When Genius Failed, Again (EP. 476)

11:49Ben Carlson:Because he was getting a lot of accolades too. So when that happens, on the other side of it, of course he's going to get stomped on.

11:54Michael Batnick:So I think he was up at his peak, like 2 ,700 % since inception. I mean, absolutely eye-watering numbers, like the type of numbers that you don't see. So what ended up happening is Mark Rubenstein has a great slide. He shows that the assets were up 5x in three months and got in 30 days. So fund assets, March 2026. That's a great chart right there. March 2026 was$9.3 billion. June, 2026,$20 plus billion. July, 2026,$45 billion. This kid was on a heater, the likes of which we have really seen before. Then on July 24th, he sends out an investor letter framing the sell-off as a buying opportunity.

12:45And then by July 30th, just a couple of trading days later, they sold the entire public levered

12:53Michael Batnick:book to Citadel at a 10 % discount. Now, there's people saying that all of the gains in the fund came from Anthropic and that all the public stocks went to zero. He was actually underwater. My understanding of the situation is that's not true. In the letter, he said that they still have. Now, he was long all of the AI names and short like the Adobe's of the world. So it blew up both ways. The alligator jaws slammed shut.

13:21Ben Carlson:This is why leverage is so detrimental because a lot of those stocks are still up a ton from when he bought them. Right. Sandisk is still up over a thousand percent in the last year. If he would have not used leverage and just held these funds. Oh, shoot. We're in a 30 percent drawdown, but we can survive. The thing is, when you see the numbers go from nine billion to 20 to 45 in three months, you feel invincible. You feel like nothing can stop you. I'm sure my favorite anecdote from Your Money in Your Brain by Jason Swag. And I use it in my book, Risk and Reward. I called it, what happens when you get gains like this is you get cocaine brain.

13:53Ben Carlson:And Jason Zweig said, they did these studies on your brain that show that there is no difference between the brain activity of someone who's high on cocaine or morphine and someone who's making money on their investments. It's the same in that with him, that's why he took more leverage because he needed a bigger hit each time to keep it going. That's why you have to use leverage when you get that size if you want to keep growing at that same rate, which obviously there was no risk management whatsoever. Mark Rubenstein also astutely said the perfect number of blowups for a hedge fund manager is one.

14:28Michael Batnick:And I think what he means is that everybody needs to get punched in the face really badly one time. Now, if you have two or three blowups, you know, you're come on, no more chances. But everybody gets one mulligan. And this is a bad one. But the fund is still up 80%. At least that's what the letter said.

14:49Ben Carlson:It's funny. Yeah, John Arnold said that too. He said, my philosophy when I used to hire traders was that the optimal number of past blowups is one. Okay. So it's kind of like, you're right. This is your mulligan. It's funny. My kids and I in the driveway, we always do free-through contests, like best out of five, best out of 10. And I always tell my kids they get one mulligan and they'll miss one. I get one more. I start on a make though. So he can't have that. Right?

15:13Michael Batnick:No starting on a make anymore. Here's a great line from Rob Copeland who wrote the book on, what did he write the book on? He wrote the Ray Dalio book. Okay. Was it called The Fund? I can't remember the name of it. I think so. So Rob wrote in the New York Times, the story of situational awareness is in some way an old Wall Street lesson learned by every generation and then forgotten by the next. It's true.

15:38Ben Carlson:Perfect. Every, there's this idea that you can like learn about history by reading books and studying the past and learning from mistakes of others. And that's great. I'm sure like 2 % of the population can do this. Most people just need to pay their tuition to the market gods by themselves. Everyone needs to find out whether they can be a stock picker like Warren Buffett. Everyone has that itch in them. Can I do it? And then you figure out you can't and then you move out. Like everyone has to try this stuff. I'm going to time the market. I can do it. Everyone has to do this stuff themselves once.

16:04And obviously it's the same with big hedge fund managers.

16:08Ben Carlson:I wonder how much of a lockup there is because some of this is in private money. I haven't read much about that because you said the numbers.

16:15Michael Batnick:So I'm guessing that what's remaining is 95 % Anthropic and whatever private investment he has.

16:24Ben Carlson:Because it says the month-to-date performance was down almost 70%, but the year-to-date performance is still up 80%. I think Anthropic is up 400 % this year. So I'm guessing that's a lot of it. Like the fact that this, for most people, the fact that this kid got them into Anthropic was probably worth the investment in the fund. I mean, I think in many ways, like, Hey, investing in this fund got off, got us access to Anthropic. That's good enough.

16:48Michael Batnick:The investors in this fund, like this was a velvet rope type of, uh, type of hedge fund. You had to be somebody to get in or know somebody to get in. These are not, this is not like retail money. That's going to demand their money back. Like, I'm sure if anything, I'm not sure. I would suspect that if his investors were going to demand their money back or give him more, they would probably give him more.

17:11Ben Carlson:Yeah, he's going to get a second chance. This is what we do in America. We give people like this a second chance because they're smart. Well, hold on, but the first chance is not over. Like, the fund didn't wind down. He's still alive. Well, I know, but this is the kind of thing that you would think investors would go, all right, give my money back. But they can't because there's a lot of private investments, right? That's why, again, this guy should be a VC investor. He should not be a public market investor. I almost, I'm willing to, I'm willing to say that he's not going to be a successful public market investor.

17:37Ben Carlson:If that's his risk management. Nobody is. What do you mean? Nobody is.

17:42Michael Batnick:There are very few, very, very few, uh, name, name brands in public stocks. They all blow up. Every one of them. I dude, I wrote, I wrote this post in 2015, I think. Like who's the, who I did this, this silly post where i wrote i i did like a clip art of every famous financier every famous investor by the year that they were born and i put it on a chart of the dow oh that's right to show when

18:14Ben Carlson:the legendary ones were yeah that's right there hasn't been any since really right i showed it

18:18Michael Batnick:by their birth year like and the most recent one was like einhorn and cliff fastness and they were born in the 60s.

18:26Ben Carlson:But Einhorn got his comeuppance too by betting against the tech stocks for years.

18:30Michael Batnick:But this is my point. Like there are no, there are very, very few. Every one that we crown eventually, that's why Buffett is so impressive.

18:38Ben Carlson:And the thing is, he did use leverage. He used it leverage in the most intelligent way possible though. And how come no one has learned from him? None of these people have learned from him. None of them. It's kind of amazing.

18:51Michael Batnick:Well, Einhorn's tried to start an insurance company. I think I think Ackman did it too. Anyway, the market is like an ocean and eventually washes everybody away.

19:03Ben Carlson:My joke a couple weeks ago was that, you know, when the tide recedes, that's when you find out who's been swimming nude. There's a lot of nude beaches in South Korea. How's that? The thing is, the market these days, because it moves so fast, everyone feels like a genius or an idiot, and it can happen in like a week. So I tweeted this out. Have you ever been to a naked beach? in europe i think i did yeah i mean it's just a lot of chicks with armpit hair though so it was a bush yeah yeah no we we did a when i was in vienna we went to a water park and uh people chicks are going topless down the water slides it's just normal in europe that's the thing uh so i wrote this on july 29th six out of the seven mag seven are incisable drawdowns right now so six out of the seven we're down 15 or more and microsoft down 30 these things are getting killed So two days later, and this Apple was at all-time highs.

19:52Ben Carlson:Two days later, Apple was down almost 15%. Microsoft was up almost 20%. Meta was down 10%. Amazon was up 20%. And they've moved more since then. I think Microsoft is 30 % off the lows or something. The moves that happen in these stocks now that can make you feel like you pound your chest and be like, I'm the smartest investor in the world. And then you feel like an absolute dumbass a week later. That's what this market does now. That's what, so semiconductor stocks. People felt, again, invincible. and then they crash in an instant. And then in one day, after Leopold's fund got, I don't know, I guess we're still splitting hairs on whether that's a bailout or not.

20:27Ben Carlson:Bailout? No. Got bailed out by Citadel? No, no, no, no. A bailout is like... Margin call? I think it's borderline bailout. After that happened, SanDisk was up 25%. We had these stocks up in one day, 15, 20, 25%.

20:42Michael Batnick:It's really amazing. It was not a bailout. I'm sorry. That's like a governmental, term. That's like taxpayer term.

