Things Are Getting Stupid Again (EP.350)

25:10All right. From Tal Smith at New York Times, auto insurance. Motor vehicle insurance rose 1.4 % on a monthly basis in January alone, has risen 20.6 % over the past year, the largest jump since 1976. Saying that this is like one of the big, bigger pieces of inflation right now. Have you, with your insurance broker, have you upped any of these lately? It's absurd. I got my renewal recently and I said to him, hey, I don't even drive. Like, I don't, I don't, my car is. Yeah, but you do drive with a death rattle, so. That's true. But I have like 6 ,000 miles on my car maybe. And I think I've had it for close to two years or a year and a half.

25:52That's right. You drive, the train station's what, a mile away from you? I don't even drive to the train station. I walk because the babysitter needs it for after school. So anyway, so I said, hey, can I, this seems like a lot of money that I'm paying insurance. I don't, I, I don't drive these like that. No, it's not. Mine, when I re-upped mine last year, it tripled and I'd been with the same, I was with Progressive for like, since I've had my own car. So it's been, I don't know, 20 some years and I, and I do my home with them. And so it's all bundled together and you get a discount or whatever.

26:23And it tripled. And I'm like, I called them like, well, what happened here? And they're like, I don't know. Cars are more expensive. Like, we can't really explain it. I got a little bit of a cheaper deal somewhere else, but. I wonder if you get a minivan. Do rates go down? If like, all right, this person's clearly driving under the speed limit. We're going to take it easy on them. I mean, it has to just be that cars are more expensive, but the jump doesn't seem commensurate with a car. You might not know this about me. How do you, what sort of, what do you think I drive in terms of speed on the highway?

26:53Am I, do I do the speed limit? Am I closer to 75 miles an hour? What do you think? I would have said you're like seven miles over. Wrong. I'm not a fast driver. You're a slow guy. Really? I, uh, I'm like 65. I think I'm sort of average when it's when what's the speed limit. I don't know. 60. I usually I'm usually below. Although maybe this has to do with my Jeep. Maybe if I was in a faster vehicle or more comfy ride, I would go fast. That's right. You can't, you can't go above it because you're like the opposite of speed like in speed you can't go below 55 or the bus will blow up you're the opposite if you go above 55 your jeep will blow up yeah i think yeah i think i'm like uh 62 or so okay see i i'm i push it i go like so if in michigan the highways are 70 75 in some areas actually too i'll go give me a nine on there i'll go 79 and a 70 i do think you can learn a lot about people by the way that they drive like you've you've heard the george carlin on right everyone who drives faster than you as a maniac and everyone drives slower than you as an idiot but you ever see you ever been in a car with somebody who who where it's your first time in the car with them and they're just a really aggressive get out of the way asshole like where they're like that my whole contention has always been easily 75 of the people on road are bad drivers yeah i agree with that and that might be low you know i'm a very selfless driver i'll give you an example let people in i'll give you no i'll give you an example so driving down my road onto the main road called merrick road if somebody is either going straight over merrick road or they're making a left most people don't move over enough so that if somebody wants to make a right they could just go around them not me i pull over to make sure that if there's somebody behind me they could sneak by not to brag i'm a very very conscientious driver all right but you want to get the wave i get mad if people don't get the wave i'm happy to let someone in that drives me nuts yeah yeah my other really big pet peeve is people who on the highway pass you get in front of you then slow down like they don't know how to use their cruise control i think there should be a horn specifically for saying why aren't you using your cruise control it just shouts it those are the worst you pass then they pass right because you have your cruise on and they don't easily the knot wave is the worst person in the world uh and a distant second I don't like when you're pulling up to a red light and somebody speeds in front of you and just literally cuts you.

29:23Yes, that's bad. Come on, really? Where are you going? I agree. All right. You asked why things continue to be so well in the stock market. Maybe it's because people with the most money who have the most stocks are still flush. This is from Torsen Slock, who is becoming a regular on Animal Spirits for the past six months or so because the charts are so good. The highest income quintile, so the top 25 % by income, consume almost 40 % of spending. So the consumer spending is 40 % is done by the top 25%. The top, sorry, the top 20%. The top 40 % makes up close to more than 60%. So the people with the most income spend the most money, but it's not commensurate with their level.

