be some very confusing and weird behavior in the stock market. Is that fair or is that too cute? That's recency bias. If the market was lower, you would not be saying this. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Because, again, it could be the fact that the market's saying, show me an actual economic slowdown. The data hasn't shown it yet. I'm not going to go down more until you show it to me. That could be it. It's worth mentioning the Enber results is not just two quarters in a row of falling GDP girl.

39:40So it's personal income. That was never a thing. I feel like I wrote about this seven years ago. What is a recession? It was never the definition. And Jason Zweig wrote about this. I think in the literal, maybe, I don't know if it was the 90s. I feel like he did. It was never two consecutive quarters. It was like a, I forget what the language is. Was it a general decline in overall business activity? They look at employment and income and personal expenditures and retail sales and industrial production, all these different six categories or something. Plus, if you look at, if that is the definition, two quarters in a row, then we didn't have a recession in 2020 because it didn't go down for two quarters in a row.

40:16It went down for one quarter. All right. And I continue to believe, so this is another one from the Guide to the Markets. J.P. Morgan shows total assets versus total liabilities. And total assets is like$190 trillion. Total liabilities is$20 trillion. This is the margin of safety for people. And even if assets get hit, if we got into recession and assets fall, whatever, 15 or 20%, there's still a huge, huge margin of safety for most consumers. And that is why you think, like, I don't know what the financial crisis level would have to be if the tariffs were just so high it caused some sort of panic.

40:48I just, I don't see it being terrible. CNBC says it's still inequality of consumers. So they're saying that low-income earners, and this is all your credit card calls you've been listening to lately. I feel like you've been on the credit card corner a lot. So they're saying low-income earners are cutting back according to all the credit card lenders. So they're looking at like Lowe's and TJ Maxx and then American Express and JP Morgan, that those spenders, which are higher income, are continuing to spend and increasing their spending. So here's the question. We keep saying, what's going to get people to stop spending money?

41:23And it's like, oh, recessional job loss. Job loss. No, but what causes rich people to stop spending? That's different. Nothing. Well, that's not true. I don't mean that. Is it going to have to be seeing their friends get, like, I don't know what is going to make rich people stop spending money and going on vacations and buying expensive stuff? I don't know what it is. Job loss. And seeing, yeah, and seeing friends lose, I don't know. All right, great email here. Do you want to read this or me? You read it. You're a better reader than me. I landed in the States yesterday after a one-week trip to Europe, while taking one's family, two adults, two children to Europe, doesn't quite reach the not-to-break standard.

42:00Yes, it does. Both of you have preached that money is not only to be saved and invested, but also spent as a natural saver like Ben. This is difficult for me. I have not looked at the total damage, but we flew business class and stayed in a luxury hotel. There it is, not to brag. This is a tremendous amount of money that wasn't required, but made the trip above and beyond what it otherwise would be. I'm still comprehending the numbers, but I'm quite certain in 30 years I won't care and will remember the trip fondly. Yeah. Great, great stuff. You know, it's so interesting where, where the money feelings come from.

42:30Is it nature? Is it nurture? I'm a spender and I didn't grow up. Part of it is personality based in how you grew up. Right. But I, not that I didn't grow up poor, but I didn't grow up going on, uh, to, uh, there was no plane vacations for us. We didn't go to, I didn't go to the Caribbean until I was an adult. Um, but I am just not, maybe I'm just not risk averse. Maybe I'm risk seeking. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I, I'm a spender. But it's good to hear this from people that saying like, we're not telling people to go blow all your money and just be crazy. But if you're spending on experiences like this, and he was saying like, our kids are getting older, we're not going to do this very much longer.

43:08And yeah, it's painful to, you know, pay off that credit card or whatever it is, but you're never going to forget that trip. It's a shame. And I'm context. I know I'm, This is a first, this is a champagne shame. Okay. But for people that have money that can't spend it, it's like, what are you doing? Yes. Right. Enjoy. That's what it's for. It's, it's, it's a, it's a tool to enjoy life. You, we're going to die. Enjoy it. Yes. I think we are. Yes. You're a spender. I'm a saver. I become more of a spender because of, you know, life events. And this is one of the things I just, I'm, I feel very strongly about.