20:50Ben Carlson:Okay. If Citadel didn't step in, what would have happened?

20:53Michael Batnick:What do you mean? They would have got marching called. Okay.

20:57Ben Carlson:And that would have cascaded things even more probably, right? I think Citadel stepping in was the thing that really stopped the flow though.

21:03Michael Batnick:Yeah. I just think a bailout is a special

21:05Ben Carlson:sort of term. I don't know. I think it's kind of a bailout. What's the thing from Warren Pies here? The Leopold liquidation pushed semiconductor single stock volatility to 75%. This is only the third time has reached this level. The other two instances were March 2020 and April 2025. We're in a new world of moves and volatility.

21:25Michael Batnick:We just are. So Todd Stone has this chart, this table that shows the year, the gain of the S &P 500, and the top 10 or the top 25 contributions to the year-to-date gain, right? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And six of the last eight years, I'm sorry, six of the eight years at the top of the list where the top 10 stocks contributed the biggest to the overall index has happened since 2020. Wow. We are in a new world, obviously. Historical data points have been rendered not completely useless, but mostly useless. So the type of data points that I love that I've said a million times on the show are behavioral based.

22:13Okay. So for example, I love stuff like this.

22:18Michael Batnick:Jason Gebford tweeted, the NASIC 100 lurched, great word, from a three-month low to the best gain in three months during an uptrend. So to me, that sort of data point is human psychology. and I don't care if that happens in 2026 or 1949. Like that is human behavior and human behavior is immutable. You agree with that? Yeah. All right. Humanity is the one constant. So Jason says the April 2000 signal sucked after three months, but otherwise, three months later, it's pretty damn good. Positive 86 % of the time. Again, the data point is very clear. You're in an uptrend. stocks are at a three month low and then they have their best gain in their best gain in three months.

23:12Michael Batnick:So that's like, oh, so that's, you're in a, you're in a bull market. You get a shakeout, right? Cause there's bad news. Oh, what's going on is bull market over and then rip best gain in three months, everybody back in the boat and everybody gets back in the boat because the fears were proven to be nothing more than fears.

23:29Ben Carlson:So we are recording this pre-market and on a pre-market basis after everything that's going on, two wars, gas price spike, inflation is sticky, bond, long bond yields are rising, hedge fund blowups, software crash, semi crash, new Fed chair that everyone apparently hates. We're going to get to that later. And we're back at all time highs. And when I poo poo stuff like rising bond yields and government debt crises, maybe I put too much faith in the stock market sometimes. But this is why I don't worry because the stock market's not worried. And maybe that's naive of me. But when I poo-poo all these risks and people say, oh, you're blind, just wait.

24:07Ben Carlson:This is why. The stock market doesn't care because corporations are still making money. I made this joke on Twitter. I was walking around the other night and every bar and restaurant, as far as the eye could see, my wife and I went to Chicago. And on a Tuesday night, we walk around the river, we went to dinner and every restaurant is full of people. On a Tuesday night, we do the river walk afterwards for a nice little stroll after dinner down to the lake. Every bar is packed with people. And I wanted to just grab some by the shoulders and shake them and go, don't you know the 30 years at 5.3 %?

24:37Ben Carlson:What are you doing, you idiot? Right?

24:41Michael Batnick:The 30 years at 5.3 % and you're drinking an IPA. A hazy IP.

24:44Ben Carlson:You're drinking a$19 cocktail.

24:48Michael Batnick:Ben, Josh and I went out to, we're at a dinner the other night.

24:54Michael Batnick:And somebody was asking us or talking to us about the semiconductor blob or whatever. And I was like, listen, what do I know? I still think it's like very, very early in the story. And I think the shortage of computer and all that sort of stuff is a real thing. And he said to me, he's like, yeah, but you're always bullish or something like that. He's like, I don't know if he said always. He's like, yeah, but you're bullish. And I was like, it sort of stopped me in my tracks a little bit. Like, huh, is that how this person and other think of me as a market commentator? And I feel like I call balls and strikes.

25:26Michael Batnick:The market starts to go lower because it's responding to things that are like bad. And you've been barred before. And yes, my views will change alongside the market. But the market is so clearly telling you that this is a bull market. To your point, I think we said this last week, like we lost the MAG-7, we lost the semiconductors, and the equate is an all-time high and ripping. Like what are you barrage about?

25:47Ben Carlson:Right, when the MAG-7 lost, people got, oh, well, it's just semiconductors holding up the market now. Then semiconductors crashed, the market's still up. It's like, okay, what's your next X thing? But that's, it's always been the case though, that the bearish argument just sounds smarter and the bulls like, you're just a naive idiot. Yeah, we sound stupid. Right.

26:05Michael Batnick:And you're 18 of a bull market. Just wait. I respect risk more than most. I'm terrified when the market falls. Right? So like, I don't view myself as a... And I keep saying this is going to end badly.

26:18Ben Carlson:It just is. Everything's, Tom Cruise, cocktail. Everything ends badly or it wouldn't end. It is at some point, but enjoy the ride while it's here. Okay, Goldman Sachs had a good -

26:30Michael Batnick:By the way, are you in on the new Tom Cruise movie, Digger?

26:33Ben Carlson:I don't know. I'm cautiously pessimistic. I saw the preview. I have faith in my guy TC, but I don't know, man. I don't know. It's a big swing. It's a big swing. We'll see. I give him credit for trying something besides a 12th Mission Impossible movie. Uh, Goldman Sachs had this, uh, good piece. I pulled a few good charts. They have really good charts. So they say tech equity weight is now above tech bubble levels, which some people look at and go, Oh my gosh. But like, duh, this should be way higher. Technology should be a huge part of the market. Of course it should be way. This doesn't, this doesn't scare me at all.

27:10Ben Carlson:These companies are way better than, all right. We were talking about, we were talking about this the other day offline. I think, uh, 60, 40 portfolio bonds have just stunk this, this decade. I think You talked about this last week. Like bonds for the last five years, returns have been, you got nothing. Goldman says they have a rolling three-year 60-40 portfolio and says balanced portfolios have delivered strong returns in recent years. This is diversification in action. Bonds have stunk. Stocks have done well. 60-40 portfolio is up 12, 13, 14 % per year in the last three years. It's done really well.

27:44Ben Carlson:That's diversification. That's why anyone who ever says 60-40 is dead is trying to say diversification is dead. and it's not going to die. This is interesting. 10-year rolling real returns. Inflation adjusted. And this is 60-40 portfolio and then the world portfolio. I think that's like everything. They include like private markets and like the global, they try to build a global portfolio. This, it looks high, but if you look back at, I don't know, it's not super above median or mean historically. just eyeballing it no it looks yeah right there's been plenty of other times when this has been way higher this is not something that jumps out at you correct if you showed this chart to somebody

28:29Michael Batnick:blindly like not even a market person just said like just come into this chart is there anything uh that jumps out at you they would say no yeah it's on the uptrend that's it all right uh let's talk more about investor behavior stuff so great chart from bloomberg shows the goldman sachs basket of retail favorite stocks. And this was the worst monthly performance since 2023. How about that? So what's in there? I don't know for sure because it's proprietary, but I'm guessing Palantir is in there. And I'm guessing a lot of the Max 7 names are in there. Micron, Sandisk.

29:06Ben Carlson:Yeah. The funny thing is, this used to be Goldman Sachs' basket of favorite hedge fund stocks. And now it's retail. Remember, that's what they used to show. And I'm guessing, my guess would be, if you took the basket of retail stocks and the basket of hedge fund stocks, they're exactly the same. I think you're probably right.

29:23Michael Batnick:I think you're probably right. All right, so Gunjan from the Wall Street Journal tweeted this. So she tweeted this on Wednesday. So this happened last Tuesday. So retail sold a net$243 million of single stocks yesterday, meaning last Tuesday. The largest one-day outflow since the COVID crash. Holy shit.

29:47Ben Carlson:So that was the mini capitulation because the next day the market bounced, right? I think so. So I think that was like the, okay, interesting.

