Winners and Losers From the Stock Market Rally (EP.412)

24:59That obviously doesn't always mesh well with reality. But we've heard enough people who say, listen, I've heard everything you guys have said on LeverGTS. I don't care. I'm investing in these things. So there's people who probably would be willing to pony up and do this. I have to say that my comment about free money, I think obviously that was sarcasm. I was joking. Please don't take that literally, especially when the 9 % on the other side of the six and a quarter is, and God knows what, sort of private credit instruments. But yeah, Ben, you're 100 % right. If you could borrow money at 3 % and invest in the market over long periods of time, I can get on board with that, but that's not this.

25:42And so I don't know. I haven't done enough research, but certainly this caught the internet's attention, and then some. I would love to talk to these guys and learn more about it, but the thing that worries me the most is the four-to-one leverage. And I'm guessing the reason they did that is because that gives you enough juice to get these high returns. I want to learn more about the margin and the collateral and all that sort of stuff, and what happens if this goes wrong. And I want to learn more about the downside. Yes. What happens if the private credit yields compress? Okay. But it's or what happens if the 9 % ends up being 4 % or worse?

26:19Yeah. I have questions. Yes. All right. New York Magazine had this story about how everyone is using AI to cheat in college. Did you read this one? Uh-uh. Okay. A lot of internet people talking about this. So they interviewed all these college kids and they said, I just jumped the prompt from my class into ChatGPT and handed whatever it spat out. This person said they wrote, you know, they interviewed all these college kids anonymously. And they said, AI wrote 80 % of every essay he turned in. He said, at the end, I'd put my own finishing touches on it, put my 20 % of humanity, my voice, and that's it.

26:51They asked this other girl. She said she rarely sit in class when she didn't see other students' laptops open to ChatGPT. Toward the end of the semester, she began to think she might be too dependent on the website. She already considered herself addicted to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Reddit. And she said, I spend so much time on TikTok, hours and hours until my eyes started hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my homework. with chat GPT. I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12. So she's saying chat GPT helped me do homework faster so I could rot my eyes out on TikTok.

27:19Nice. So I really don't blame these kids for doing this. Like I don't get mad about this. Do you think that there was, and this is going to sound like I'm poo-pooing college, but was there ever really an essay that you wrote that you thought like that really helped me become better at my job someday? No. Well, me? No, I didn't. I don't know if I wrote a single lesson in college. Did you cheat in college? Dude, I didn't even show up for the tests. That's true. I didn't, I mean, we didn't, it would have been harder to cheat for us back in the day. The only time I did a homework assignment once where a friend said, hey, can I look at your homework assignment to make sure I did it right?

27:58And he copied my whole assignment. And so we got called into the professor's office and he said, guys, have anything to tell me? and I'm thinking, what are we talking about here? And my friend knew immediately. And he goes, obviously one of you copied off the other one because your answers are exactly the same. What a dumbass. Yeah, friend really screwed me on that one. But I think if you have the ability to do a paper on ChatGPT and you do it and your professor gives you a decent grade, that's on the professor, not the student. I think it's the colleges have to keep up and give different types of tests.

28:31And also, I guess the student is harming themselves in some way. like using a chat GPT created something in your, in your own work life is probably not going to go. It can help you in certain aspects, but most of the stuff, the work people are going to see right through it. So I've spent zero time thinking about this, so I don't want to really comment, but I think the one thing I would say is if you cheated at everything, if you just take shortcuts, you're just going to cheat yourself. You're not going to develop the skills and the whatever. No, I mean, a counterpoint is like, wow, that was very inspirational.

29:04No, the counterpoint is like, well, you're right. You're right. 12 hours on a NASA. How is that like a good use of anyone's time? Yes. That's the thing you have to be creative. And I, but I think the whole, my whole thinking on AI is just that anyone who has a little bit of creativity, that's what's going to shine because if this stuff is all just going to be regurgitate regurgitated, I can't say the word, um, and easy to do, like that stuff is going to be meaningless. I told you, I got a demo from a FinTech firm a couple of weeks ago and they showed me how they're, They're pulling stuff from the internet to create custom blog posts for financial advisors.