43:45Enjoy some of your money. Yeah. so I got somebody asking me to send them an autographed book and I keep putting it off because I apologize I'm a procrastinator with too many things in my life and I couldn't Is there an Uber for mail? I always do this too where I'm sending books to people there should be an Uber for mail like hey we'll pick it up for you and send it off to you because going to the post office is such a pain in the butt. Well I did go to the post office once actually matter of fact and there was a line I left So anyhow, I Googled. So there's a Gemini tool now in your inbox. Mr. Big time, can't wait in line, huh?

44:22I cannot wait in line. I said, find me addresses. Because I know that they gave me their address. So boom, two seconds, found me the address. All I said was like, find me an address in my inbox. Oh, that's pretty cool. So I can't remember what I was typing in on ChatGPT the other day. But I think I put maybe a doc we were looking at and like, hey, come up with some questions here. But it also said, would you like me to take this outline that I was prepared for you and turn it into a PowerPoint presentation? And I said, yeah, sure. Let's take a look at it. And it was very rudimentary in that it wasn't very formatted very well or anything.

44:57But then I took one of my PowerPoints. I'm a very simple PowerPoint person. I don't make it all pretty and stuff. I keep it very clean. But I said, hey, take my PowerPoint and make it look better for me or offer some tips. And it didn't do a very good job of it yet. But someday it's going to be like that. And that's going to be amazing. Like, hey, take this PowerPoint presentation I did that's very simple and basic and make it look way better. And someday it's coming soon. Yes. Soon. That is coming. All right. Let's talk about crypto a little bit. So we had this discussion two or three weeks ago, and you were asking the question, is Bitcoin decoupling from risk assets or is it leading us out?

45:32And I think you were the first one to say, like, what if Bitcoin is leading us out? Because it was just a few days where it decoupled from the NASDAQ. And if you look at this, this is the last three months of Bitcoin. This is Ibit versus the Qs. and you can see yeah, Bitcoin didn't really decouple from risk assets Bitcoin was can you say canary in the coal mine? because that's the opposite because that's like bad stuff coming what's a good analogy for canary in the coal mine but Bitcoin was the first one to start railing so it didn't really decouple from risk assets it just led the charge which is kind of interesting alright, so I was in Marco for spring break a few weeks ago and I'm a middle-aged guy So you put stuff into Zillow, right?

46:12Let's check out the neighborhood. Check out the houses around here. And once you put a new place into Zillow, they start sending you off emails all the time. Hey, look at this house. And look at these emails I pulled all from like yesterday. $300 ,000 price cut in Marco Ion. $225 ,000 price cut. $55 ,000 price cut. I'm seeing these all the time now. Is there a real housing slowdown in Florida? Well, on the west coast of Florida. So not in the east coast? No, I don't know. I'm not a Floridian real estate expert, but the West Coast has been getting bombed with hurricanes. I'm sure that's part of it, and the insurance is part of it.

46:48There's probably a lot of demand pull forward, too. So if you look at, I just pulled up Case-Shiller, Miami. This is since the start of the pandemic. Case-Shiller, Miami housing index is up 81%, and the national housing price index is up 54%. So maybe some of this was just pulled forward, but I'm sure you're right. Part of it is just the insurance stuff, the hurricane worries. maybe a lot of baby boomers pulled forward their purchases then. And so I just think if you are, you're in a way better negotiating power as a buyer than you've had in, I don't know, 10 years maybe? It's a long time since you've had this kind of power.

47:22Buffett was asked a question about real estate versus stocks, and I love this answer so much. Just bear with me. It's two and a half minutes, but it's worth listening to. Well, in respect to real estate, it's so much harder than stocks in terms of negotiation of deals, time spent, the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership. Usually when real estate gets in trouble, you find out you're dealing with more than equity holder. But there have been times when large amounts of real estate have changed hands. of bargain prices, but usually stocks were cheaper, but they were a lot easier to do.

48:03So Charlie did more real estate. Charlie enjoyed real estate transactions, and he actually did a fair number of them in the last five years of his life. But he was playing a game, and it was an interesting game, too. But I think if he asked him to make a choice when he was 21, and he had either be stocks exclusively the rest of his life or real estate the rest of his life. He would have chosen stocks in a second. There's just so much more opportunity, at least in the United States, there's so much more opportunity that presents itself in the security market than it does in real estate. And in real estate, you're usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns maybe a large property they've had a long time.