29:56Michael Batnick:Listen to Apple's earnings call. It's Tim Cook's last one, so I want to listen. They never say anything interesting. They didn't say anything interesting this time either, but I wanted to listen. And they were talking about the strength of the iPhone 17 because of their AI capabilities. And I got to tell you, AI can't do shit for Apple. You can't do anything. It's still, when I talk to text, I know there's been a common gripe of mine, but if I say Knicks, it writes next. And I have to say like, no, Knicks. And it literally cannot get it right. I was in upstate New York over the weekend. We took Logan to Rookie Day, which is, he's going to sleepaway camp next year.

30:38Michael Batnick:So we spent the day there. So we dropped him off and I went to Hyde Park, which I've always wanted to visit. Hyde Park is famously the home of FDR. And there is a Vanderbilt mansion down the road. So we had nothing but time, plenty of time. So we took a drive there. Lovely, by the way. Great time. Very historic of you. Well, you know, I'm a big history guy. And I took a bunch of pictures and I wanted to send them to my dad. And I should be able to say to Apple, hey, Siri, send all of the pictures from Hyde Park to my dad. and it can't even do, I mean, it can't do, isn't that basic shit? It's hard to believe.

31:20I had to change my wife,

31:23Ben Carlson:I had to go from Courtney to wife in my phone because I would say, call Courtney, and it would always call Corey, or it would do some other name, and I'd say, call Courtney, and it wouldn't work, so I had to change it to wife. So it just says wife in my phone now because that's what it gets.

31:36Michael Batnick:It's no better than the automated services that you're like, you know, when Larry David is yelling at the incurb?

31:42Ben Carlson:It really is hard to believe, and guess what? The stock market doesn't care.

31:47Michael Batnick:No, you're right, it doesn't.

31:48Ben Carlson:We care. All right, let's talk about South Korea. The KOSPI index at one point was up, I don't know, I think it had doubled for the year. And then in five weeks, I mean, it's a semiconductor trade, but in five weeks, the entire market, which is I think the sixth biggest stock market in the world, collapsed 40%. And it's still today up almost 50 % on the year. So we got a 40 % drop in five weeks and it's still up 50 % on the year. Unbelievable. It really is. Again, one of the biggest stock markets in the world. But so that story is interesting.

32:22Michael Batnick:So they got liquidated.

32:24Ben Carlson:Yes. I think the number was 3.5 % of the entire population of South Korea got a margin call.

32:31Michael Batnick:Can that be? It's a pretty high number. That's what I read. All right. So they have a great chart showing the one day change and then they show individual investors net buy value for Kospi Index and then they show foreign investors. So individual investors got liquidated and foreign investors bought the shit out of the dip. It is, by the way, it's Tuesday morning, 938, and the S &P 500 has gapped higher, meaning it opened higher to a new all-time high. Ding, ding, ding. Meaning the highest the stock market has ever been in the history of mankind. Isn't these people getting margin called

33:06Ben Carlson:and Leo getting margin called? Like, this is the thing as a stock market investor. You just have, survival is the key. Just never get yourself in the position where you're a forced seller. That's like, it sounds so simple and people just can't help themselves. Ben, one of the things that I've been saying over the last couple of years is,

33:26Michael Batnick:one of the things that people use to dismiss the bull market or cast doubt is all of the degenerate behavior. Oh, look at people buying stocks and leverage and they're buying quantum computing and whatever the next hot thing is. and they use that as a way to dismiss the validity of everything else that's happening in the market. And I understand that impulse, right? It makes sense. Like, oh, there's so much speculation this is going to end badly and it's going to end soon. I get it. And what I've said to that is, listen, we live in a world of 24-7 trading, of hype, everything that happens with hyperspeed, with the message boards, and people able to colonize on stocks way quicker than they have in the past.

34:10Michael Batnick:Do not let that behavior distract you because that is never going away. That sort of degenerate behavior is with us literally forever, unless there is another Great Depression. People will continue to speculate. It's only accelerating. Robin had said that in the call. It's only accelerating, the speculation. Okay, so I really love to see the fact that in this bull market, a lot of that behavior is getting punished. Not just in the double levered semiconductor trade, But all of the meme stocks, all of the, we have our degenerate Dow stocks, which is basically a basket of meme stocks. And they got cut in half.

34:50So while the legitimate bull market is reaching new all-time highs, the degenerate bull market

34:57Michael Batnick:is in shambles. Yeah. How could you not love to see that? Yeah, this is not like the meme stock stuff with GameStop back in the day.

35:06Ben Carlson:That was AMC and GameStop. That was so stupid. Right? This is different now. People have kind of learned. The retail crowd. It's different. All right. This is interesting. Jeff Patak, friend from Morningstar. Behavior Gap is alive and well. So the DRAM ETF, DRAM. DRAM. Right? So he's saying since inception in April, it had$26 billion in net assets by the end of July. This is before the fall. I think the DRAM fell 30 % or something. Maybe 30 % or 40%. He asked, how did it get so big so fast? He said it gathered$26 billion in net inflows over that span, which is kind of crazy. But here's the thing.

35:46Ben Carlson:Over that time, it had massive returns. So it has$26 billion in assets. $26 billion came in. But the fund earned 102 % return over that time. So what does that mean? What does it mean? Average investor lost money in the fund. investors lost 1.6 billion dollars in DRAM because they came in so late and then it then it crashed is there something though i understand how i understand how like the math works

36:17Michael Batnick:because on average about it it's a calculation that makes sense but is there like something weird in that calculation that like makes it true but also not exactly true like misleading

36:28Ben Carlson:What this tells you is that investors did not take part in those huge gains. They came in later.

36:33Michael Batnick:No, it tells you the average dollar didn't do well. It doesn't tell you the actual median investor's experience. Well, that's true. It tells you the average dollar.

36:45Ben Carlson:Right.

36:45Michael Batnick:But it just tells you that, look, if you look on the chart, most of the money flowed in as it peaked. But for example, and I don't think this is the case. I'm just using this. if an advisor put this in their model portfolio. Now, I know it's 26 billion. It's a huge number. So that's not the case. But like, I think that some of these, sometimes these data can be factually accurate, but not telling the entire story. Like, I don't think the average investor in DRAM lost money. Could be wrong.

37:12Ben Carlson:On a dollar basis, of course, because so much money came in. That's the point. The money flows in. Same thing happened with ARK. All the money flowed in after the performance had already been good. And then it crashed. Right.

37:23Michael Batnick:More true than not true. Maybe I'm nitpicking. A little bit.

37:27Ben Carlson:All right. You mentioned Todd Stone earlier. This is a crazy chart. Cumulative daily ETF equity flows. He does it. He puts this out by year going back to 2017. And each year, it shows the equity flows throughout the year. And obviously, it goes up until the end, total flows. And each year, it goes up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Each year is higher than the next. 2026 is in another stratosphere. Look at this chart. This is insane. it's 50 % higher than it was last year, which was a record.

37:58Michael Batnick:I'm going to, so we have Todd on TCAF next week. I'm going to talk about this because what can be responsible for this gap? Like obviously DRAM is in here.

38:12Ben Carlson:I'm thinking as part of it.

38:14Michael Batnick:Is it? It's probably, it's probably SMH too.

38:16Ben Carlson:It's gotta be all AI shit. I'm guessing it's, that's a huge number though. That money just keeps flowing into these ETFs. And part of it, again, we've talked is like retirees rolling over the 401ks, right? Maybe going from mutual funds to ETFs. I don't know if that's a big part of it. No, no, no.

38:31Michael Batnick:Because the damn burst. This is like, this is different. It's massive, right? Yeah. It's wild.

38:40Michael Batnick:Okay. We spoke about this a couple of weeks ago. And I guess it's happening. So CNBC reports, Trump Media and Technology Group's new paid data service launched on August 1st, providing faster access to truth social posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts on the platform. Truth API, the new application program interface, is designed to give firms a direct, licensed, real-time feed to the platform's most market-moving truths. Interim CEO Kevin McGirt said in a release announcing the launch.

39:12Michael Batnick:Is that legal?

39:16Ben Carlson:I can't believe that they're not even trying to put some sort of positive spin on this and go, hey, whatever we earn on this, we're going to give it away to people in need or something. I don't know.

39:26Michael Batnick:By the way, Trump's family is the largest shareholder in Trump media, the public company that operates Truth Social, obviously. But imagine companies were doing this. Imagine Apple's like, hey, Truth Apple, or whatever they're going to call it, where we're just going to release our earnings a little bit, you know, maybe like five minutes early.

