What Would You Do With $3 Million? (EP. 451)

26:27That means the growth story for all of these companies in serious question, the industry wide re-rating seems completely justified to me. And I could not agree more. So for example, a company like Salesforce that we work with and we have worked with for a decade, guess what they do every year? They raise their fees and they can't imagine that we're a one-off. We're not a very unique business. That's over. Right. How about we just say, you know what? No. Right. And we negotiate, but we only have so much leverage. And so, yeah, the re-rating both make sense in the long term and simultaneously can be overdone in the short term.

27:13Yes. I think that's where I'm at. And whatever, one or two of these stocks is going to look like an amazing long-term deal after all this. And a bunch of them are going to look like dogs. That'd be my takeaway. All right. So I have been a relative defender, I would say. to some of the private credit stuff. I think I've been pretty fair. You've been trying to get people off of like the just going crazy because they hate it and it's going to be a crash. And yes, I agree with that. Like, so a lot of the cockroach stuff, my take was like, listen, sometimes loans go bad. Sometimes there's fraud. And it's not just in private markets.

27:52Okay. This is tricky for private credit because a lot of the businesses that they lend money to are SaaS businesses. Why? These are recurring revenue. This is predictable. It's easy to model. Uh-oh. Okay. Wall Street Journal. Private investment firms have piled into the software industry in recent years. At the end of last year, almost 9 % of private equity-backed companies were in the software space. The exposure is even more significant on the loan side. Within the private credit universe, the firm classifies, this is KBRA, about 70 % of borrowers of software companies representing about 22 % of the 1 trillion plus debt exposure in that universe overall.

28:36Yikes. So I spoke to one company yesterday in this universe and I said, what's the duration of these loans? And they said, for us, it's four to five years. And I went, eee. So all the publicly traded BDCs just murdered last week. Absolutely destroyed. um arcc which is the aries business development corp and this is basically liquid private credit and it's the biggest one i think it's 15 billion something like that so right on their website software and services um now i don't know how much of this is horizontal sas companies which is really in the eye of the storm how much is vertical which i suspect will fare a little better but it's 24 of the portfolio yikes so investors are obviously selling down the not just the BDCs, but like the private equity managers.

29:31So ULAL is down 50%. That's not a surprise. Blackstone, KKR, Apollo are all down, I don't know, 30%. These are getting hammered too. So to me, like Blackstone is a screaming buy. I don't own it. But I think like that is way overdone. Okay, just because they're bigger and more diverse than... I'd say it, not investment advice. Okay. So Blackstone getting caught up in the software stuff. I mean, like I get it. I get why investors are doing that. but come on, this is the biggest winner, and my estimation is going to be a secular trend. All right, so just— Wait, I know it's not fun to see things crash, because people own these things, and especially people who work at these companies.

30:09That's got to be a lot of turmoil. I think the most interesting thing about the AI from a market's perspective is this reshuffling of deck chairs. And every month, every couple months, it's like, oh my gosh, over here now. No, wait, over here. It's very exciting. It's one of the more fun parts about this market, I would say, watching this stuff happen in real time. All right. So we mentioned like there's horizontal software companies where there's a piece of software that serves a lot of different industries. So they don't, there's no real special specialization. Software, I mean, Salesforce, for example, right?

30:42Like they work with financial services and I'm sure they work with every other industry in the world, as opposed to a company that only works in one vertical. So I pulled this, where did I pull this from. I think this is PitchBook again. PitchBook is all over this trend, by the way. So they were talking about investor salary and software private credit loans. All right. A spokesman for a New York City parking garage company, GMC, explained that the company had recently ended a multi-year contract with a parking garage management software provider after it stopped providing certain features. Instead, GMC hired a programmer to develop a bespoke system that will organize the company's New York City Valley parking garages more efficiently.

31:26Quote, now we won't be subject to another company's price hikes. They have all the leverage that they know the customers really rely on it. Pitchford goes on to say, but it certainly won't work for all. A media company executive said there was, quote, no chance of canceling the content management software system it used, adding that alarms about the death of software were overblown. That's a good both sides thing, right? Yeah. Okay, last week I asked, like, what stops this train? What stops the margins from rising so much? And it seems like the hyperscalers are going to try to test this theory.

32:05So another Mike Zaccardi tweet via Bank of America, hyperscalers' capex as a percentage of operating cash flow was 65 % in 2025, expected to be as high as 90 % in 2026. It was 40 % from 2017 to 2023. So they are really going for it. And maybe the market pushes back, but you don't believe this? There's no way. There is no way that investors will allow 90 % of the operating cash flow to be spent on CapEx. That would be my thinking too. The stocks will crash. But they're saying this isn't 2026. This is right now. This is going to happen this year. So look at the numbers that they've said in their, like, listen, their expectations.

32:52but this is from Matt Vinson on Twitter. He said, 314 billion of incremental CapEx spend in 2026 on top of what they've already done from the big five, and that's Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle. That's one percentage point of GDP growth and more than 2 % of total US GDP from five companies in spending. These numbers are astronomically high. So to your point, when do investors say enough? No, enough. I mean, I guess they're kind of already saying that. Microsoft's down 25%. So this is like a quick, like, snap your fingers, 10 % correction in the market when one of these companies goes, all right, you got us.

33:34We're pulling back. Right? Isn't that it? Isn't that the fastest correction ever? You know, the Cranston meme? Yeah. But I don't know how the market will respond to a pullback of CapEx. Or do you think they'll be looked at positively? Like, okay, great. I really don't know. I don't know either. But these numbers just, this is why the AI bubble stuff is so hard to wrap your head around. Like, because these numbers just seem so ridiculous. But then you see this stuff that's happening and you go, well, maybe it's not ridiculous. Because this productivity is going to, it's going to happen. I don't know.