29:37And they sent me a couple of them and they were so bland and useless. I thought, well, this is, this is not helpful to anyone. It's, it's helpful to summarize if you don't understand the topic, but if you're actually trying to educate someone and show them and get their attention, like no one's ever going to read this. Yeah. So like, I think people who are creative, those are the ones that are still going to stand out. But if you're just doing bullet points on everything, yeah, you're right. You're cheating yourself. That sounded like a parent to a kid talk. Right? You better save that one for your children someday.

30:15Yes, I'm very responsible. All right, speaking of AI, I've been talking about the Quarter app a lot because they've built an LLM processor into the app. and we're investors in court. I've said that before, just full disclosure there. But it is just so, so freaking cool. So I asked the chat, what did I say? So wait, the important thing is, is that the only thing that it's pulling from is not the whole web. It's just company earnings reports and presentations. Right. And then it's like directing you to it. I asked, did they mention anything about Bitcoin in the call? And this is for Schwab. and it gave me like the answers or the quotes and then it like directed me right to it.

31:06And this is just such a small example of what's to come with AI. And it's exciting. Put a pin in this one because I use it more so I'm going to talk about it for some other thing. But yeah, go ahead. So last week there was an announcement that Coinbase, which is entering the S &P 500, kind of amazing. That's kind of a big deal, isn't it? It is a big deal. Coinbase has agreed to acquire Deribit, the world's biggest trading platform for Bitcoin and Ether options, for roughly$2.9 billion. This morning, there was news that Robinhood is acquiring, I think, a similar company in Canada for$250 million.

31:47So Bitcoin and ETH have gone absolutely nuclear over the last - It goes up like 65 % in a month. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So I was looking at the chart of Bitcoin and Coinbase. And Ben, take a look at this. This is three years. Bitcoin and Coinbase were tracking each other pretty damn closely. And it's been a nasty decoupling. Like, when did this happen? I guess in December, early January. Massive underperformance from Coinbase. I'm not exactly sure what's going on. Sort of, huh, that's interesting. That is surprising. That's surprising. So you'd have been, because you'd have thought Coinbase would be like a leveraged way to play Bitcoin, but Bitcoin has been a way better option.

32:30I would have thought. All right. So I was, I'm scratching my head. Like, why is the price going up? Since it went public, when did Coinbase go public? I'm guessing 2021. I guess that's right. Because it went public right at like a peak. So Coinbase, since it went public, is down 4.8 % in total, which is probably surprising to some people. So it's basically gone nowhere, but it had a huge drawdown. It had like an 85 % drawdown or something. Wow. All right. So anyway, so why are the coins mooning? Chris Berniski is a real person in crypto Twitter. and he tweeted, who has the best data-driven explanation for ETH's recent massive move?

33:22Narratives are a dime a dozen. I can make them that too. I can make them too. Show me the data. And I was like, oh, awesome. This is, you know, I'll find something in here. There's nothing. You should have seen the responses. It was one joke after another. I'm like, you know, a serious person should have serious, maybe some serious responses in the replies. Nothing, nothing. Nobody knows. Sometimes nobody knows anything. Yeah, people just make sure. Oh, because whatever. I don't know. You can make something up. So can I? But I was very much looking forward to seeing some data. And I don't know.

33:58They're going up because they're going up. Now, I'm sure there's reasons and whatever. But like an actual, what was the catalyst for the 65 % move in the last week or whatever it was for ETH? And it turns out your guess is as good as anybody else's. Nobody knows. More buyers and sellers. There we go. You nailed it, Ben. All right, let's talk about real estate. So Bespoke tweeted a chart. The active listings by region. And the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast are all tracking each other pretty closely. Mostly down until the right, a little bit of a pickup. But the South, holy gazole, the South is skyrocketing.

34:34So I went to Fred and I looked at - This is my Florida take, right? Housing inventory in Florida. So Florida is at, I don't know if there's an all-time high, but for the last 10 years, Florida is at a high. It is skyrocketing. If you compare that - So it's one of the few places that's higher than pre-pandemic. Yes. And if you compare that to New York, for example, New York is down to the right because there's a freaking housing recession, right? There's no turnover. And so the story in Florida is what? Just the over - Well, there's a lot of people that came there. Yeah. People move too much. Ton of people moved there.