30:09It's way more. I still don't think that there's a direct link between this chart and the stock market today. Okay. So you're at a loss for words for why the stock market continues to be so strong. Is it 17 of 18 weeks? That's the number I keep using. I don't know if I'm making that up, but it's something like that. You said it so confidently. I agree to you, but I don't look at like weekly returns. So why is that dynamic persisting? That's my question. That's not an economic thing. That's a market thing. I think the trends are shorter, but more potent, right? This is why I think the - Remember Potent Potables?

30:49Oh, yeah. Was that Will Ferrell? I'm surprised that we haven't had more flash crashes. Why? Because of the way that the mini booms and busts and we have these citadels of the world controlling the liquidity, I'm really shocked that we haven't had more of these rug pulls where we have an air pocket. I mean, think about how many huge down days there were in the pandemic in that March 2020 period where we lost 8%, 9%, 10 % or whatever. I think that's just, I think the market's just. But there's been no news to knock us off this trend. That's what I'm saying. So if it's going to trend, the trend, instead of being really slow stair step, it just happens a little quicker now.

31:26We pull everything forward. The losses and the gains. All right. I pulled this one from the transcript. Just wanted to talk about the consumer again, remaining strong. They did this whole thing where they pulled consumer quotes from recent earnings calls. They did MasterCard, Wells Fargo, and American Express. This is MasterCard. president. Consumer remains resilient and consumer spending remains robust. I would venture to guess robust is used on 30 % of all quarterly calls. We'll have to check on quarter for this, but it's got to be a lot of them. Let's see. Here's the next one. I feel this. We say the same thing over and over again, the last number of quarters, but the consumer continues to be very resilient through a time when I think we all would have thought there would have been more weakness at this point than American Express.

32:10Consumers are doing what they do best, which is consume. And more importantly, all the credit numbers, the balance sheet side of consumers is very strong. Just in, I went down this list from the transcript and every single one of the earnings calls was like this. It was like weak. We would have thought consumers would have been weak right now. They just continue to spend and they're not stopping. We love to spend money. I just can't imagine ever betting against the US consumer. Was there a monster change in consumption post pandemic? Just like people's habits about spending money? Yes. I think that's, there's going to be a line in the sand there.

32:42It was the opposite of the Great Depression. We had these frugal misers in the Great Depression, like the Depression babies or whatever. So now we have consumption babies from the pandemic or something. Everyone's decided like, screw it, I'm going to live my life and spend. I think we do. People are only talking about the inflationary side of prices being up. No one is talking about the fact that wages are way higher too. I don't think anyone thinks that way. That, oh, wait a minute, wages went up too. With the prices. So people are spending more. I don't think people are making that linkage. When you walk into a Burlington, you're walking into amazing prices and great gifts.

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34:09Available feature on equipped vehicles. Terms apply. Does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com slash Blue Cruise for more details. All right. I know you hate demographics, so you can stop listening for a while if you want to. I don't hate demographics. I just don't think it's... Go ahead. This is the New York Times. In 2022, America had 4.75 million 32-year-olds and 4.74 million 31-year-olds, the largest two ages by population. So look at the largest ages by population. I knew I kept running into 31-year-olds. They're everywhere. Like locusts. It's basically all in your, it was kind of an interesting way to look.

34:41I mean, this is like niching down in the demographic thing, but it's just saying the majority of the age groups are now in their like mid to late 30s and 40s. And you have to think about the consumption patterns of those people. What happens when you settle down and buy a house or get a new apartment or move to the suburbs? You spend a lot more money. And this is going to take a while to play out still too. From the Guardian, those born between 1981 and 2000 are in line for a seismic windfall over the next 20 years. According to Knight Frank, they did this study saying$70 trillion of assets is going to move hands between the generations in the U.S.

35:18alone. I still think this is overstated because I think the boomers are going to spend a lot of it down, especially if they're retiring early and living longer. But basically just saying millennials are going to be - The market keeps going up to 13 % a year. Wow. True. And here's one more demographic. I don't think this is overstated. I think there will be massive ramifications with respect to the wealth transfer. I don't have any strong predictions in terms of what that's going to look like. But I think it's going to happen a lot. It's going to be a lot slower than people think. Here's an obvious one.

35:53More preference for digital assets. Right? The average 60-year-old is going to have, I don't know, 0 % of the portfolio in Bitcoin. Right? It rounds down to zero. Yeah. The average 35-year-old will invest differently. They just will. I also think this, we always talk about how all these financial advisors are hanging on for way too long. They promised they'd send their book of business down to the younger person, but they didn't. That's going to be the change. When all the boomers start retiring and passing down their money or they die off, then a lot of those older advisors too are going to lose business because young people will find their own advisors.