34:06This is a great tweet from Bucco Capital. Jassy was too slow to invest in CapEx and got a wedgie from investors who said, more CapEx, you loser. So he said, fine, want to see CapEx? I'll f***ing show you CapEx, but now everyone hates it. So, all right. CapEx for Amazon. 2025 was$130 billion. They're guiding to$200 billion, by far the highest of the Mag 7. $200 billion? What? How? How do you spend$200 billion? It is kind of crazy that they're even higher than Meta and Microsoft and Google. Okay. Now, think about it from this point of view. the output of all of the spend is going to be so insane.

34:54Remember the video we showed last week of Henry the bot? Like, think about what's coming. I think we're like so deep in the stock price and the numbers that we're like, think about what's coming. And this is why, all right, zooming out, like, I think it's hard to get too bearish on the stock market overall. Well, the question is, but what is all these cool tools? How does it actually help the bottom line? That, I get it, Meta is gonna get more ads. But that's the thing. Like, how does it actually make more money for these companies? That's the hard part. Well, I'm sure they know what they're doing.

35:27Do they? Famous last words. Yeah, dude. I'm sure there is a plan. They're not idiots. They're not spending the most money in the history of the world because they just like lighting money on fire. These are not dumb people. And if you're making a face like they are, come on. Zuckerberg did the metaverse. They literally changed the name of the company. These people are not always right. Okay, that was pretty dumb. You do have me there. But they're all - I know, you're right. We're going to get some cool stuff out of this. I just want Scarlett Johansson in my ear. That's all I want. Make it happen.

35:59Hey, take all my emails and do - My bigger picture, amongst the software crash, amongst the re-rating of the momentum trade and whatever, whatever, we've got a new Fed chair coming in who's going to cut. The consumer is fine. There is giga-gaga CapEx money being spent. like the market's going to be just fine. And I hate to say that out loud because I'm making this up just like everybody else is. But I guess I would just say like, if you're like nervous right now and like, oh, like this, the market's about to fall out of bed. I don't say it. It could be wrong. Of course. The market is broadening out.

36:34Well, there's that. I mean, thank you. That's the key point. Right? Yeah. Like that's, if this, you don't, you don't see that. You don't see that at market tops. If you saw all this stuff not working still, then I think you'd be rightful to worry about stuff. If the rest of the market was rolling over, I've said this a million times, if the rest of the market was rolling over before the AI stocks did, I would not be saying this. I would be getting nervous. And this is the money thing too. So Gunjan from the Wall Street Journal, wild inflows to sectors outside of tech this year. Sector funds, excluding tech, have seen a record$62 billion in inflows in the first five weeks of the year.

37:07To put that into context, that's more than they saw in all of 2025. Are you kidding me? So the money is also, it's not just the performance of these things. Like, hey, they're bouncing. Investors are taking notice and they're diversifying. Yeah, so when you asked me earlier in the show, like, why are staples mooning? It's flows. Yes, money is going into them. I thought this was kind of interesting. There's an ETF, XMAG, which by the way, credits them for being early. There will be more popping up. This is the only 493 ETF that I could find. And assets are, I mean, it's not a lot. It's$125 million, but it was like nothing until the flows have only really just started to come in.

37:47And they've taken off like a rocket ship in the last three months. Holy cow. All right. All right. Another one. Market check, Ben. It's$945 on the East Coast. Oh, S &P's flat. Equally, it's up 23 basis points. The beat goes on, Ben. All right. Small caps up a little bit. All right. So last week, I talked about like what is the case for EM? Like why would EM and international stocks keep outperforming? And this is from The Economist, Why the Dollar May Have Further to Fall. And it talks a lot about, like, the safe haven status. And I think the dollar is down 12 % from the highs or something. It says, 17 years ago, debt securities held by foreign governments and central banks accounted for 38 % of all portfolios investment into America.

38:29Today, it's 13%, the lowest level in modern history. So, like, the overseas, they're not owning as many treasury bonds. and that impacts the dollar. And it says there's no rival asset that looks ready to supplant the dollar's reserve currency. And I totally agree with that. But demand for greenbacks can ebb and flow without any serious challenger emerging. So it says the ongoing erosion of America's safe-having status together with uncertainty over policy and independence of the central bank mean the dollar's appeal increasingly rests in the ability of American assets to outperform the rest of the world.

39:01That is a precarious base on which to build investor loyalty. So it's saying the dollar could, just cyclically, It doesn't mean the dollar has to crash and go away forever and lose its global reserve currency status. But we could be in a cycle of that. And that's the bull case for emerging markets last week that we didn't talk about. I'm looking at a ratio chart of IFA divided by VTI. So international developed divided by U.S. Oh, man, this looks like a bottom. It looks like a real bottom. And there's been a lot of false starts over the years. Could be the one bad. This could be happening. It could be happening.

39:33Or two years. This is a blip. But yeah, who knows? My mind is, I mean, my mind is blown. We asked for years, what would be the catalyst for this? What could possibly make this happen? And it wasn't like a rhetorical. Like we were serious. It was like, I can't, what could happen? What, how? And so we have a talker book coming up in the coming weeks with Invesco about real assets. And the point made on that show was, listen, part of the AI build out means we need more stuff. We need more energy. We need more physical labor. We need more data set. Like we're building all this stuff. That's like bullish for all these other countries still with the materials and industrials.