39:43Ben Carlson:And you read about these politicians historically, and they seem like heroes. Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt. And I just feel like we're just never getting those type of superhero politicians again. Because if they came up today, they wouldn't want to be the president.

40:00Michael Batnick:And also, you kind of need to be a dick in the social media world to rise to the top. Like, I don't care what party you belong to. Like, if you're going to galvanize the masses, you have to just say the stupidest shit that appeals to the dumbest people. And unfortunately, that is.

40:20Ben Carlson:South Park called this in 2004. And they had this whole episode about how they were voting for a school mascot. And Kyle didn't want to vote because the two options were a douche and a turd sandwich. And I feel like that's just, that's where we are. South Park, again, they were right. The rest of our life, we're going to be voting between a douche and a turd sandwich. All right. I have a theory about the Fed that I've talked about for a while. Uh, Joe Weisenthal tweeted, uh, Bank of America says the market's reaction to Kevin Warsh resembles an emerging market facing a credibility shock. And he talked about how the curve, when he talked, I mean, all the macro people I follow hated his press conference and seemed to think that he's, he said he's not going to talk as much.

40:58Ben Carlson:He's not going to communicate as much. They didn't, he's getting rid of forward guidance. All these people said, this is crazy. And so Bank of America said he got a steeper curve. Equities went down in a weaker dollar. And that's like what you'd see from EM banks. Now, the macro people, probably not great. The macro people are up in arms about this. The people I follow are not big fans of Warsh. They don't like his press conferences. They don't like the way he flip-flops on issues. They think he's too political. I have a theory, and I think it's going to be put to the test, that the Fed really only matters like 5 % of the time.

41:27Ben Carlson:And it matters when they are the lender of last resort and when we are in a crisis. That's the only time the Fed really matters. The other time, I think it's basically astrology for middle-aged men. that talk about the Fed's forecasts. I think the Fed really, honestly, besides in a crisis, doesn't do much. Their forecasts are always wrong. They never help out when there's an actual bubble. They always are way too late to the party. They want to come in and rescue after the fact. That's the only thing that the Fed is good for. Am I wrong? I don't think so. This may be a test where he's going to say, we're not going to do this stuff anymore, and the macro people are up in arms.

42:04Ben Carlson:They hate it. Yeah, I still, the Fed is astrology for finance bros. I think that's what the Fed is. Like, their forecasts are never right. So what, well, it's an expectation function and blah, blah, blah. They're never right. Who cares? Well, I don't think anybody's, I don't know if that's true.

42:25Michael Batnick:They talk, they set guidance, they set interest rates. I mean, it doesn't, it matters.

42:28Ben Carlson:I just think 25 basis points here or there doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. it's when we need them to really act. That's the only time the Fed matters. That's my, all right. And when we need them to act, it matters almost more than anything. All right. So I have a little new segment here. I rewatched Obsession, which I think you did too. I saw from Recommendations. And as I was rewatching again, I thought, what if you did one wish willow for the economy? I love this. Okay. So I did one wish willow for the economy. And so you break it and you go, I wish we had 3 % mortgage rates again.

43:02Ben Carlson:and the economy would go, great. Here's a massive recession. Enjoy.

43:10Two, I wish income inequality would improve. Break it.

43:15Ben Carlson:Fine. Here's a pandemic. Here's 9 % inflation. Everyone hates it. Stocks fall 80%. You're welcome. Three, I wish home prices would fall. I want lower home prices. Break it. Okay, fine. Here's a global financial crisis. Good luck buying a home the banks won't lend to you anymore. Housing prices are down, though. There.

43:34Michael Batnick:I love this concept. How did I do? I love it. I also rewatched Rewatchables. I rewatched Rewatchables. I rewatched Obsession thanks to the Rewatchables. What a f***ing great movie. Holy shit. So I rewatched it with Robin. And at the end of the movie, she goes, that was so stupid. And I immediately responded, you're an idiot. I mean, how do you not like that movie? So now, she listened to the Rewatchables with me. We listened to it on the way up. And she got more into it. There were so many Easter eggs in that movie. So many things that I -

44:02Ben Carlson:It was fun to watch it again the second time because the first time you're just going, what is going to happen here? Oh my gosh.

44:06Michael Batnick:It's very similar to rewatching Sixth Sense because the first time you are so immersed in what's happening and the second time you see it through a new lens. What a movie. Wow.

44:15Ben Carlson:It really is. Yes, it was just as good on the second time for me too. So I talked about the mortgage rate thing. It's back to almost 7%, 6.8 % last week for the 30-year mortgage. How does anybody buy a house? How is anybody going to buy a house? It first hit 6 % in the fall of 2022 when inflation did. And everyone, including us, thought like, okay, this is short-lived. Like, rates will go back down. Just wait a little bit. It'll be like a year or two.

44:40Michael Batnick:Whoa, whoa, whoa. Rates are going to go back down. Credit to us, we did not say that. Are you sure? I'm positive. Not about the rates, I per se. I don't remember what we said about rates. But when people said, should I wait to buy a house because I think prices are going down? Oh, okay.

44:50Ben Carlson:We definitely did not do it. You're right. We did not do it. We said, you do not time the housing market based on rates. Don't try to play that game.

44:55Michael Batnick:In 2022, we said, like, do not wait. Because imagine people were going to buy a house in 2022. Now, in fairness, a lot of people were just priced out, which obviously is horrendous. It's four years later. It's crazy.

45:09Ben Carlson:Again, people have been, and I'm sure there were people who bought, who did adjustable rate mortgages and said, fine, I'll do the adjustable rate mortgage. It'll be a lower monthly payment. And then I'll refinance when rates fall.

45:19Michael Batnick:Yeah, well, it's almost five years. By the way, I think this is why I don't really love when you poo-poo interest rates. because, yeah, the stock market might not be bothered by it.

45:26Ben Carlson:Okay, so this is why, though. So this is a good segue to my next one. This is the treasury yield curve. If you show this treasury yield curve, the curve one, so this is from Exhibit A, and it shows it now versus 12 months ago. You can see, really, the changes in the belly of the curve. Boy, that's a really fun thing to say, right? If you're in finance and you say the belly of the curve, that sounds like...

45:44Michael Batnick:Ben, for our non-virgin listeners, what is the belly of the curve?

45:49Ben Carlson:The belly of the curve is like the middle. So the two to ten, two to seven years, like it's the middle of the curve. And when that, that's, you say that's the belly. The belly's moving like, oh, the belly of the curve looks really attractive right now. And if you showed this yield curve to a finance student in Econ 101 and you say, this is the yield curve, what do you think? They go, this looks normal. This is the way it should look. This is the way a yield curve should look. And so I agree. I poo-poo rising rates for the economy because I don't think it's going to lead to a government debt crisis.

46:16Ben Carlson:I really don't. I think people who worry about that are wrong. You know what? You're right. It does impact mortgage rates. That's where the bigger reason is. And I wrote a whole blog post about this saying that, yes, the mortgage rates, that's the thing that matters more than deficits and government debt crises and all this stuff. It's the mortgage rates.

46:31Michael Batnick:You know which belly is not looking attractive? Mine. What's that? I look terrible. I wore one of my Tommy John shirts the other day. Like the, what is it called? Slim fit one? I can't remember what it's called. It's like the tight one. And Robin said, she just gave me a look. I'm like. A look of disgust? Yeah, she's like, what are you wearing? It's like bunching up your belly.

46:57Ben Carlson:Time to call your personal trainer again.

47:01Michael Batnick:Come on. I'm out of control. Do it. I'm out of control, Ben. All right, this is a dystopic scene. I went to get lunch the other day. So I'm in the city once a week. I'm in the city on Thursday, and that's my very busy day. I don't have time to grab a big meal. So what do I do? I grab a smoothie. That part of the story is completely irrelevant. But there's a place called Pura Vida Miami. And it's right across the park. And you walk in. I think I've said this before. And it's like Abercrombie and Fitch for lunch. It just smacks you in the face with a fragrance. It's like, it's bizarre. Oh, I went to this place.