36:30I can think of that too. All right. Another one from St. Louis Fed. those born in the 90s, younger millennials and older Gen Zers had an even sharper swing in wealth deviation from expectations between 2019 and 2022. We've talked about this, how young people are doing better than we thought, but the St. Louis Fed looked at what if they were on trend from before? How would it have looked? And they're saying that this group's wealth surged 44 % from 44 % below expectations in 2019 to 39 % above expectations in 2022 and 83 % swing, basically saying that like this change in wealth in this three-year period was unlike anything we've ever seen and we'll ever see again probably and the biggest one is home ownership and then financial assets part of it too but they're saying that we've never seen a swing like this go from such below expectations to above expectations in such a short period of time that they are they're way above the levels of wealth we would expect of them to be based on historical trends and based on where people were in the past at their age.

37:28People are flush. Yeah, they are. We have a chart later in the show about the value of real estate. There's just so much money. And we're not going to get to crash in asset prices for no reason. Right? It's not just all of a sudden there's going to be... There has to be... And I'm not saying that there won't... I'm not saying that we can't have a pullback or whatever. It's not going to happen for no reason. That's the thing. Absent an event, the trend will continue. Right. What's the catalyst going? There can be corrections. There can be bear markets we had in 2022. But if you want like a system-wide crash, there has to be something there.

38:06You're right. That is going to cause people to panic sell these assets that are up in value so much. All right, Ben. One month, this is from Fast Company. One month after taking its open AI-powered virtual assistant global, the Swedish buy now, pay later company has released new data touting its ability to handle customer communications, make shoppers happier, and even drive better financial results. This is Klarna. The app-based AI chatbot already handles two-thirds of all customer service chats. Klarna boasted in its announcement on Tuesday that the AI assistant is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.

38:37You know, I need an AI assistant. Ben, listen to this. I don't know if I told you this. I got an alert on Friday. It's time to check in for your flight. I'm like, wait, where am I going? Did I forget that I've traveled? I booked my Denver flight, which I'm, the actual date is March 24th. I booked it for March 3rd. Okay. Not even close.

39:02Not even close. So what did you do? What did I do? I switched my flight. Okay. On Thursday, Josh, Matt, and I had a meeting, scheduled a meeting for Friday at three o 'clock. So the next day at three o 'clock, I sent out a calendar invite. And then the next morning at like 11, Josh sends out a calendar invite. I'm like, what, my invite's no good? Like, are you saying he had a better invite than I am? His invite trumped your invite. Well, turns out it did. Because on Saturday, on Saturday, Matt declined the calendar invite. And I realized when I got the email notification that the invite that I sent was for March 29th.

39:44The actual meeting was for like March 2nd. So I need an AI assistant. I am a complete disaster. So here's what I wanted to see if AI can fix. We went out to eat the other day, and we go to the front, and they say it's a 20 to 30-minute wait. Okay, fine, we'll go walk around the mall, which talk about consumers being flushed. This is on a Saturday. My kids wanted to go to Cheesecake Factory. We go to Cheesecake Factory, which, you know, I'm not a big, I hate going to the mall, but it's like my kids' favorite restaurant. And there's an hour and a half wait at Cheesecake Factory, like 4.30 on a Saturday.

40:18So we go to On the Border. This is the stuff kids like these days. There's a 20 to 30 minute wait. Wait, there was a wait at 4.30? Yeah, at 4.30, hour and a half. But we, so they tell us 20 to 30 minutes and on the border. See, I only eat at fine dining establishments, as you can tell. Whatever, the kids don't care. And so we go walk around the mall and five minutes later, oh, your table's ready. I feel like the people at the hostess stand never know, it can be plus or minus, a half hour. They never actually know how long it's going to take for your table to be ready. I feel like they just make up the numbers.

40:55An hour. So where does AI fit in? Couldn't it better estimate people's eating times based on what they order, how long it's going to take in the kitchen? I want a more precise figure from AI. So when I called Delta to rebook my flight, I'm yelling at the phone like Larry David. By the way. That was another good one this week. Like, Larry David yelling is some of the funniest stuff on television. I don't know if it's because he passed rest in peace, Richard Lewis, but he really looked like death in the most recent episode. Did you notice that? Yeah, my wife and I both mentioned it. I was watching some old clips of his too.