40:15And it's interesting. All right, let's talk about AI. All right, Ben, look at this chart that I just dropped in that I was just talking over at the end of before tariffs. Okay. Okay. So it, like you said, it flatlined for a number of months there and then now it's taken off. Is that what you're looking at? It puked, recovered, went sideways, and is now accelerating very hard. This looks real. It does. Okay. Kai Wu had a new piece out. You read it, I assume? I read it? I did. Kai Wu is one of the most interesting white paper writers. Now, he's more than that. He manages an ETF company. He's a very smart guy, but he does white papers.

40:58He's usually at our Future Proof conferences, too. He might be there. Yeah, he'll be there. He does like two or three a year. And every time they're just, he looks at things differently because he's like a machine learning smart dork who puts all this stuff together. So he has a chart showing companies mentioning AI-driven ROI, which has gone from nowhere up to 7%. And he's pulling this from earnings transcripts. And then he's also got a chart showing companies mentioning AI-driven economic gains, which has gone to 32%. So, but think about it like this. only 7 % of companies are talking about an ROI that they're getting from all of these, the CapEx spending on the hyperscalers.

41:37So it's coming. Do you think that's going to 30 %? That's probably, he also looks at like a lot of the winners here. Like what are the companies that are benefiting from this? And I pull out one he didn't mention. Look at the chart for C.H. Robinson. I mentioned this one on the show a couple months ago. I put it in here right below his charts here. What does this company do? This is the logistics company. I think I mentioned on the show, unless I mentioned to you just a phone call. I had a friend who worked here, so I know about it. And it's a trucking logistics company that is using AI to make it faster to match drivers with trucks.

42:07Look at this chart. Parabolic. It looks like the silver chart. Okay. They're using AI to make their company more efficient to match drivers and trucks and shipments around the country. This is so good. Right? What a great example. So in the previous lines that I mentioned, the previous chart, he has another one that shows, all right, so those companies that are talking about AI-driven ROIs have beaten the market by five percentage points a year. The companies that I've mentioned in AI-driven economic gains are beating the market by 4.8 % a year. That's a great chart because a lot of times you say, okay, sure, they'll say anything in their earnings calls, but does it actually translate?

42:44So this is showing what people are saying actually is translating into economic gains. It's not just fluff from company management. It's hitting the bottom lines. and I don't have this chart in here, but there's a chart of S &P 600 earnings estimates and they're skyrocketing. There is a reason why small caps are catching a bid. I don't know that it's all productivity, but I'm sure it's a part of it. All right, here's one part of artificial intelligence that I don't love. Google now has suggested responses built into Gmail. I don't like them either. and they're good enough that, and I'm sure that they're going to get better.

43:28I just don't like the idea of this. So for example, this is a suggested response in our inbox. Hey Joe, next one was huge. For three plus years, I'd probably, oh, it was somebody asking about like, what do I do with my house money, right? I'm buying a house in three years. I don't know if I just want it to sit in cash, but what do I do? Hey Joe, next one was huge. For three plus years, I'd probably lean short duration bond funds or just keep it in a high yield savings account. volatility is the enemy for a known future expense, Michael. Now, I would hope that somebody's going to know that that's a fake email.

43:56By the way, I did not send that email. I just don't like this idea. You wouldn't send the Chinese fortune cookie at the end there? Yeah, volatility is the enemy of a known future expense. If you ever see me doing that, that's not me. I accidentally hit send by exit on the suggested reply. So you talked me into Claude a little bit last week. And I took, so Whitecharts has the ability to do these comp tables where you can take an index or a group of stocks or a fund and break them out into all these different categories and variables. So I just took year-to-date gains in every S &P 500 company. I downloaded the spreadsheet.

44:26So it takes what has it done so far this year? And I put it into Claude and I said, tell me what's going on in the market. And it spit this out in, I don't know, 60 seconds. It says industrials are on fire. Chemicals are having a moment. Consumer staples rotation. Hershey is up 27%. Food names, even airlines showing surprising strength. Defensive characteristics plus pricing power equals working. And then it talks about tech carnage deep in, And then we'll show this in the YouTube if anyone wants to see it. FinTech collapse. It's like, here's the bottom line. I just thought it was really good.

44:56The market is experiencing an aggressive rotation from high multiple growth into tangible capital intensive businesses. And it says that's equipment, logistics, chemicals, semiconductors, consumer staples. This looks like a classic late cycle value rotation. Investors fleeing expensive momentum driven names for businesses with physical assets, pricing power and operating leverage. Like this is really good. That part that you just mentioned, this looks like a late cycle thing. if I was to like have one thing that's like, how did I miss it? Right. Earlier in the show, I said like, I like the setup.

45:25If there was one thing that I would point to that said, Oh, you dumb, bald idiot. It would be this dynamic. Yeah. Yep. It's kind of funny that Claude pulled that out, but I just think, I don't know late cycle. It hasn't even started. That's the hard part, but the.com stuff, I know this is different than that. We had to go through the dot-com blow-off to get everything that the internet promised. Maybe it's exactly the same. I don't know. So I thought this was pretty good. I think one of the most ironic things that we're talking about is the fact that the AI boom so far is probably going to disrupt tech more than anything at the beginning, right?

46:04Yes. From the start, tech is the biggest industry. They're disrupting themselves. They, like, accidentally, like, turned the gun on their face. So Adam Ozemeck has a sub stack, and he wrote about, he wrote this really long piece about, like, how the human touch stays through all these technological developments. And I thought this was, he said, there's still 67 ,000 travel agents, despite the, which is crazy to me, despite the fact that there's widespread leisure hospitality and stuff online. Self-checkout has failed to replace 3.2 million cashiers and 4.2 million retail sales workers. I remember Scott Galloway, when he came to speak at one of our very first conferences, said, what's going to happen when you don't need cashiers anymore and there's 3 million people displaced?