47:41Michael Batnick:Last time I was in New York, I got a salad or something. Oh, yeah? Okay. All right. Anyway, it's wildly popular. So I pre-order my smoothie, I go and I pick it up, and there's 25 dudes with bike helmets on waiting to deliver people a$28 salad. And it was just, imagine an alien landing on Earth. Or even like us seven years ago were shown this picture and described what was happening. You'd be like, you'd be very confused.

48:12Ben Carlson:Did you watch the Good Fortune movie with Seth Rogen and Keanu Reeves? I have not. Is that on Apple? I don't know. It's not on Apple. Anyway, go ahead. There's a whole thing about this. He's about this thing. All the DoorDash drivers waiting in line for someone. It's, yes, I won't spell that for you, but it's a whole part of the movie.

48:29Michael Batnick:Anyway, it was a pretty dark scene. All right.

48:32Ben Carlson:On the other side of that, the Wall Street Journal. They interviewed these people who just have to have multiple engines on their boats. And this is probably more in New York than it is in Michigan. But they interviewed this guy who wanted this big boat in Miami, and he wanted four boats, four motors on his boat, okay? And these high horsepower outboards range from 200 to 600 horsepower and cost anywhere from$20 ,000 to$70 ,000 per motor. And they said they've helped the boating industry navigate the choppy economy better than others, making price discretionary goods such as RVs. And the whole point was, why do you need this much power on your boat?

49:07Ben Carlson:And it was like, listen, I have to get to the fishing hole as fast as possible, as fast as humanly possible. And my thing as a boater is the fishing boats on the lake, those are like the F-250s on the highway. They just drive with reckless abandon. They dart across the lake as fast as humanly possible because they want to get to those fishing holes for other people. It's hilarious to me that you need that much power for a fishing boat. People have money. They're going to buy it. Yeah.

49:38Michael Batnick:Ben, we've been talking about GLP-1s and the impact that they're having on the stock market. This is wild. So this was at the cover store in Barron's. Morgan Stanley raised its 2035 GLP-1 sales prediction from$150 billion to$190 billion from diabetes and obesity alone. That would mean 30 % penetration by then amongst obese Americans, up from 6 % last year. I'm shocked that only 6 % of obese Americans are taking this drug.

50:11Ben Carlson:That's very surprising to me. I wonder what percentage of the population is obese. 30 to 40 percent? Sure, sounds right. So there's a massive market for this. I do wonder if there are a lot of older doctors who aren't quite on board yet with this stuff, who kind of go, no, this is voodoo stuff. We're not doing this. And it's going to take a group of, we have to push a lot of the baby boomer doctors out of the way, no offense to them, and get a new, younger crop to get these and really start writing those scripts.

50:45Michael Batnick:People have very strong feelings about other people taking weight loss drugs.

50:52Ben Carlson:And you shouldn't. This should not be a stigma at all. People should not be ashamed of doing this. All right, Ben, I'm coming clean. I want to take it. Do it. I don't care. Try it. You already have irritable bowel syndrome. It's not going to make it any worse.

51:07Michael Batnick:Hey, that's between us.

51:08Ben Carlson:Okay.

51:12Ben Carlson:I mean, I've heard of people trying to like microdose this stuff or take it so they can lose some weight.

51:17Michael Batnick:Yeah, I want to microdose.

51:19Ben Carlson:Go for it. I don't care. It's going to make you healthier. If it gives you a jump start, go. But obviously, the thing people say is, well, if you want it to really work, you have to take it. You can't stop. You have to keep taking it or you have to change your lifestyle.

51:33Michael Batnick:My problem is I am a child. I have no willpower. This stuff changes your willpower. This is my one wish, Willa. All right. Give it a try. I wish to not be a disgusting mess. All right. This is a tweet from Sam Altman. Cool use case of chat GBT work I heard last night. Connect your family calendars and explain your kids' interests. Every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid's soccer game that afternoon, one kid's upcoming birthday, some news, et cetera. So Bucca Capital quote tweeted that and said, over the next few years, you are going to have to fight with everything you've got to retain your humanity.

52:14Michael Batnick:They will try to convince you to give up connecting with each other, to give up truly being alive. It will be the most important fight of your whole life. Now, I love that he said that earnestly, and he's not joking. I mean, obviously, Sam's tweet is so absurd. So, so absurd. These people are not people. And I'm not saying all of San Francisco, because not everybody is like that. Not all the tech people are so lost in the sauce. but what the f*** are you talking about? No. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not turning my child's calendar into a podcast.

52:48Ben Carlson:Well, this is why I don't really believe any of their dire predictions because they don't understand human beings. This is like a robot pretending to be a human in a lot of ways. They don't, they, these are, again, intelligent people with no sort of, it's funny because I was thinking about this the other day about the AI world that we're going to be stepping into. So we had a swing set in our backyard for like 10 years now and it was just the kids don't use it anymore and it's kind of falling apart and the wood is getting moldy. And I wanted to take it down.

53:12Michael Batnick:Put a data center there.

53:13Ben Carlson:Yeah, we're going to do some work for our backyards. I wanted to take it down. And my neighbor, when he had his take it down a few years ago, called a company. They came in like a half hour. Cut it down, took it out, hauled it away. And we had nothing to do last Saturday because the kids got back from camp. And I said, George, get some gloves on and grab a hammer. We're going back there. We're going to take it down ourselves. So we took all these tools. I took a chainsaw and a hammer and we hammered this thing and George and I took the whole swing set down ourselves and we broke stuff and he had the best time of his life hitting stuff.

53:41Ben Carlson:I love that. And I thought like, do people who work with their hands and do physical activity, are they going to be the happiest people in our new tech overlord world? Like Peter Gibbons in Office Space, did he have it figured out where he was more happy being a construction worker at the end than he was working in front of a desk? And I do wonder that the people who retain that physicality and that use their hands more, those are going to be the happiest people in the AI world. don't you think we all just got to get out there and chop some wood it was so much fun i we we were my he's my son is i i felt like he's gonna probably hammer my toe or something or and uh we made it out with an unscathed thankfully using chainsaws and hammers but hey i got it done it's done you have a chainsaw it's a very little chainsaw you don't be honest i have a chainsaw but it's a i mean it's like this big so on the other end of the spectrum um

54:36Michael Batnick:I have this personality like defect where I will just let shit linger unresolved forever. Like that, that Alexa thing that's been plugged in making that sound since I moved in 11 months ago, whatever. Yeah.

54:48Ben Carlson:See, I have the OCD thing where if I have something to do, it annoys my wife a lot because I have to, I have the blinders and I have to get it done. I'd rather it be you

54:56Michael Batnick:than me because I have the opposite of OCD, whatever that is. So these posters behind me have been literally in bubble wrap since the end of last September when I moved into this house. And Trevor, one of our multi-talented financial advisors, Trevor's a photographer. He's a man of many talents. And he came over last week and he said, what do you got? You got some housework for me? I said, do I? I have a whole punch list for you. So he did a great job hanging these pictures. There's five inches in between. He really set me up. And while he was doing this, I went outside. We were going to go on the water.

55:34Michael Batnick:When he was done, I had some people over. I tried to inflate. Robin got a paddleboard. And it's an inflatable paddleboard. Jeez, I can't say that word. Paddleboard. An inflatable paddleboard. I probably should have that whole part out, but whatever. So I have an electric pump. And bet I shit you not. It was just a chef's kiss. I couldn't figure out how to get the air into the paddleboard. Like the screw on it, you had to like push it in at a certain angle. So I come inside, I'm like, Trevor, I swear to God, dude, could you help me get some air into this balloon?

56:14Ben Carlson:I have one of those too. It works pretty good once you get it out. It kind of locks on there.

56:18Michael Batnick:Not to brag, I figured it out eventually, but it was giving me a little bit of problems. Okay.

56:23Ben Carlson:This is why you outsource. I do. I really do. I can't believe you let another man hang pictures in your office no no no Robin wouldn't

56:32Michael Batnick:dude I can hang a picture

56:33Ben Carlson:oh she wouldn't let you

56:34Michael Batnick:she wouldn't let me alright this is interesting so Vlad from Robinhood during their earnings said more than 100 ,000 customers have opened the Gentic trading accounts

56:50Michael Batnick:so I think to me this is like the sports betting ETF the whole point of trading is it's fun Right. Like, am I beating the market in my trading account? No. Like, you know, you get some, sometimes you have some good months, some bad months, whatever.