48:55Maybe they've borrowed too much money against them. Maybe the population trends are against them. But to them, it's an enormous decision. When you walk down to the New York Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business totally anonymous, and you can do it in five minutes. And the trades are complete when they're complete. In real estate, when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase. I mean, then people start negotiating more things and more things. And it's a whole different game and a different type of person to some extent enjoys the game.

49:31We did a few real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 2009. But the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent and probably better and securities, there was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every sentence is as important to the person. And in stocks, if somebody needs to sell 20 ,000 shares of Berkshire or something and they call it so the price is right, it's done in five seconds. And it closes all the time. 95 years old. Think about the mental state of most people at that age. So I haven't spoken about this on the podcast because I didn't want the scrutiny, whatever.

50:18I bought a rental property in 2020. And for me at the time, the decision was my entire life is in the stock market. My entire livelihood, my earnings, my career, my liquid investments. So I decided I was going to buy a piece of real estate to diversify. And I got very stupid lucky with the timing. So I bought a house in Long Beach in 2020. And obviously real estate has gone bonkers. and I got super duper lucky. I had one tenant. And you had a 3 % mortgage, right? 2.875, not to brag. She was wonderful, never missed a payment. And this year I said, I haven't heard, I assume we're good for next year.

51:03And she goes, no, actually I'm moving out. And I said, okay. And so I made the decision, I spoke to Rob and I said, let's sell it. I just, the reason why, a couple of reasons. Number one, I pulled forward 20 years of returns. like the purchase price versus the sale price. So I would have taken me 20 years in a normal market to get the store to return. Number two, and more importantly, every single time I got a text message from her, my you-know-what went into my throat. And thank God there was never anything major. Didn't you have to replace something, an AC unit? Didn't you have to do something?

51:36Yeah, there was leaks and AC units. Yeah, all sorts of things. And I did wonderfully well. I listed the house in April. and I should be in contract now. But even still, there's three months without any tenant. So that's three months where I have to carry the mortgage, which is not great. So I ended up doing like, I think 25 % compounded for five years on the transaction. Buffett's point about how quickly the transactions take place in the stock market versus real estate. And he's right. You sign a contract and then it's like, hey, our inspector found this. Let's knock a little bit off the price.

52:11And let's look at the back and forth. That's why most real estate investors end up just being buy and hold and don't want to do transactions because it's a pain in the ass. And the transactions are expensive. So listen, I don't want to spike the football because God knows what they're going to find in the inspection. But the thing that I've learned after doing this is you either really do it, not that you have to be a professional as a career, but you either really do it seriously and you're like, all right, I'm going to buy five of these things, whatever. I'm going to get a group of money together and do this and we're going to have a management team.

52:39Yeah, hire a property manager. Right. Yeah, because otherwise you get an imagine, not a man you got a guy found a text message on vacation right hey this this i'm like i don't what do i know i can't fix anything so it's not to say that that stocks are good real estate is bad i got i don't want to give that impression but it's a different ball game it's a totally different ball game yeah all right uh look at this tri-up and i pulled this out i saw somebody tweeting about estee lauder the company's in like an 80 drawdown and wouldn't you know it what a coincidence not the stock has followed the earnings per share almost to the T because to Buffett's point, that's what we're doing here.

53:18That's what we're doing. And the reason why I am and remain optimistic and hopefully forever will be, I hope, is because we are maniacs. The citizens of this country are maniacs. We are greedy. We move the goalposts. We are never satisfied. and while that can be psychologically sad perhaps and damaging for individuals, for all of us it's great because we all want to make more money and ultimately that shows up in earnings per share, shows up in profits. So who's the winner if Estee Lauder is a loser? Because I've been looking at this lately because my daughters are now into like the skincare game.

53:52I don't know if they found this on YouTube influencers or what my daughters are all about buying. They love going to Sephora. So anytime they get a birthday or something now, it's, hey, I want a gift card to Sephora so I can go buy lotions and sprays and whatever skincare stuff. And it's crazy to see my daughters at this. This is just what the girls are doing now. And I had to look to who owns Sephora. And I think it's - It's LVMH. Yeah, LVMH owns them. And they're getting killed too, by the way. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's in a pretty good downturn too. Huh. Okay. So there's 100 % tariffs on foreign movies.