41:32He was great. He looked really, really frail. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm yelling at Delta. The customer service AI has to, like Clarence is talking about, that's going to change things. Speaking of, there's not really AI, But just in terms of like, yes, prices are higher. We're talking a lot of inflation. There's so much consumption. But then there's like the push and pull of the technology deflationary wave. My dad's retired. My dad is taking piano lessons. The whole package cost him$35. Like an online lesson? Yeah. So someone gets on Zoom with him? I don't think it's – I think it's like pre-recorded.

42:11Okay. $35? Wow. Something like that. Isn't that wild? Yeah. That seems really cheap. All right, Ben, are you ready for my Vision Pro review? Let's hear it. I've seen pictures of it. This might surprise you. I'm going to start with the bad, and then I'll go to the good. Okay. Wait, can you put it on while you're giving me a review? I can't, and I'll tell you why in a second. There's not much going on there in terms of what you can do. The only apps that exist for me are Safari, Disney +, and Max. Right, because a lot of the places are still, like Netflix doesn't know if they want to get in there, all that kind of thing.

42:50Right, like there's no Slack. So in terms of like being able to do work on it, I couldn't connect it to my laptop. Like it's just, it's also very clunky. So everything syncs to your eyeballs and you've got to like pinch things and you've got to sync your finger to your eye. And it's just, it takes a bit, a little bit of getting used to. um i guess maybe it's sort of like how when we first got the iphone it was like hard to type right people were like complaining about like the so we'll get there um all right it's big and heavy okay so work out after like an hour or so maybe not even it hurts my nose like the bridge of my nose was sore the next day.

43:37Like I really, I really felt it. So the travel case is also big. Like there's a handle for the travel case. So you can't just like put it in your backpack unless you have an oversized backpack. Okay. Um, it's you're, you're right about this part. This is not going to surprise you. It really is incredibly isolating, incredibly isolating. Having it on when there's people around you is definitely not cool. Like if your wife's around, if your kids are around, it's also really loud. Like the sound quality is great. So Robin got mad at me because I'm in my office on my chair watching something and she's like screaming.

44:16She's like, you didn't hear me? I'm like, no, I didn't hear you. Wait, what do you have? So it comes with, do you have AirPods in or what do you have? No, so there's speakers somehow in there. The sound quality is stupendous. It's really good for what it is. And it's stupid expensive. It's like$4 ,000. Okay. All right, so that's the bad. Here's the good. It really is magic. And it's hard to describe in words, but it works really well. The screens and all that stuff. It's magic. There is something called an immersive experience that you could watch on Apple TV. so one example is you could be in the studio with alicia keys and i almost like got emotional because i was so like moved by like the magic of this thing i was like this is insane i felt like a four-year-old walking into disney uh the movies holy shit holy shit how do you watch them through apple tv through apple tv or disney plus so in terms of like the immersive experience at disney you could choose the setting in the background you could be on top of the Stark Tower.

45:29And you look around and there's like a giant Iron Man suit behind you. And it's all around you. It's like having this sphere on your face. And then if you want to watch a movie, which you can watch movies in 3D too, if you press play, Manhattan turns tonight. So the lights go down. There's also a cinema feature where if you hit the cinema button, you're at the movies. It's a giant screen theater. You could sit in the balcony. You could sit in the front row, the middle, the back. So you just have to figure out a way to do this without having a goggles on your face. So I watched... Then I'll do it.

46:02I watched Napoleon on my face, and it was just a surreal experience. So this is definitely the future, for sure. But it has to get smaller. It has to get lighter. And I'm sure it will. And it has to get cheaper, and it will. So there's... Oh, also, they show you a clip of being at Fenway on first base. and be at the soccer stadium, what I said about being at concerts and movies and sports, that's going to happen. Right. You're going to be watching a baseball game like through the view of the umpire or something. It was unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. All right. So there's an 85 % chance, maybe that I'm going to buy one in the future, but I returned mine.

46:48Okay. They took it back. They took it back. You just thought you wouldn't use it enough yet, probably. There's two reasons why I returned it. number one, like I said, it just, it's not comfortable. Like it just, it did hurt my face a little bit. And number two, I used it. This is a very good opportunity to teach Kobe a lesson, by the way. So Kobe picked up on it in two seconds. He just turned seven years old. He picked up on it in two seconds. How to use it. He was calling it an eye mask and I'm like, this kid's brilliant. Cause I thought he, I thought he knew about like the iPhone, the iPod. Yeah.