46:42They're still working. And he's saying like, part of it is just people want a human touch when they have an interaction for a transaction. Not always. But that's the thing that's going to be hard to map out with all this, is how much are people going to still require the human touch? This is the topic for the next 10 years of our career. Oh, yeah. for sure. Like, yeah, this isn't like going away quickly. You're right. All right. Crypto. Last week, Bitcoin was at$78 ,000. I can't remember in what context, but I said, I have no interest in buying it right now. Right? It's just like bleeding and there's no whatever.

47:21And then just a massive puke. So I bought it on Thursday. I actually bought IBIT. I've never bought the ETF before. Again, this is not investment advice and it's acting like dog shit. It's barely bouncing. I'm probably going to dump it. Bitcoin's getting smoked again today. I bought at 66 and went down to 68. Here's what's going on in Bitcoin. Alexandra Semenova tweeted, IGV and Bitcoin look like twins. I mean, they are moving in lockstep. This chart is a tough look for Bitcoin. Yeah, it's acting like the broader tech world. All right. Somebody tweeted, when I said things will get ugly, this is what I feared.

48:01Maybe the worst sentiment I've ever seen to BH. which the good news is this means opportunities are near and the Taurus are whatever. Okay, so Nick, quote, Nick McGillie, quote, tweeted it and said, I've now seen multiple big crypto accounts saying this is the worst sentiment they've ever seen. And we aren't even in a recession. Can't imagine what would be happening if stocks were crashing too. Very good point. My God. Yes. That's like the Homer Simpson meme. No, this is the worst sentiment yet. Correct. So last week, again, when I said I wasn't interested in buying it, I really wasn't. But then it crashed.

48:32And look at this chart. So you see put volume spiking. You see volume number of shares spiking. So like you saw a physical get me out liquidation and I buy that all day long. I just do, right? Like that's right in my wheelhouse. It hasn't worked yet. And if it rolls over, I'll just sell it. And if it bounces to 72, I'll probably sell it too. So this is, you remember the player haters ball from Chappelle Show? I don't know if you were a big Chappelle Show watcher. Man, we went on spring break one year in college. My senior year of college, we went to somewhere in Mexico and there was a big bus.

49:02pick us up from the airport all these college kids at one resort and chappelle show like was just huge at that point and people were doing the little john the whole way there uh which one just uh yeah yeah pretty bad but anyway remember the player haters ball they had ice tea in there like this the last couple weeks has been the player haters ball for crypto if you were a person who wanted to dunk on crypto you've been doing it incessantly i've been seeing a lot of people on on and this is like i feel like more crypto more than anywhere else is dunking when things are up if you're owning it and dunking when things are down if you don't own it you hate it like it is more than any other asset class it is the ultimate lighting rod so last week on on tcaf which was awesome by the way we had a new guest on john mowry who's phenomenal he asked me because we were talking about crypto i said i just bought it today and i think he asked me how much of it i owned and i don't know why i didn't divulge but i guess it was just like live and i wasn't whatever so before the recent sell-off i sold it down to five percent of my liquid net worth all right so whatever that i that's that's where i was it's now smaller obviously since it's gone down so much um but i bought again the the the 66 000 that i bought that's not like i'm not adding to my holdings like i'm gonna i'm gonna sell it that's where i am too i'm probably like four to five percent and for me it was up to like ten percent and that's what got me nervous and why i sold some because it's way too high a percentage i was significantly i mean i was significantly higher and I said like, whoa.

50:25You know the scene in Old School when Will Ferrell is on stage, he's like, I blacked out, what did I say? That's sort of what I had with my crypto stuff. I was like, wait. Because when it went to 120, it grew to an outsized portion of my liquid net worth. I was like, what am I? What? This doesn't make sense. So better to be luck and be good on the timing there. I've always said a hugely volatile asset like this is great for portfolio management if you're rebalancing around it, but it's really hard to do. So here's my game plan. for my short-term trade. Again, I'm sure nobody cares, but here's what I'm thinking.

50:57You're catching knives. You're just catching knives all over the place here. I'm allowed to change my mind. No, I caught two knives. I caught two pukes. I caught Bitcoin and software. That's it. If it bounces like 72, I'll sell it. If it goes down to 63, I'll probably sell it. And if it pukes again to like down to 50, I will buy and hold more. So by the way, we didn't even mention this because so much other stuff is going on. Ed Bradford on Twitter is a good follow. said he showed a chart of silver and it spikes and then it crashes. And he said, this is the craziest market I've ever seen in my life.

51:27In 40 years of trading or whatever. And I responded to him, I said, I didn't even realize silver crashed again today because so much other stuff is crashing. Sean, our research analyst, shared this with me. The two worst days in history for silver have both happened in the last 10 days. In history, going back to like 1970, this is the two worst days. And it's everything is a Keynes Beauty contest now. like everything is a derivative of a derivative and people getting ahead of and ahead of and ahead of and it just takes things too far right i will say um with all this trade talk 90 i guess 95 of my liquid net worth is in strategies that we want for clients every health's wealth management so it's not like i'm day trading my butt off over here all right all right ben yes all right i i told you i've i've taken my hands off the steering wheel more and more as time has gone on for me I don't like having the brain damage of constantly checking my stocks in crypto.

52:22And it's not - I can't help it. I'm a maniac. All right. This chart from Goldman Sachs has been flying around a little bit. They show the cost of home ownership in LA, San Francisco, New York, Boston, DC, Atlanta, and then the rest of the US in 2000 and 2024. Okay. Owning the income ratio in the initial year of home ownership. Okay. When you're a first time home buyer, how expensive is it? What's the ratio of the price to your income? And they've all gone up way, way higher, right? The rest of the US is not that much higher, but some of these big cities, LA and San Fran and New York, and obviously they're not building enough and these places are still very, you know, people want to be there, right?