57:07Ben Carlson:Yeah, but don't you think that these traders who do this and implement rules, they're going to do so much better. I mean, there's not going to be a lot of alpha here, obviously, but they're going to do so much better than they would have using their discretion.

57:20Michael Batnick:You're absolutely right. I'm not questioning the results. I'm questioning like - The entertainment value. The sustainability of this. Like, are people going to be like, are people going to be like, oh, I use an agentic thought to trade?

57:32Ben Carlson:But there's going to be so much tinkering and back and forth with the AI. Yeah. Let's try this. Let's add this. Let's change this rule. 100 ,000 people, that's a lot.

57:42Michael Batnick:All right, let's talk crypto really fast. So Duality Research had a really interesting post where he shared that since Bitcoin peaked last October, cumulative ETF outflows have reached$10.4 billion at their maximum. But$9.3 billion of that, or nearly 90 % of the entire drawdown in ETF flows, occurred during that final two-month stretch alone. So he has this great chart that showed the peak, the decline, with the outflows over a 30-day period. And we really did see capitulation over the, I guess, the May to July decline. And in fact, 30-day flows finally turned positive again. So I thought that was interesting.

58:22Michael Batnick:But I also thought what was interesting was the fact that the price has not moved with the software bounce. So we spoke to somebody from Grayscale recently, and why is Bitcoin not keeping up in the risk on rally? And my explanation was, it's software and it's being treated as such. It's being punished like a software stock. But software bounced, and Bitcoin did it.

58:42Ben Carlson:yeah that that's not we want the correlation to break down so if you look at just the bitcoin and ethereum off the highs from their the uh etfs ethereum's down more than 62 percent bitcoin's still on 50 percent and they just haven't they've then they've just kind of been dead money down there it feels dead huh it always does every time it feels deader than usual i i i i bought a little

59:08Michael Batnick:bit yesterday. Just a little, just a little, taking a little step.

59:11Ben Carlson:Okay.

59:14What?

59:15Ben Carlson:There's negative negativity and private credit now?

59:17Michael Batnick:Just complete, complete washout apathy.

59:19Ben Carlson:All right. Um, that's the thing. This is interesting. You're talking, you talked before about, um, spiking the football on people and like kicking when they're down or whatever. Like that's just something we do. And then we build them back up. There is no, like there's the apathy thing with Bitcoin. There's no people like dunking on Bitcoin right now. I see. I told like there was a lot of that in the past. Like I told you.

59:40Michael Batnick:I mean, you're right. It's not even that even. Nobody cares. You're right. All right. So there hasn't been any negative news in private credit in a while, except for the story that I missed. This is kind of this is kind of nuts. Let me read this lead from the Wall Street Journal. The problems from Mark Walter's sprawling sports and finance empire began with an internal whistleblower complaint. The complaint questioned how Walter's asset management firm, Guggenheim Investments, booked revenue from dealings with insurance companies and had drawn interest from federal prosecutors by last year. People familiar with the matter said.

1:00:16Michael Batnick:Within months, the investigation evolved to focus on investments in private credit, a lending business that has boomed on Wall Street in the past decade and a half, and which supplied the financial firepower for Walter's 2012 acquisition of the Los Angeles Dodgers alongside partners. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission are now examining how around$16 billion in loans extended to companies tied to Walter or his conglomerate TWG Global wound up on the books of insurance companies he owns after passing through a third entity. The authorities are trying to determine whether the activity constituted fraud.

1:00:59Ben Carlson:Doesn't it seem like if the Sopranos were out today, they'd somehow get into racketeering and money laundering through private credit funds? 100%. Right? It's so esoteric and hard to understand. It seems like a place where if you wanted to commit fraud, you probably could. That's obviously no knowledge of the fraud in this case.

1:01:16Michael Batnick:Speaking of that, the actor who played Big Pussy died. Yes. Did you ever watched the show yet? I'm like, I'm like stuck on the fourth season. Okay.

1:01:26Ben Carlson:That was probably one of the fastest binges I've ever done in my life is the Sopranos. At some point, I'm going to do it again as well.

1:01:35Michael Batnick:One other story that I missed that I thought was kind of interesting. So Blue Owl, this is from the FT. Blue Owl launched its technology focus fund in 2022. After consulting with UBS about creating a vehicle that would be suited to the blanks clients, at least 60 % of the money the fundraise came from UBS clients, most of whom were based in Asia. That's an interesting wrinkle to the story.

1:01:58Ben Carlson:Huh.

1:01:59Michael Batnick:Isn't that wild? Why is that? Now, this wasn't their flagship. I think it was like a couple of billion dollars. But that's something you don't think about when you're investing is who are the other LPs?

1:02:15Ben Carlson:Well, institutions, that's a lot of what they look into, or they should be.

1:02:19Michael Batnick:Anyway, Blue Owl reported earnings this week and not terrible.

1:02:27Ben Carlson:Stock market doesn't care. Stock's still at like 60%.

1:02:31Michael Batnick:All right, let's move on to... So the year-over-year iPhone revenue change. So the iPhone had been sort of... Debt is the wrong word. It just hadn't been consistently growing at all for like years and years and years. So for the last three quarters, the revenue growth grew 23%, 22%, and 22%. most, uh, best June quarter ever. I don't know. I have the iPhone 17. Doesn't do shit.

1:02:58Ben Carlson:What are you talking about? You have a supercomputer in your pocket. You're complaining about it.

1:03:01Michael Batnick:I'm not complaining about it.

1:03:02Ben Carlson:I love my phone.

1:03:03Michael Batnick:What does it do

1:03:03Ben Carlson:better than the 16? Oh, the battery doesn't die. I don't know.

1:03:11Ben Carlson:I have no idea. And I'm sure there's a thread on Twitter. Someone that tells you all that. I was about to scream like Mad Dog Russo.

1:03:17Michael Batnick:Like, fix Siri. Just freaking... I don't know what I have. Make it better, for God's sakes.

1:03:22Ben Carlson:Are we going to get Claude on here someday that's going to just use Claude to do it and not Siri?

1:03:31Michael Batnick:All right. People are still traveling. July 26th. I'm sorry. July 23rd was the busiest day for commercial air travel ever.

1:03:41Ben Carlson:I know everyone wants to... That's crazy. I know everyone wants to say like everything the economy is fake and it's all K-shaped and it's only rich people, but it's not. The planes are full. The restaurants. When I was walking around Chicago talking about that, all the restaurants and bars were full of young people. And I keep being told how miserable young people are because of social media and they can't buy a home. That's not what I saw. I saw a bunch of young people who probably have entry-level jobs smiling and drinking and laughing at the bars. And the planes are full and the theme parks are full and the bars and restaurants are full.

1:04:10Ben Carlson:if you still think like the economy is just all fake, then you're not paying attention to what's going on around you. You're too into social media.

1:04:15Michael Batnick:It's so, it's so nuts how social media is like a warped fourth dimension.

1:04:24Ben Carlson:Yes. People don't believe their, their eyes anymore. They just believe what they see on social media. It's really, okay. I, I, obviously I was about the wrongest I've ever been about movies, and you were right. I still can't believe the Michael Jackson movie is so big, though. That, I don't know. The child stuff didn't keep people away. Biggest pop star in the history of the world. Yeah, but I mean, it didn't end very great. Okay, so here's the thing. I had my faith in movies restored through Obsession and The Odyssey. So I went and saw The Odyssey. I'll save that for recommendations. But I think my faith in humanity has been taken away now that Spider-Man is the biggest movie ever.

1:05:01Ben Carlson:Because what are we doing here? The 11th Spider-Man movie is going to be the biggest movie ever. I thought we were done with the superhero stuff. This, to me, I don't like it.

1:05:10Michael Batnick:I love Spider-Man. And I have no problem with this.

1:05:14Ben Carlson:I watched the last one that had all three Spider-Men. Like, do we need another Spider-Man? Come on. Oh, he had his memory wiped. Everyone had their memory wiped. And we're going to do this. And there's three Spider-Men.