47:21He was calling it an eye mask. Cause it's a mask that goes over your eyes. okay so he said to robin i don't know if i told this story a couple of weeks ago but when we were in fort lauderdale we went into the elevator and a guy was like hey mike i'm a big fan and it was a proud dad moment for me but when we left kobe said are you famous because he sees me on tv on youtube like when he goes to the youtube he sees he sees my face yeah so he thinks i'm on he He thinks I'm on TV. He saw a fan interact with me. And he said to Robin, is daddy rich and famous? Because he bought the eye mask. Oh, interesting.

47:58And I'm like, all right, that's it. It's going back. I can't. It's a great lesson. And I can't have Kobe thinking that I'm rich and famous, which is not true. So I returned it and I explained to him that it was too much money and we can't spend money on everything. It's not unlimited. We have to save the money for other things. He was mildly disappointed, but I think he got the lesson. So I was very proud of myself. I like it as a lesson. Get their hopes up and crush their dreams. Exactly. So if he didn't say that, I don't know if I would have kept it. I was 50-50. But as soon as Robin told me that, that's it.

48:31It's going back. Duncan put out a poll on the compound YouTube, and only 26 % thought you would return it for a refund. So the majority was wrong. But they were wrong for the right reasons. If Kobe didn't say that, I probably would have kept it. Right. so like you see in some of the futuristic movies like her it's like a hologram you hit and it the screen takes up your whole room that's what if they can make dude that that happened yeah i'm watching i'm on my my chair back there and the the screen is the size of my room right it's insane hopefully i'm sure they'll be able to do that stuff eventually it's hard to verbally explain it but once you put it on your face you're like oh there's that that's it there's no you sent me a video of Chris using it.

49:13And you just look so weird doing it. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Because your mouth is open and you're doing it. But yes, okay. Oh, look at that. Bitcoin, all-time highs. Okay. So let's get into crypto. I'll take... People last week said I didn't take a big enough L. I said like four times. I took the L on crypto. I wasn't... First of all, I wasn't trying to give you the L. No, I was... I'll admit it. I said I was underwhelmed by the crypto ETF for a while. Your reaction was understandably defensive. I wasn't even talking about your prediction. Yeah, okay. So anyway, I keep saying, why isn't this impacting Coinbase more?

49:46Brian Armstrong, we are dealing with large surge of traffic, apologies for any issues. The team is working on remedies. Look at Coinbase and MicroStrategy. They were both down 90 % of the lows. MicroStrategy is all the way back to all-time highs, and it just rocketed higher. Coinbase is still 30-some percent below all-time highs. But that's, you know, they do the charts with this level of gain requires this, or this level of loss requires this level of gain. Those are huge gains to come off of those kind of lows. and be even near all-time highs or back at is kind of insane. I mean, the thing we keep - Before we talk about the flows, can I just, I just want to share with the audience a conversation that we had in terms of like, where do we trim some, right?

50:26This is a conversation you and I have been having. Like, we have to take some off the table eventually. So I've been bullish on Bitcoin for the reason, it's incredibly simple. For me, it's just been a demand supply imbalance. I still can't believe that you missed that one. You were going to put on the perfect trade two weeks ago. Well, I did buy it at$38 ,000, but I only put five grand in. But you were willing to make a big buy at like$42 ,000. $42 ,000. Sorry, didn't mean to rub it in. That stinks a little bit. But anyhow, so I did have conviction that it was going a lot higher, but it's happened very quickly.

51:03And so it's become a much bigger piece of my liquid net worth than it probably should be, frankly. And we talked about this, the last boom, we said, I think we said 75 ,000. We'll think about selling. We probably wouldn't have. We would have said, okay, let's go to a hundred. But we talked about like in such a volatile asset, that's going to crash a lot. The rebalancing piece is probably not a bad strategy. You just have to figure out what your bands are. For me personally, and this is definitely not financial advice, with Bitcoin specifically, I think most investors, in terms of thinking about regret minimization, you'd rather sell early, right?

51:44Like if you leave some on the table, big deal. But if you give 30 % back, you're going to feel like an asshole. For me with this, it's the opposite. I'm okay holding on too long. I don't want to sell early because I think this asset is so insane and the moves are so dumb. I didn't sit through a 77 % crash in Bitcoin and an 80 % crash in Ether just to sell back when it got to an all-time high. So that's how I'm personally, I personally will have, I keep saying personally, I will have more regret if I sell early than late. So that's how I'm thinking about it. Everybody has to do obviously what's right for them.