52:59Here's how I equate this. So my wife's talking about wanting to do a summer trip somewhere this year. I said, why do we have to go anywhere in the summer? Michigan, we have to stay here because it's finally nice. You had to hunker down. But she wants to go to like a national park or something. And we looked at a bunch of places and it's February right now. and everywhere is already sold out. All these places, you can't find a place to stay in June by booking in February because these places are known now. That's what big cities are, I feel like. They're not building more national parks. They're not building more up.

53:30Apparently, they're not building more housing in big cities. So I think if you're wanting to buy in a big city and you're a first-time home buyer, unless you have rich parents or you strike the lotto, you're out of luck. Huge national park guy over here. Okay, what kind of national parks are we talking? the national parks. I love all of them. Have I been to more than four? Probably not. Love them. Okay. Here's where I've been. I've been to Bryce and Zion. I've been to the Grand Canyon. Yellowstone. The Tetons. Is that a national park? So what's the best one you've been to? All of them. Just love America.

54:14All national parks. Okay. Although my wife is very much not a national park person. Like, there's no way. I mean, and I can't do a solo. Do you want to go to the national park with me? Let's do a little boy's trip. I would love it. Lace up the boots. Let's go hiking. What do you say? All right, I'm in. We did have a nice hike together in San Diego last year. We had a great hike. Are you kidding me? Mm-hmm. Anyway, all kidding aside, I really do love the outdoors, but probably not in my near future, unfortunately. So, Ben, I don't know if you know this, The Seahawks won the Super Bowl. I don't know how many people in our inbox reminded us of that fact, that Michael was wrong.

54:53Yeah. You know what? It was all in good fun. I think everybody that texted me, DMed me, emailed me, it's all good, clean, wholesome, family fun. I put myself out there. That's what we do in the show. I can get dunked on. It's all good. But here's an interesting thought that I had. I mean, the most obvious one is, hey, wait a minute. Markets are efficient? Because when this happened, the Seahawks were the reason why I bet against them. They were the favorite, right? They were the favorite, okay? The market was right. They were the favorite in week 15. I said, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense.

55:33Why are the Seahawks the favorite? Sam Darnold is not a good football player. I mean, that's the stretch. I said, Sam Darnold's not winning a Super Bowl. And the market was right. because the market usually is right, which goes back to the point I made earlier last week. I understand that people feel a certain way about the prediction markets because it's like all speculation and degem behavior and nonsense. And I'm with that, okay? Like, I don't love that aspect of it. But we need more markets and places where markets don't exist because when people are just giving their opinion, who cares? There's no skin in the game, right?

56:11When think tanks are writing about the demand for this or the price of that of real giant pools of capital, right? If we made markets and things like that and money could be allocated more efficiently, that gets me excited. I get it. I mean, the financialization of everything, we're there already. Like this is just our society now. Because markets, price discovery, it's a thing. Markets work. Markets function properly. Put your money where your mouth is, right? Yeah. Put your money where your mouth is. So ChartKid had an awesome chart showing the net income percentages of the S &P 500 by sector versus the market cap.

57:00And wouldn't you know it, Ben, they're not exactly the same, but directionally, they all move together. The market is usually right. So you sent me this polymarket thing for what price will Bitcoin hit in February. And this is interesting because you talked about like, is stuff priced right or not? This is a really interesting way to play it. So it says, you basically pick the price of Bitcoin and it goes from$35 ,000 to$150 ,000 in February. Okay? So if you think Bitcoin is going to take off, what did you say it's at now? $65 ,000? $68 ,000. $68 ,000. If you think it's going to - 68! If you thought it was going to go to 80 ,000, it's going to take off again.

57:43You can buy yes for 20 cents, right? Meaning your upside is 80%, right? It's a huge upside. It's a bigger upside than buying the price. Here's another thing that I have come around to. And I did say this to Vlad. Think about what, think about people that are speculating on Bitcoin using options or some sort of leverage. Hey, guess what? No offense, average degenerate, myself formerly included, when I was buying options on stocks, did I really understand the Greeks? Of course I didn't. Right. Of course I didn't. I was like, wait a minute. I bought this call option. Why am I down 16 % as soon as I hit enter?

58:25So that's the thing. If you're an options trader, you'd be looking at these markets as well to see where the mispricings are. Yeah. Yes. I'm thinking more of it from the person that does want to speculate on the future price of an asset. Isn't this a better way to do it? If you're going to do it at all? Right. Because you're putting a little amount up for it. Yeah. You're getting implied leverage there. But it's just, it's crystal clear what you're doing. Right. You either think the price will be above this or not at a certain date and time. It is interesting. It's options for dummies. And I don't mean that disrespectfully because I was a dummy.

58:55All right. I have a question for you. So Nick Majuli posted this tweet and he says, why is a$3 million home a status symbol, but a$3 million portfolio isn't? How can someone value looking wealthy over having more financial freedom makes zero sense? Obviously that's correct. I was thinking about this though. Wait, I love Nick. I think this is a dumb take. So where I'm in my life, I was thinking about this. Let's say I'm in the Price is Right and I'm in the Showcase Showdown and I win both Showcase Showdowns, right? One Showcase Showdown is you get a$3 million portfolio in a brokerage account, free and clear, Vanguard funds, whatever, whatever you want.