1:05:23Michael Batnick:I don't know why you're taking this posture. What do you mean, do we need another Spider-Man? It's the biggest movie ever. What are you talking about? I hate the superhero movies. Let's make real movies. This is not a real movie. Dude. All CGI. Bullshit. It's, by all accounts, it's an awesome movie that everybody loves. People reject bad superhero movies. I thought we were done with that. And people are embracing good. What's that? I thought we were done with a superhero movie. That's all.

1:05:48Ben Carlson:I'm sick of them. So don't f***ing watch it. Okay, I'm just saying. It just pains me a little bit that Spider-Man is going to be the biggest movie of all time. It shouldn't be. The 11th Spider-Man.

1:06:00Michael Batnick:It's not the 11th Spider-Man.

1:06:02Ben Carlson:It is. Look it up. It's literally the 11th Spider-Man. No, it's not.

1:06:04Michael Batnick:The Tobey Maguire ones and the Andrew Garfield ones are different. Do you realize how many there have been? It's really the 11th. I'm looking it up. Weird stance. You're mad that people love Spider-Man?

1:06:22Ben Carlson:Okay, if you include the Spider-Verse movies, there have been 12. Have you seen Spider-Man? Have you seen it? No, I'm sure I watch this and do it with my son. I watch all of them when they come on Disney or whatever. but and the last one was kind of cute because they brought Tobey Maguire back and Andrew Garfield I actually didn't like

1:06:35Michael Batnick:the last one I didn't enjoy that that was too much

1:06:38Ben Carlson:I actually think the Andrew Garfield ones are my favorite I can't believe Spider-Man wasn't over after number three when Tobey Maguire was dancing down the sidewalk

1:06:44Michael Batnick:I literally laughed

1:06:46Ben Carlson:in the theater

1:06:46Michael Batnick:that was so cringe when he's twirling the cane or something

1:06:52Ben Carlson:okay so do you want to like do your victory lap of movies because it was the biggest day ever or something I can't talk about it

1:07:00Michael Batnick:because I was right. So I can't talk about movies anymore.

1:07:02Ben Carlson:No, I'm giving you credit. I said I was wrong. You were right.

1:07:07Michael Batnick:Biggest. All right, Eric Davis. Brand new day. I secured the biggest opening weekend ever at the domestic box office with$360 million.

1:07:17Michael Batnick:I think it's done over a billion dollars already globally. And all the while, the Odyssey is still rocking ass. So I think it was one of the biggest weekends ever. for the box office. So I think it's wonderful. Ben, did you see Rick Moranis was at the Spaceballs? There was a Spaceballs something at... Is that Comic-Con? I don't know what that was.

1:07:45Ben Carlson:It's like the first movie he's done in forever.

1:07:48Michael Batnick:That guy was awesome. I can't wait. I haven't seen him since Little Giants. Where has he been? He retired from acting. All right, so there is... We're going to overdo it with the nostalgia stuff. The same way that we overdid it with superheroes and the same way that we're going to overdo it with video game movies. All right, Macaulay Culkin. And I'm here for this part. Macaulay Culkin is allegedly, I think Bellini was talking about this or somebody, I can't remember. If Macaulay Culkin makes a new Home Alone, it's going to do$2 billion. That could be the biggest movie of all time.

1:08:23Ben Carlson:So he's the dad, obviously? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

1:08:28Michael Batnick:Are you in for that? Or are you mad? because it's the fifth Home Alone, Ben.

1:08:32Ben Carlson:I mean, it's not going to, no, it's been like eight of them. It's not going to be any good, but I'll watch it. Oh, it'll be great. You think so? Yeah, I do. Catherine O 'Hara's not around anymore. I don't know. So is the dad. The dad, both the parents are dead now.

1:08:44Michael Batnick:Classic that guy. All right. Michael B. Jordan is doing the Thomas Crown Affair reboot.

1:08:52Ben Carlson:Okay, I love the Thomas Crown Affair, but you can't say like that's an untouchable movie by any means because it's already been redone once. Definitely not untouchable. I like heist movies.

1:09:01Michael Batnick:I'll be around for that. But leaning more into nostalgia. So Clue the Sequel series with Alicia Silverstone is ordered at Paramount+.

1:09:07Ben Carlson:Okay, come on.

1:09:08Michael Batnick:No one wants that. I mean, I don't want this. But there is truly a bull market in nostalgia.

1:09:15Ben Carlson:I still can't believe that she ends up with her stepbrother in the movie. I still am not over that to this day. Paul Rudd is her stepbrother, and she ends up dating at the end.

1:09:23Michael Batnick:That's like a very elevated porn movie, if you think about it. Very weird. so chart kid matt did uh wrote a blog post that there's a bull market nostalgia and he looked at google trends for things like um live events and vinyl and boombox and 1990s and they're all up and to the right people are yearning for yesteryear the funny thing is i've been watching a lot of the

1:09:44Ben Carlson:90s movies with my daughter as we go through our rom-coms a lot of the stuff from the 90s aged pretty well actually like the like a lot of the fashion choices they made would still be okay to There's not any that you go, oh my God, what were people thinking back then? It's really not that bad. It's not like the seventies and eighties where you go, oh, holy cow, that hair or that, you know, it's not as bad as you think.

1:10:03Michael Batnick:Well, that was the cocaine fueled. True. Mania. Well, let me ask you this. I know you're a big rom-com guy and I've learned to love rom-coms in my later years, but I was thinking about the rewatchables did Hitch and I never saw Hitch. You know why? I know it was a huge movie. I remember when it came out. I love Hitch. Is Hitch the movie where Will Smith gets his face blown up by a big... Okay. It came out in 2005. I was 20 years old. I'm not watching a rom-com by myself with my boys when I'm 20 years old. Yeah, that's true.

1:10:33Ben Carlson:You know, I did watch a lot of them with my mom, I feel like. I've always just been a sucker for rom-coms. I love Hitch. I guess that's probably right when I started dating my wife, too. So we probably saw that at the theater. I've always loved rom-coms for whatever reason. They don't make good ones anymore. You got to watch the classics.

1:10:51Michael Batnick:I thought the one with Sidney Sweeney and Glenn Powell was all right. Yeah.

1:10:55Ben Carlson:Glenn Powell should be doing a lot more of those.

1:10:57Michael Batnick:All right. Ben, so I was talking to Chris last week after my illness. And Chris said, word for word, you're never like that. You're never a sick person. I can probably think of three or four times you've been sick that I know you. Quite the juxtaposition between you accusing me of being a sickly person, like a young Teddy Roosevelt. Because Chris just doesn't pay attention, apparently.

1:11:22Ben Carlson:You're sick all the time. I'm sick regular. Okay. When you get sick, though, you get really, really sick. Well, I get very dramatic. Yeah. You're like, I was in bed for 36 hours straight. I didn't move a pinky.

1:11:39Michael Batnick:That is true. That is true. So speaking of things that happened last week,

1:11:47Michael Batnick:we, I had to catch a train early in the morning. And this happens, I know this is not unique to us. I think this is very typical. Every single time we leave the house, it's an emergency. And it's not my fault. It's always Robin's. Like every single time we leave, she has got like four bags, water bottles, can't find the keys. Is that, is that true in your household as well? Of course. Okay. Right. I think that's pretty, pretty standard. so uh i wanted to play her the clip of the cologne thing from last week i thought she would think that was cute she did not think it was cute um so we were already on we were we were already on on high alert you know we were just yelling at each other for getting me to the train like i gotta be like it's it's it's 804 yeah it happens so during the unwind i'm trying to play her play this this clip for her and she was listening and she goes God shut up like get get to the point stop talking and I got to admit I got to admit she had a point it was a lot of talking okay I we did

1:12:52Ben Carlson:get a lot of cologne recommendations for your son though and I just picked out a few because these ones have had in the past so someone said there was an actual Michael Jordan cologne in the 90s and I remember this I had it my first girlfriend gave it to me for Christmas and I I got it had to be terrible. Polo was another one. The blue polo. I definitely had that when I was in high school or college. I feel like there was multiple polo.

1:13:12Michael Batnick:There was the blue polo with the American flag sideways.

1:13:16Ben Carlson:The blue one with the silver top I had.