54:28If I was a better writer, I would have nailed this joke already. but I said to you, there's a coming to America joke in here somewhere. Ah, yes. I got, I got, yeah, the guys in the barbershop wouldn't like it. So this is from Bloomberg and they say Trump's post, he posted about this on Truth Social, followed meetings that he had over the weekend with Jon Voight and his manager. Barclay says if this is deployed on a wide scale, it may end up harming the very industry it is supposed to help, especially given that the U.S. exports three times the amount of content that it imports. And then the White House came out today and I'm sure, hopefully Tom Cruise put the call in.

54:59I think he could save us from these. The White House says no decisions have been made. We're exploring all options. Who gets a carve out here? Guy Ritchie movies gets a carve out. I hope the Parasite guy gets a carve out. Oh, wait, Denis? Any sort of British company? Actually, most of the best directors, I don't know about most, but the two that come to mind, Denis and Christopher Nolan, foreign directors. What are we doing here? I thought Towers were about national security. What the f*** is this nonsense? You're going to mess with my IMAX? And I saw Netflix and Disney down today, and I don't know.

55:34Cardiff Garcia posted this. It says, the industry generated a positive balance of trade in every major market of the world. $22.6 billion in exports. It's a$15 billion trade splitter plus. Just stop with the nonsense. Can we stop with the clown show already? Good grief. How about this? This is good news. Amazon MGM is test driving a new romantic thriller with Speed Duo, Keanu Reeves, and Sandra Bullock. I'm in. Wow. Okay. but it's not a speed reboot. It's just another. Yeah. Speed two was just a travesty. I can't believe they made it without him. You know what? Credit to me. I never saw that movie.

56:09It's on a cruise ship. I rewatched the original speed lately. It still holds up. I watched it a couple months ago on HBO. It's a perfect movie. Yeah, it's no fat. All right. From the economist, you and I have talked about this before. Sobriety is taking over the world. The amount of alcohol consumed globally is probably in decline for the first time in history. Across rich countries, many members of Gen Z, born after the late 1990s, are shunning alcohol entirely. 30 % of Americans in their 20s did not drink in the previous year. And I know that there are problems with alcohol, health-related problems, domestic violence, alcoholism.

56:44There are a lot of bad things that come with it. I think the fact that people are drinking less is a net negative for society. because the whole socializing thing of, I think it helps get people offline and it puts people in a better mood. It relaxes them. They actually - Oh, Ben, you need alcohol to have fun? Yeah, I do. So they said a 2012 study found that alcohol increases social bonding. And they found that people who frequent a pub feel more engaged in their community. They have higher life satisfaction. And this says it is not a stretch to say that alcohol has played a big evolutionary role in fostering human connection.

57:20I think one of the reasons young people are unhappier is because they're not connecting with each other as much anymore. Alcohol is the way to do it. You know that alcohol helped me find my wife in college. If I was not drunk when I met my wife, I probably wouldn't have gone up to her. So I had this move. We had some friends. We're watching Cops. Remember the show Cops? I don't know if it's still on even. Can I just say, I know this is your story, not mine, but Cops is my favorite show of all time. Back to you. Really? Well, it's certainly got one of the best intro songs ever. So anyway, a police officer pulled a guy over.

57:47The guy was obviously drunk driving. and the police officer sticks his hand in the window and he goes, breathe in my hand, sir. And the guy goes, and he blows and he goes like this. Cop smells it and he goes, okay, sir, you're wasted. Please get out of the car. And so me and my, every time we would go out, my friends, me and my friends would do that to each other. We'd say, breathe in my hand, please, you're wasted. And that's the move I did on my wife. She was standing there at our house party and I said, breathe in my hand, please, ma 'am. And I smelled it and I said, you're not wasted enough.

58:12Go get some more drinks. Great line. That's how I had my, yeah, that's how I had my wife. Here's the, this is from the Derek Thompson thing. He says every drink of alcohol takes five minutes off your life, but also every one minute of exercise adds five minutes to your life. And that's why I diversify. Think about it. It's called balance, people. Remember the part in, you never watched Seinfeld, but him and Elaine had this argument trying to figure out what percentage of the population is good looking. And Elaine says, I don't know, 25 % and Jerry said, no way. Have you ever been to the DMV? He says probably four to 6%.