59:26The other Showcase Showdown you win is a$3 million home. And in Michigan, right, a$3 million home will get you very far. I don't know a$3 million home, obviously. At my stage in life, what would I rather have? A$3 million house or a$3 million portfolio. Wait, Duncan, polled the audience. Duncan, polled the audience. Doesn't everybody pick the portfolio? Yes. I personally, I would pick the house. If you gave me. Oh. I would pick the house. Where I am today, I would pick the house. Wow. I would rather ever. Why? Now, a lot of people would say, you're an idiot. You are an idiot. You could take a million dollars and buy a$3 million house.

59:59The house has insurance. It has upkeep. It has maintenance. It has property taxes. at this stage of my life. And this is not a looking wealthy status symbol thing. I would rather have a very nice home than a… Looking at a$3 million portfolio, seeing my portfolio go up in value brings me no joy at all. I don't get anything from that. I understand. I would get way more utility out of a$3 million house. So what would you do? You would take the portfolio? That's a very… You're right. Like your opinion of that assessment, I understand. I want to say you're right. I understand it completely. But I know 90 % of people would say, you're an idiot.

1:00:34But at this stage of my life, I would take the house. I think Ben is secretly trying to tell us he has a$3 million portfolio. No, but I'm saying you get these two things. Wave a magic wand. Which one do you want? No, I think your point is because you are at a level of success that a$3 million portfolio doesn't do anything more for you than what you already have. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is like my stage in life with kids and like - No, I'm not. That's okay. That's right. I understand what you're saying. That's like when you see rich people buying up all these properties and stuff, like why would this person need three more houses?

1:01:10I totally understand it. I think you get a lot of utility from a very nice house. How's that? Of course you do, yeah. If money's no object, like if the people that are buying all those houses can legitimately afford them and some can, some can't, yeah, it sounds awesome. So Duncan, that's a good survey for our channel. I'd like to see that. All right, hold on. But let me understand Nick's tweet. Why is a$3 million home a status symbol? How could someone value looking wealthy over how? Oh, I think he's like talking about like an internal. Okay, I understand what you're saying there. Yeah, but it's also because no one shows off.

1:01:45No one walks around saying, hey, I got a$3 million portfolio. Check it out. Remember that? See my statements. Remember, was it a crypto person that had their net worth in their Twitter bio? I think we spoke about this person. It had to be a crypto person. Might have been a Tesla investor or something. Wall Street Journal ranked nine major U.S. airlines on seven equally weighted operations metrics to parse out which is the best airline. And number one, Southwest. I've never flown Southwest. I did it for the first time this year when you and I went to Vegas a few months ago. Wasn't the greatest experience of my life.

1:02:20I mean, so Southwest and Allegiant are one and two. And they're talking about a lot of it is like lost bags and timing. And those are two of the more uncomfortable airlines as far as I'm concerned. I'm surprised Delta's not first on this list, and they were last year. And here's the thing. Southwest and Allegiant are supposed to be like the budget carriers now. I feel like after you add all the fees and stuff, they're not cheap anymore. It used to be like Allegiant, the flights used to be so cheap. They would say like, hey,$150 for a flight. Like if you add on because you have to pay for your lug and you have to pay for an overhead and you have to pay for a seat, like if you add all the stuff, the add-ons, it's just as expensive as any other flight, but it's not as comfortable.

1:02:57Like it's like you feel like you're sitting on a piece of cardboard on these flights. because they really pack people in. I'm a big Delta guy. I only fly Delta if I can help it. I put everything on my Delta. That's my favorite one. On my Delta Amex card. So you don't pay for bags. On time arrivals, it's number one and it has been for the last five years. I've had like two bad flight experiences with Delta, which happens. I fly a lot. Anyway, this is probably deeply boring for most people. But anyway, I thought that was interesting. Southwest number one. They say on time arrivals, Delta is best for.

1:03:28I think that makes sense to me. Okay, interesting here. This is from The Economist. One study found that between 1965 and 2012, the amount of time parents in rich countries spent with their children doubled. Now look at this. This shows millennials, Gen X, baby boomers, and silent generation between how many minutes per day they spend with their child on childcare. And we are totally the helicopter generation because we spend way more time with our kids than any other generation. And this tracks with me. With every other parent I know, the dads are so much more involved than they were in previous generations.

1:04:00You think about the silent generation, even the baby boomers, like a lot of times it was like, the kids just go do what you want. This, and I don't know what the ramifications of this are. Like the fact that parents are so much more involved in the kids' lives now. So for our six-year-olds, there was baseball, not evaluations, okay? For Little League. And a bunch of the - Which is an insane thing to do at that age. Yeah, six, what? we've had that too with football like a football like camp that you they're taking notes the evaluation is just evaluate them during the season like they're babies if you have to evaluate them at all so anyway there's a lot of like back channeling and make my kid rank a three and not a two like and i'm just thinking like come on guys are you serious they're right they're six six so even like to what end you want to win a little league world series for six-year-olds who gives a shit like literally who cares what is wrong with you right i get it if like fine they're they're 10 they're 13 you're you know you want your it's fun it's competitive you want to win six this is where i mean my my parents went to every single one of my games but they never ever put themselves in and like they never talked to me about my performance they never like it was hey good job great you did awesome or whatever you know we're excited for you uh they didn't try to like guide my sporting life in some way and i feel like that is a thing that's changed more than anything is like the parents are so in uber involved in this stuff now than they were before and i'm i'm more than i'm way more than my parents were so i i'm a hypocrite here but i try to like back off i i try to like not just not i try to not ever criticize my kids about what they do in sports and just i always say like do your best and have fun and that's all i care about um yeah it is it is so much isn't it i i had the boys over the weekend so robin left me robin went with her friends to vegas to see the backstreet boys at the sphere which is this is probably the first time that actually sounds like a pretty fun girls weekend this is probably the first time she left me with the boys but look look at look at these notes so she left me like full notes of where i need to be hour by hour with clothes lined up on the counter with post-it notes and boy, did I crush the assignment.