52:22My thinking has always been with Bitcoin is that it's a call option and I'm buying and holding it forever, forever in quotes. But basically that was my strategy is I'm just never going to sell. And it has been very painful at times, but I think just knowing that has made me okay with dealing with the volatility of it. But I'm starting to think as you are, like I should think about rebalancing at some point when it really runs up. And I'm trying to figure out a level for that. And I think it's getting close. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, so just back to the flows. So Balthunas tweeted yesterday, Fidelity strong with plus$400 million today, its biggest one-day haul.

53:01Bitwise had third best day. Anything Ibit brings is just padding the number. Throw in the rally and the 10 will likely hit$50 billion in AUM tomorrow. More than halfway to passing gold ETFs less than two months in. Now, that's kind of crazy. The gold is halfway to gold ETF. I think 27 of that is GBTC. But even netting that out, even netting that out, these things have taken in over$20 billion. That money is still in a Bitcoin product. Yeah, that's – so we actually – talk your book on Monday. Is it the following Monday? Yeah. One of these Mondays with Fidelity Digital Assets. Anyway, what I would implore listeners who are thinking about buying it or feel FOMO because there's stupid shit happening.

53:40Like we're back. Yeah, we're not at 2021 levels yet, but there's stuff. Well, but there's not a ton of coverage. I was looking yesterday. If this was 2020, 2021, it would have been in the front page of every financial publication. It does feel like retail is not like back all in again or something. I think because the memories of the last crash are still very, very fresh. CNBC had one little box up there. New York Times had nothing. Wall Street Journal had one little thing. Like it's not plastered everywhere. Right. So a CryptoPunk sold for$60 million. It's just the meme coins. They're up 300 % in a week.

54:17Like FOMO is natural. and I wrote an article about this yesterday, just be careful. If you want to speculate and have fun, just a thousand bucks, whatever your number is, like just don't go nuts, please. This made me laugh. Corey had an interaction with Cliff. Corey tweeted, this monk or monkey, I don't know what this is, just sold for$567 ,000. This penguin just sold for$531 ,000. This punk just sold for$16 million. Crypto animal spirits are back. Cliff said, Corey, where do you see these transactions? I'm blissfully ignorant of how to monitor the monk stuff. And Corey said, there's a deep cost to your sanity and psychological health that comes along with monitoring these sorts of things.

54:58Are you sure you really want to look deep into that abyss? To which Cliff replied, you're right. Please don't tell me even if I ask again. You're a true friend. Sometimes you stare at the NFT and sometimes it stares back at you. That made me laugh. I mean, it is. This is like the funny money stuff too, where the prices of the coins go back up. So this stuff starts transacting at a high values and it all doesn't feel real. The interesting part about Bitcoin specifically is that the higher it goes, the more valid its story becomes of an alternative store of value, an alternative to the current system.

55:33Now, it's not a story that I necessarily subscribe to, but you're going to hear the drumbeat grow louder and louder and louder if this thing really, really, really takes off because it's still very much a fringe asset, very much. It just won't die. If the SBF thing didn't kill crypto, I don't know what would. Now, listen, you don't have to love it, but if you're still calling this thing a tulip, I mean. Right. For how many times it's died and people have thrown dirt on the grave. Clearly enough people ascribe value to it. Yes, regardless of how silly you think it is. All right, we go to crypto?

56:08Yeah, we're good. All right, a couple weeks ago I said, it's really hard to find a bearish signal in housing. It's hard to be really bearish on prices. That prices could fall a couple percent again, but be really – it's hard for me to see that. But I think it's really hard to be bullish too. So the Redfin had their homebuyer payments that they always update. It's 40 percent higher than it was two years ago, three years ago. It's hard for me to think 2021 is three years ago because that's what old people say. So I looked – so today the median home value they have is almost$400K at close to 7 percent.

56:42That's a$2 ,700 payment. If rates went to 6%, we're talking 2 ,400. 5 % is more like 2 ,100. So I think you'd have to go, I think rates would have to get back to like 5 % to really cause a ton, a ton of movement. But last year I looked, Case Shill rose up 5.6%. Inflation was up 3.4%. That seems low considering how much housing has moved. That's a big, if you're up 2 % more than the inflation rate every year, that's a lot for housing. Yeah. Historically, it was still a pretty good year. So you think if rates come down, housing prices don't go out that much? You just think activity comes back? That's my, I think rates would have to go down quite a bit for there to be like another boom.