58:45And then Elaine says, okay, 95 % of the population is unattractive. How are they getting together? And Jerry says, alcohol. Anyway, that's a good line. Speaking of alcohol, remember in Landman, I think one of my favorite bits from Landman was Billy Bob saying that he used to be an alcoholic, so he stopped drinking, but he drinks like 10 Mic Ultras every night. And the bartender says, you drink Mic Ultras. He said, give me 10 bourbons versus 10 Mic Ultras and see which version of me you like better. Yeah. I had never been a McAlter drinker, but I usually drink heavier beers during the winter. And watching that show, I started drinking Michelob Ultra lately.

59:22I wanted like lighter beers for the summer. And I got to say, people judge me all they want. It's a very refreshing beer. I've never had one. You know, we should obviously say, listen, there's some people that are terrible alcoholics. Oh, yes. Horrific, horrific drugs. I know people. Yes. I'm just saying on a net positive, net society level for young people, it can really mess your life up. But I think if it inhibits your socialism, socializing other people, then it's a bad thing. I truly believe that. You're preaching to the choir. You don't need to convince me. All right. Recommendations. Why don't you go first?

59:57Okay. Somebody emailed us about your friends and neighbors, which has taken a turn for the sideways. I mean, I'm still into it because, you know, it's a good husband and wife show. Robin enjoys watching it with me. But it's not. The last two episodes have been really not terrific, which is fine. I'm still enjoying it. But somebody emailed us. So spot on. I just love the money aspect of it. Yeah, it's fun. Somebody said, doesn't this show seem like an example of a Hollywood taking a feature-length movie script and stretching it out into a streaming series? It's got a great hook, but holy hell does it turn into a mess by mid-season.

1:00:2620 years ago, this would have been a two-hour,$30 million budget drama comedy starring Harrison Ford and Nick Cage, something like Matchstick Men. And it goes on. But yes, 100 % right. I agree. A lot of shows these days should be movies. So, Ben, did you watch Black Bag or did I put this in here? I did. Okay, so Black Bag was on Peacock. I watched it. You watched it too? Yeah. Okay, so I had heard good things. It's funny. I watched this with my wife, and I was going to say, you shouldn't watch this movie. So I'm going to give my review that I want to hear yours, because I was going to say, you shouldn't.

1:00:54So it's Michael Fassbender, who's played a spy a lot lately. It's a Steven Soderbergh movie. It's a Steven Soderbergh movie. His movies, you can always tell it's a Steven Soderbergh movie. I thought my wife was kind of unsure and kind of came around at the end. I really liked this movie. I thought it was great. Like the whole guessing who is the double agent, who is the, and the fact that a lot of the spies were paired off together like Mr. and Mrs. Smith style. I, it wasn't like the greatest spy movie ever. I enjoyed it. You. Now tell me why you think I didn't like it. It was a little slow. You couldn't really tell what was going on most of the movie.

1:01:29It was kind of hard to follow. I just thought for a spy thriller, it was a little slow and a lot more dialogue than action. I'm really glad to hear you say that because I was thinking, it occurred to me, but maybe it's not just me. You know what? You know when they ask the fake interview question, tell me one of your weaknesses? I'm terrible at following movies, I think. I had no idea what was going on, but I enjoyed it. I mean, but also, maybe it wasn't just me, because it was pretty confusing. The first 30 minutes, I was like, what the hell is going on? Am I supposed to be following this? Yeah, they don't hold your hand.

1:01:55It was very confusing. All right, but then even like, I don't even know that I know what's going on in the Mission Impossible movies. Are you supposed to? No, a lot of times you don't know. But they have action there to help, right? All right, so it's not just me. Because I found myself, oftentimes with movies like this, I don't think I know what's going on. No, this was a hard one to follow. Did you like it or not? No, I did like it. Okay. I enjoyed it. It was hard to know what was going on. I think that's why my wife didn't like it either. She's like, what's going on? And I had to like kind of pause it.