1:06:21You should have seen me. Not only did I do that, she came home to a clean house. Well, it sounds like she made it easy for you to crush the assignment. Clean sink. Yeah, no, she did. She made it like completely Michael proof because I am not the best with these things. But yeah, I wonder if we're like, sometimes I feel like I'm like not doing enough with my kids, but I'm with them. I take them to school every single day. I'm here when they get home. Right. I go to their practices. Because like I work, so I work, obviously I work a lot. Kobe said to me the other day, randomly like daddy if the Knicks were in the finals but you had a work call what would you do and like part of me felt sad that he asked that yeah and I was like the Knicks of course I would never schedule a work call during the Knicks game he's like but what if it was like a really important call like a really one you couldn't cancel and I was like well I care about you guys and provide it for you guys more than I care about the Knicks so like obviously I would choose that but the fact that he said that he's noticing that I'm like working all the time but fine I'm still with them.

1:07:15I live in the house with them. I'm with them every single time of all days. And our parents weren't like this. Now I grew up in like a divorced household. So it was a little bit different for me, I suppose maybe. But I think my mom was gone in the morning and like not home when I came home and I didn't feel not loved. I was like showered in love growing up. It was just, it was just normal. It was more normal. And this is, this is more normal. This feels abnormal, but this is the way it is now. I was about to say, I feel like I'm roommates with my kids. Yeah, I guess that's what being a dad is.

1:07:43But I feel weird about the fact that we can now track them on the phone all the time. Like, I know it's helpful. Like, hey, you can see where they are and you can follow them and you can see the stuff they're doing. But to me, that almost feels like invasive, right? But you can't, because when I was in high school, whenever we wanted to go out and get in trouble, I would say, hey, mom, I'm staying at Chris's house. And Chris calls mom and says, hey, mom, I'm staying at Ben's house. And that's all we needed to do. We were free for the night to do whatever we wanted. Kids can't do that anymore. Well, tell me if this is true to you.

1:08:14Again, my growing up situation was a little bit different with divorced parents, but I feel like all parents and friends are like friends with each other's parents. Yes. Was that like that growing up? I don't think it was, but maybe that was just my experience. Not as much. There's way more competition among the parents. The parents feel competitive with each other about the kids. Stuff the kids don't even care about. That's the hardest part. is that like, oh, that parent cares, so I have to care. It's like, why? It's a bunch of try-hards, am I right? Yeah. All right, Ben, it's been a minute. It's been a minute since I've spoken on this pod about email etiquette, right?

1:08:54You're being an email etiquette guy. No infractions, which I think that cements my standing as I'm not an email snob. I'm really not. It's been 18 months. Find me the last time I brought up I said anything about somebody's email. I'm going to need the AI to get on this, but you've said a lot of stuff over the years. But it's been a while. Okay. I think people, maybe people have respected my etiquette. Okay. Maybe I've trained them through this podcast. All right. So I got an email from somebody that I was maybe doing a favor for. Maybe it was somebody on LinkedIn that I said that I would be happy to speak with them.

1:09:31Because I'm a giver backer, right? You know this. I speak to a lot of people that email me. Give me my number. Give me a call. this person sent me a red receipt oh that's the worst i hate that hate it with a passion i oh if i see that i i'm like i'm not responding to you to me and i hate to be so black and white about this because like last week we did a people i people that suck type of list and i know that there's people that do shitty things that aren't shitty people i'm sorry and i don't want to call this person shitty person i don't know them but i kind of do want to say this that's desperate it.

1:10:05So it doesn't make you a bad person, but it makes you somebody that I don't want to be around, okay? It makes you somebody that I don't... I'm having trouble putting into words what a weird personality trait that is. Somebody that sends a red receipt. Hey, did you see that? Hey, so you said that. Dude, come on, get out of here. All right. Somebody emailed us. Michael doesn't know what he's talking about. There's as much caffeine in a Diet Pepsi as there is in an espresso. Okay. First of all, true. I was making it up, talking on the fly. That's what we do here. I've said this over the years many times where I will listen to a podcast like this one tomorrow when it comes out, when you're listening.

1:10:47And I will say, I will violently disagree with something that I said 24 hours ago. Why? I'm off the cuff. Okay. I'm running all the time. I'm making most of this up. We're having a good time. We're talking. All right. But I wasn't talking about espresso emailer. I was comparing Diet Pepsi to Starbucks. And here's what Chachi BD said. A 20-ounce bottle of Diet Pepsi contains about 59 milligrams of caffeine. A standard Starbucks grande brewed coffee, which is what I drink, typically has around 310 to 360 milligrams of coffee. So that's one-fifth. So Ben, in Miami, I want to see you drink a Starbucks coffee.

1:11:30You will be shaking. You'll be so hopped up. Can I just have a Red Bull instead? Isn't that easier? A monster? Drink a Starbucks. I won't make you drink a Starbucks. You know, the thing, they have these studies that like drinking one cup of coffee a day can like help you live longer. Like there's no way that's healthy. That much caffeine in your system. There's no way. I don't know. All right, we'll see. All right, so I had the boys for the weekend and I thought to myself, I'm going to get after it. Did you take him to the movies? What am I watching Friday? What am I watching Saturday? No, but I did.