57:21I don't, I think even if rates come down to six or 5%, I think there's gonna be more activity, but it's hard for me to see this, a boom in housing prices again. Yeah, I think I disagree. Okay, so you think prices could go again? Like five, 10%, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay, survey of the week. A recent report from Edelman Financial Engine surveyed more than 2 ,000 people regarding their attitudes about their wealth. Around a quarter said they feel less satisfied with the amount of money they have because of social media. And a third say they have spent more than they could afford to keep up with the Joneses.

57:56I totally buy this. Yes. I think it might even be understated. Yeah, I thought that was low. I think this stuff is getting – the keep up with the Joneses stuff is getting worse. Nobody goes on social media and feels good about their situation. That's true. Right? Yes. I mean, unless you read the replies on Twitter, then you feel okay about yourself. Like, I'm not as crazy as that, that idiot. And to that point, um, Austin Reef shared a snippet that I'm curious to hear your take on. The title is, I think it looks like, looks like, where is this? Uh, on Reddit? I'm not sure. Um, I have a secret to share, to share.

58:31That's the, the title. After the first two to 3 million, a paid off home and a good car, there is no difference in quality of life between you and Jeff Bezos. Both of you have limited amounts of time on earth. You have twice, if not more than Jeff. So you are richer than him. A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger, whether a billionaire eats it or you do. Money is nothing but a piece of paper on a number on your app. Real life is outdoors. Become financially independent. That's usually two to 3 million. Have good food. Enjoy the relations. Work out and enjoy sex. Sleep well. Call your parents. That's all there is to life.

59:02Greed has no end. Repeat after me. Time is the currency of life. Money is not. Sooner you figure this out, happier you'll be. Agree or disagree? I agree 60 % of this. The other 40%. Here's, I think, the biggest thing billionaires have over everyone else. Private flights. That's the game changer. If you have a private jet, you know how much easier your life is. Yeah. I have a flight coming up this month. I have two layovers. You think Jeff Bezos is having two layovers? Yeah. Uh-uh. So I completely agree with you agreeing with 60 % of this. I think that there is definitely wisdom in the fact that, yes, a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger.

59:39um, most of the time, forget about Jeff Bezos, but like most of the time people are just living their life, right? Whether you have 2 million or 50 million, you're most of the time doing the same thing. Um, and I understand if you have$7 million versus 10 million, is your life really better at 10? And I love, I love the premise of this that like, let's fuck like money is just for the most part, it's just numbers in a bank account. And most of the time you live your life. So I love the premise and I think people lose sight of this. However, there is a big difference between$2 million and Jeff Bezos.

1:00:11Yes. If you're a billionaire, there's probably stuff that makes your life easier that we don't even know about. There's other stuff that makes it way, way harder. The pressure and the - I guess the part that I agree with, which he didn't say, I, one, I believe this with every fiber of my being that billionaires aren't any happier than somebody with$2 million. That I agree with. And I think a lot of them are more miserable. Yeah, I mean, at that point, the money owns you. Like, you can't have that much money without it just being a massive burden. So, yeah, I thought it was interesting. All right, before we get into the recommendations, I want to talk about being the middle-aged guy at the gym.

1:00:49Middle-aged guy. So I've got the young Gen Zers here, and I've got the old people. So the old people, I walked in last week, and there was an old guy who literally went to the urinal and pulled his pants down to his ankles like a four-year-old. and they walk around with their stuff hanging out, towel over the shoulder, don't care. You know, you get to 70 something and you just don't care. And then they stand right next to you. I don't know. But then the young guys, they literally stand in the mirror of the bathroom and like pose, like triceps, you know, like. That is weird. Right? In front of other, like, I can sneak a peek.

1:01:24They're like, oh yeah, my shoulders look pretty good lately. But like they're posing. And it's not like it happens occasionally. It happens all the time. So maybe this is self-serving, but I think the middle age, call it late 30s to early 40s, is the only sane generation left. That's a good take. How's that? Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, no offense to our boomer listeners. Not to shame everybody who's not 30 or 40, but. Yes. The Gen Zers, they got totally ruined by growing up with the internet and social media. No offense to the boomers, but they had no chance against Facebook. Let's be honest. in the forward slash forward RE forward emails.