1:13:18Michael Batnick:I think you, I don't know if you and I were talking about this. I'm talking about somebody. I have cologne bottles from 2004. They last forever. Yeah,

1:13:27Ben Carlson:they do. Anything else on the cologne? Someone said start them out with an Axe body spray, but I think polo is not a bad way to start. All right, two short stories. I was sitting on my porch the other day, and the door to our porch, I kept opening. It was squeaking. Every time I went, I'm like, God, this is so annoying. So I went and got the WD-40, and I just sprayed it, and it goes away like magic. And I feel like, I don't know when WD-40 was invented. A hundred years ago, maybe? Like, in the past, people just had to deal with stuff that annoyed them. Now we have stuff that can, like, just fix.

1:13:58Ben Carlson:Like, WD-40 is a miracle that it works. Such a good point. Spray a little bit, like, one other thing. In my office, it's a shared office complex. I'm in an office by myself. And there's always people that come in here, like solicit, or like, hey, do you know where the person across the hall is? Like, no, by myself, I don't know them. So the guy comes in yesterday, and I'm like, yes. And he goes, do you have any paper shredding needs? I'm from West Michigan Shredding Company. And I'm like, eh. And he goes, let me guess. You're all digital now, huh? I said, yeah. And he goes, do you have a business card I can take?

1:14:25Ben Carlson:I said, no, I don't really, not a business. He goes, okay. And walked out. I'm like, man, there's a guy who's used to getting turned down. I mean, that is a company that is just, right? I'm sure there's people who still need stuff shredded. Like, I had a friend growing up who his dad was a private investigator, and he would make us take all his boxes to, like, the industrial shredder. We'd have to sit there and watch so all the papers were shredded to make sure they were. Wait, hang on. Pause. What a crazy job. Yeah, right? I think he said he mostly followed around, like, divorced couples to see if there's a, you know, are they having an affair for the divorce procedure?

1:14:58Ben Carlson:I think there's a lot of that.

1:15:00Michael Batnick:I feel like private investigators should be a more movie trope. The only one I can think of is Pat Healy.

1:15:08Ben Carlson:Yeah, you're right. But yeah, he was just a very normal guy. But I think it wasn't as exciting as you'd think from the books and movies. All right, recommendations. I'll go first because I saw The Odyssey. And it's funny. I saw The Odyssey and walked out. And the kind of movie you walk out and you go, holy shit. One of those, you know. I thought that a lot of people talk about the Cyclops scene. I thought the Trojan horse scene was like an all-time movie scene. The music and the, we were in like the Dolby atmosphere. So like the, it was like pounding our seats. Like that whole scene I thought was just an all-timer.

1:15:40Michael Batnick:He was in the horse with them. That's how he shot that. Christopher Nolan.

1:15:43Ben Carlson:So I want to be, I, so I'm still a physical magazine guy for GQ. And, uh. You know, you, you really are Gentleman Quarterly's core audience.

1:15:55Michael Batnick:Oh, totally. I'm a GQ guy. Like you're fit, you like to look good, you're run, you like clothing, you like fashion and movies.

1:16:05Ben Carlson:They had a big profile about the movie and how to make it. Because that's kind of, I was at a store in Chicago shopping for a shirt. And the guys at the counter were talking about the Odyssey. I said, I saw it last night. Did you hear how they did the Cyclops scene? Did you hear how they did this scene? Like people love talking about that stuff with the movie. So it's a very social movie. So anyway, in this story, they talk about Christopher Nolan, how he inspires both devotion and a certain kind of masochist. and they talked about how Matt Damon was watching Nolan's team do something spectacular, like build some platform off the side of a mountain really quickly that you could put a techno crane on.

1:16:35Ben Carlson:And he said the assistant director saw Damon marveling at this. And he told Damon, what's interesting is that every single person here could work on an easier movie for more money, but they don't. And that's the kind of thing you aspire to in life. Sure, there's a lot of rich people, but you're doing something that everyone wants to be at, to doing that's really cool. and that's it like no there's no there's never been a director like no one before who does what

1:16:57Michael Batnick:he does no mind blown just so well done i don't know why i've been standing on ceremony not refusing to see tenant makes no sense give it a try your your expectations are probably so low so low i i really i think it was what i forget what turned me off when it came out like people couldn't hear what was going on or it wasn't good but the story made no sense but then i listened to who's on this pod? I think Sean Amanda and Chris Ryan on the big picture talking about the top Nolan movies. And they had 10 at pretty high. It's the only one I've never seen.

1:17:31Ben Carlson:Yeah, I just didn't do it for me. A couple more. I didn't really like Shrinking Season 1 that much. I thought it was just okay. And I thought, why is Harrison Ford doing this show? But I watched Season 2 and 3. A bunch of people. And I absolutely loved it. It's a show that got better the further it went along. And seeing Harrison Ford at age 84, still occasionally tapping into his unbelievable acting. He'll bring it out every once in a while. He's kind of funny. And there's scenes with Harrison Ford and Michael J. Fox in season three. I was like, oh my God, I grew up with these two people. I grew up watching them all and Michael J.

1:17:59Ben Carlson:Fox says, the whole scene is Harrison Ford is developing Parkinson's. So Michael J. Fox is on it and it's Harrison Ford dealing with the fact that he's an old person who doesn't have much time left probably. It's really well done. I finished The Men Who Would Be King by Nicole Laporte, which is a book you recommended about DreamWorks. Awesome, right? Great Hollywood stories. I love the fact that they thought Saving Private Ryan wasn't going to work. There was some amazing gladiator stories about Russell Crowe trying to give a foot race to people. And he lost and he planted on the sand. Yeah, he was a big time psycho.

1:18:28Ben Carlson:And they were going to do a streaming service in the dot-com bubble, like before Netflix. And it didn't work out. Anyway. Yeah.

1:18:36Michael Batnick:Wait, was that the one about DreamWorks or was that about? Yeah, DreamWorks.

1:18:39Ben Carlson:It's all about Spielberg and David Geffen. Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. That was your recommendation. Good call. Very good.

1:18:46Michael Batnick:All right. after Shitty on Masters of the Universe last week, I watched it three times. I watched it once in full. Logan wanted to watch it. I get it. Great kids movie. Right. It's a kids movie. And there was some stuff for the adults, a few one-liners that the kids missed. Yeah. It was whatever.

1:19:01Ben Carlson:They like poked fun at the old He-Man and what's with a name and what are you wearing and all that. It was pretty good, I thought.

1:19:07Michael Batnick:Logan loved it. He wants to be He-Man for Halloween. Okay. All right. House of the Dragon. You know, I'm such an idiot. Somebody emailed us. By the way, the actress that plays Renera is incredible.

1:19:19Ben Carlson:Yeah, she's pretty good. You're right. I actually think that I'm going to zag on you. I think the show has tailed off a little this season. It has. But it's still really good and really well done. But I think I'm just more attuned to the story of the Seven Nights one or whatever that came out early this year. I'm too confused all the time. They just keep bringing new characters. I'm too confused.

1:19:39Michael Batnick:I, like you, still have no idea what's going on. And I don't know how this happened. I feel like the biggest idiot in the world. Somebody emailed us, hey, turn the captions on. I watch everything with subtitles. I don't know why, for some reason, my HBO is not, I don't have the subtitles turned on. So I feel like a shmohawk. I missed the entire season just because I had my subtitles off. A little late to turn it on. What else? What else? What else?

1:20:06Ben Carlson:That's it. That's it. All-time highs again. the stock market really is just so impressive when you think about everything that's been thrown at it it's hard to believe i really wish 10 years ago i knew that this would happen what would you have done differently uh i mean i just would have owned the queues

1:20:31Michael Batnick:okay and i just would have aggressively bought everything all the time of course that's why But even with hindsight, it wasn't easy.

1:20:38Ben Carlson:No, it really wasn't. None of this has been easy. And it won't be easy going forward either. Drawdowns are coming. Sometime in the next 30 years, we'll have a recession again. I just know it. It's bound to happen. Bold. Email us, animalspirits at the compoundnews.com. Personal emails, personal responses. Thank you to the production team. As always, we went very long today because we had a lot to talk about. See you next time.

1:21:14I see you.

1:21:16Michael Batnick:Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet.

1:21:22Ben Carlson:Go, go, go, go!

1:21:24Michael Batnick:A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home.

1:21:36Ben Carlson:This is sick!