1:12:01Kobe won't stop talking about the goat movie. Oh, my kids are going to see. Because we have a midwinter break. They have so many stupid days off of school. So they have Friday and Monday off of school. So I think my wife's taking them to see it on one of those days. So Kobe keeps saying this is going to be his favorite movie ever. And I'm trying to teach him a lesson about lowering your expectations. He goes, I can't help it. It looks so good. All right, so anyway, so I thought that I was, so no, no movies this weekend. I don't really think there was much playing, but I thought I was going to have myself a movie fiesta.

1:12:32And Ben, I was sleeping by 10 o 'clock both nights. You're tired. But here's what I did watch. I plowed through the HBO movies. I watched, not the shows. The Pit, the new Game of Thrones show, and Industry are just - Is the Game of Thrones any good? Oh, it's so good. Is it? Okay. Well, the first two episodes were pretty slow, and I was about to throw in the towel. But I heard the third was good. Stick around. So I did. And the fourth was amazing. Okay. I'll give it a try. I watched, I think someone actually told us about this on the inbox a few months ago. I told you I was looking for all the Apple movies.

1:13:09There's a Tetris movie. There's a movie on Apple called Tetris. It's about the story of how they got the rights to Tetris to go worldwide. Okay. And that sounds like the most boring movie ever. It was actually pretty good. It's got Taron Egerton in it. And basically, I didn't realize this. So here's the one thing I learned. Tetris, I've played it a million times, you know? And my wife actually got for Christmas, my son, it looks like a mini video game console of Tetris. And you can play Tetris. So my kids are playing it. I never knew, tet means four. And so each of the pieces, if you would have asked me how many pieces are in each Tetris piece, because they're built by blocks, each one is built of four squares.

1:13:46If you would have told me like the long one, I would have said for sure that's five squares. It's gotta be five. They're all built on four squares. Okay? I didn't realize this. So they showed the guy who made it, built it in communist Russia in the 1980s. And it was about these video game developers who was going into Russia and having to deal with the KGB to get the rights out of Russia to bring the game worldwide. It's kind of like a spy thing. At the end, they kind of ramped it up and it was a little unrealistic. But the first hour of the movie or so, just the negotiations with the KGB and the Russian diplomats about trying to get this game out of Russia, it's actually really good.

1:14:18One of the better business movies I've seen in a while. you mentioned the show His and Hers my wife watched it did you finish this show? His and Hers which was this again? That's the Jon Bernthal show on Netflix it's six episodes it's a murder mystery yeah yeah I finished so the fun one of the fun things about these shows is you try to guess the twist because you know there's a twist coming this show had the most ridiculous twist I've ever was it me and my wife were we were we couldn't but we were speechless it was so dumb the twist was so dumb and so bad like the first twist it's like Oh, oh, the first was that.

1:14:51It's the girl and she lost weight. And but then anyway, it was the worst twist I've ever seen. Maybe ever. It was so bad. Okay. It was so bad. It was borderline comical, right? Like it was like funny. Like, come on. Are you kidding me? But I, so for me, it didn't upset me because A, I'm very understanding that these planes are hard to land. B, it's Netflix. And C, it was only six episodes. So I wasn't like fully invested. I think it was based on a book. Maybe the book, it was a better translation. Okay. If it was 10 episodes, I probably would have been upset. Did it bother you? Like, were you like, that was a waste of time?

1:15:28My wife said, I can't believe we put so much time into that. There's only six episodes. I get it. It was comically bad. So I've been having a hard time getting into new Audible books lately. Like, you start one and you're not immediately taken in. You kind of, eh, I'm not into this. I'll come back to it later. But then I started Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. and I was never a Bourdain person. I never watched, I don't watch cooking shows really. That's not my thing. My wife always loved cooking, the cooking channel, not me. My brother gave me the Bourdain book a long time ago and I just never read it.

1:15:57So I said, you know what, I'm gonna listen to this. And he narrates the book. And it's kind of, it felt a little bit like the Cameron Crowe book where just them telling their own story makes it 10 times better. And I flew through this book. It's just the whole, him coming up in the restaurant world and how restaurants work. And it's, I feel like they could have used him as a consultant on the bear. because the bear, like the chef takes himself, Carmody takes himself way too seriously. Bourdain takes, he took cooking seriously, but he didn't take himself seriously. Like he was very self-aware. And it's just, it's so good.

1:16:29And if you ever worked at a restaurant, like the stuff that they, he explains about working in a restaurant and the people you encounter and the shady business deals. And it's just, it's really, really good. I can see why he was so good at his shows. How, because you know why? You, like me, love a memoir. Yes, I do. Okay, so I just started listening to this one. Okay, I read that one. Oh, you did? I read that book last year, yeah. No shit, how? I can't remember where it came from. I heard it on a podcast somewhere. It's really good, right? A lot of good stories, yeah. Okay, so Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions.

1:17:05This was served up to me by Audible. So Ed Zwick, and he narrated it, so that's why I bought it. So he directed Glory. he did Legends of the Fall The Last Samurai Blood Diamond love that movie Defiance he had some Julie Roberts stories that do not pit her in the greatest light I'll put it that way I can't wait to listen it's a good one though an hour 20 is the news going to be slower this week than it was last week I think so I don't know man it just keeps coming it's just keep coming thanks to the production team as always Daniel, John, Duncan, Nicole, Rob, Graham, who else? Travis, we appreciate it.

1:17:52We have show notes every week on our blogs, wealthofcommoncents.com or relevantinvestor.com if you want to see all the charts. If you don't watch it on YouTube, check out Talking Wealth. What else do we need to plug? Remember, by Friday, if you want those networking things for Future Proof, sign up. That's right, buddy. Animal Spirits at accountboundnews.com. See you next time.

1:18:14Thank you.