1:02:02Like they had no chance. They didn't grow up with this stuff. We, no life before, we were young enough to like handle the technology, but we've seen both sides. And I'm saying people in middle age right now are the only sane generation, but we are going to be insane someday because there's other stuff that's coming along that's going to make us insane. But right now, this is the only sane generation. Yeah, it's a good take. Okay. Recommendations. I told you Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I think is the best new show of the year so far. I finished it. But the thing I liked about it is it was a, speaking of the generation stuff, it was a millennial take on spies.

1:02:34Like they overthought everything. They talked too much. There probably could have been a little more spy stuff. It got a little weird for a couple episodes because I think that's what Donald Glover does. But I thought they landed the plane and I really liked it. And I'd like to see a season two with two, with a new John and Jane Smith, new spies. I can't believe how good it is. I watched. Really good, right? Yeah. The quality is way higher. Every episode has like one or two really good guest stars. Yeah, her cameos, yeah. Great cameos. I watched it. I took a car into the city, and I left my AirPods in the backseat again.

1:03:11I just need like an AirPods subscription. It's unbelievable. You need to just go back to Wired. Yeah, Mr. and Ms. Smith, good call by you. Do you think truth serum is real? Google gave me a conflicting answer. So there's a truth serum episode, and then it comes back towards the end. Because all these people, like, can you picture people in LA, they microdose mushrooms and they microdose little weed gummies. Can you picture them being like, hey, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, we're going to Joshua Tree to microdose truth serum and tell each other all the stuff we hate about each other. Oh, interesting.

1:03:43Wait, I don't know. I don't know if I assume truth serum is real. Wouldn't that be fun? Like, we're going to lock ourselves in a room and all take truth serum and talk shit about each other for an hour. Listen, this might be embarrassing. I don't know. Is truth serum real? I kind of assumed it was. I looked on Google and like one of them said, yes, it's definitely real. And the other one said, no, no, no, there's no way it's real. So I don't know. I mean, alcohol is kind of like truth serum. That's true. Yeah, there you go. Shogun, two episodes in. I'm all in. Very good. It felt like it could have been HBO, Apple show.

1:04:09It's on Hulu. It's good. I can see it getting even better. So it's Succession slash Game of Thrones. More Game of Thrones. It's not Succession. It's Game of Thrones in Japan in the whatever year it takes place. 1500s, 1400s? 1600s, yeah. Yeah. I also watched a rewatch on Hulu. I'd seen it once when it first came out, watched it again. Enough said. It's Gandolfini's last movie. It's him and Julia Louise Dreyfuss. Never heard of it. It's a rom-com. It was Gandolfini's last movie. Wait, is he in the rom? Yeah. It's kind of this cute, like they're both divorced, single divorcees, and he plays like kind of a teddy bear kind of guy.

1:04:47And it's not what you'd think of him at all, but it's like a cute rom-com. Okay, interesting. I thought I liked it. It was even better on the rewatch, I thought. So as I mentioned, I watched Napoleon on my Vision Pro, rest in peace. I had a good time watching it, even though the movie wasn't very good. Did you watch it? I did not watch it yet. I wanted to watch it when it first came out, but I've heard not great things. So I don't know if I'm going to. It's not good, but that doesn't mean that it's not a mildly entertaining, fun watch. I mean, there's parts of it that are great. There's parts of it that are excellent, but it felt very hollow.

1:05:21and I think because it was like a four-hour cut that was trimmed down. So it just felt very empty. I don't really know what happened. I'm not sure like how Napoleon did what he did and it wasn't great. That's okay. Ridley Scott's 86 years old. He tried. Really? I didn't realize he was that old. Yeah. Okay. He tried. Other time. Summing up this show, you and I are probably thinking it's time for a healthy correction, which means it probably won't happen. I've been thinking that. It's enough already. Yeah. Yeah, we shouldn't just be levitating higher for seemingly little reason at all. NVIDIA gained$124 billion in market cap yesterday.

1:05:58I'll repeat,$124 billion. It was like$200 billion in market cap at the bottom in 2021. Or 2022, fall of 2022. So I think we all just need a little punch in the face. Just a little. Not a knockout punch, but just a reminder. Keep those emails coming. We've got some good ones lately. I love it when people share with us their, They're not doing to ask a question. They share with us like their early retirement strategy. Some dude the other day said, my wife lives in Europe. Instead of spending a couple million dollars on a house here, we're going to buy like three apartments in Europe. And I loved that strategy.

1:06:32Anyway, keep them coming. What's our email again? AnimalSpirits at the compoundnews.com. We'll see you next time.

1:06:48We'll be right back.