1:02:20Like actually this and that person. And it was like Pierce Brosnan still kind of got it. I liked it. I liked it too. But yeah. What would you get to me? That's like a 7-2. Oh, yeah. I was going to say like a 7 probably. But yeah. Yeah, 7. That works. So my kids maybe take them to the Minecraft movie this weekend. My twins, they're 7. They'll be eight next week. And this movie was, did you take your kids to see this yet? They saw it twice, both without me. Okay. I love going to the theater with them. It was just off the rails. But, I mean, it's not one of those really, I thought Jason Momoa was actually kind of funny.

1:02:54And Jack Black has obviously got very good kid energy. I just love the recency bias because we got out of the movie and I totally fell asleep for like 20 minutes. Those big recliners with the heated seats, you know, like, see you later. My son is elbowing me about stuff and I'm, what? But I just love the recency bias in kids because my daughter, we got out and she goes, that was the best movie we've ever seen. Favorite movie of all time. All of the time. She was saying it's the best movie we've ever seen. It was great. And it was just ridiculous. How about this? You talked about miniseries or TV shows that should be movies.

1:03:30How about like a movie that you know is bad? It's like a 5.7, but it has two or three good scenes in it that make you laugh. I have one that I watched again, so it's called I Give It a Year. So it's with Rose Byrne, and it's got a Vat guy in it. It's got the Simon Baker guy. You love these shitty comedies. I do. These shitty rom-coms. It's a dumb—it's Anna Faris is in it, and it's like— this couple gets married on a whim, and then they decide, like, they're wrong for each other. So they actually both find other people that they're more meant to be with. But there's two really funny scenes where they go to a work party and the husband gets drunk and the wife is still embarrassed by him.

1:04:07And then there's a thing where, you know, I won't spoil it. Anyway, there's two really good scenes in this movie. And I think the one scene you would find, it's a little vulgar for people who are not into vulgarity, but I think you would find it very funny. I believe you. Okay. Now I told you I've been eschewing trailers as much as possible. You can't not watch when you go to the movies, but I like to roll out dog movies these days. Like I saw one with Dave Franco. I just saw a tweet. I'm in. I'm not going to see the trailer, but I'm going to go watch that movie. The new Spike Lee Denzel movie looks amazing.

1:04:37I'm not going to watch the trailer. I'm just going to go see it. You posted it. I avoided it. I'm going to go see the movie. So on the flight over from New York to Boston, it's only a 30-minute flight, but American Airlines always sucks, which is why I don't fly them very often. Do they ever have screens in their planes? No, no. Didn't think so. I've never been on an American flight where they've had a screen in their planes. And the internet never works. and so the internet wasn't working this time so they had a wonderful movie selection so credit to them problem is movies weren't working what was working was the trailers so I watched like I watched the Dude 2 trailer god what a movie that was I watched like 15 trailers you could probably kill a half hour just watching trailers I did it wasn't bad that makes sense alright let's give a shout out to our production team here I want to give a shout out to my wife okay for letting you go to the next game Yeah, she's a great wife.

1:05:30Robin, is it? In my defense, I've been a Knick fan my entire life. And we've been bad for so long. Did she know that you broke the light the other night? I think I told her. Okay. And as much fun as I'm having for finally being competitive, it makes me really sad that I had 20 years of just pure misery. And I never stopped watching or going to the games. Think about me, man. I've been a Lions fan my whole life. That's true. that's that's torture all right um let's give a shout out to our production team we we've got how many people on the video audio side now four people right yep duncan john travis daniel travis um so we're getting videos up on spotify now where you can watch the video as you listen to the podcast and pick and choose the videos are up on youtube much faster now they're up on wednesday mornings not too far unsung heroes not too long after the actual podcast so we're we're humming along here.

1:06:23Cranky. Yes. When I gave my speech last week in Columbus, I had a few people ask me, like, well, how do you do all the editing and audio and video? And I said, we don't do anything. Michael and I just have the software and the mics and everyone else behind the scenes does it for us. And it's great because they know what they're doing and they're pros. Absolutely. How about to our compound media team? I feel like I had something to say to you that I was saving for the show, but I guess I didn't. Maybe I did. Maybe I'll remember next week. All right. Good luck with the game tonight. Celtics in five.

1:06:55But maybe we sneak one in tonight. Sounds about right. Animal spirits. Animal spirits. Oop. Yeah. At the compound news. All right. See you next time.

1:07:11Go.