35:13The prices went up a ton. And now demand was saturated, I guess. And people are trying to sell. And it's much harder to do because there's not as many people coming. Like all the people who are going to go to Florida, for the most part, a lot of them already came. They pulled, I think they pulled forward demand. That's kind of my take. But yeah, it's crazy to see that the supply, that's actually a place where supply is. So we should start seeing more price drops there. so I listed my house in Long Beach on April 1st and I would have thought that it would have sold like in two seconds now the house is a little bit interesting in the sense that there's not a driveway it's like a bungalow and it's two blocks from the beach and it's renovated it's a very desirable location but it's called a walk so there's like a there's a slab of concrete that goes through the block and there's houses on both sides of it so it's a bit of a pain in the ass it's not like for a conventional family, it's a little bit tricky.

36:07So where do you park? Is there an alley or something? On the street. You park on the street. So I got an offer last week, which I mentioned on the show. So somebody emailed us with a subject title, Michael's Real Estate Green Thumb. He said, Michael, when you talk about your real estate adventure, selling your place in Brooklyn without an agent, buying your house on Long Island, moments before Price House has exploded, or the stupid luck of buying this rental in Long Beach, you always talk about it as mindless good fortune, but clearly it's a trend. At what point does it become real estate business savvy?

36:33Maybe you have a green thumb or whatnot for real estate. It's a curse to be great at something you hate doing, but you have a knack for real estate investing. Maybe you should go to real estate consulting. And I said to the person, oh yeah, just wait until this podcast. So earlier in the week, I haven't had a lot of offers. I had one crappy offer and one offer that was accepted. And it turns out that like the tiles were sagging in the bathroom, which is, I don't know, I guess not too unusual, but it turns out that they were worried about damage to the foundation and the buyers were getting skittish and maybe we had open permits from Sandy that weren't closed out.

37:15and I said, all right, okay. Okay. You know what? I said, at least it'll be good content for the show. At least it'll be good content for the show. So did they back out? So they got, they did another survey or inspection or whatever. And I think we're okay. I do have to go to the town and close out permits and all this sort of nonsense. But anyway, I thought it was hilarious that this guy's saying that I'm good at real estate. It's like, dude, literally dumb luck. Again, not only am I not good, this might be terrible. This might be catastrophic. This is the total case of the easy money has already been made and you have to be a really good investor and understand locations and rental dynamics and all this stuff to make money going forward from here.

37:58Right? Like, yeah, you and I - So I have a friend who's like, dude, why are you dumping your mortgages at 2.9 %? Like, why are you selling? And I'm like, because I pulled forward 20 years of returns and I don't want the headache. And this is a f***ing headache. If there are foundational issues, like, and, and like, what if like the, the, there's roof issues? Like, I don't know. I don't want this nonsense in my life. I don't need it. I did great. And you said, I'm moving on. You go six months without a person who's renting. Yeah. All right. Uh, New York times had a stir. Oh wait, one more on the, on the rental thing.

38:28So Noah Kagan talked about this and you, you gave a good thing. Like I pulled forward all these years. He said he bought a property in 2017 to Airbnb it. He bought it for three 15, put 63 down. He sold it for three 77, but he said he also, not only appreciation, he paid the mortgage down, but he paid taxes. He paid a bunch of ownership costs. So his total profit, he said, was only$11 ,000 after he actually accounted for all the costs of having it. So he basically said, you know, he would have been better putting it in the S &P. So a lot of it is just, I guess, location and luck, and you just never know on these things.

39:04There's another side of it. It's a lot harder than it sounds. Yeah. All right, New York Times. They looked at where young people actually are becoming homeowners. And the overall housing homeownership rate in the U.S. is 62%. The highest one for people under 35 is in Minnesota, and that's 51%. Michigan's right around 49 % as well. The lowest ones are Hawaii, New York, and California. That's not a surprise. I guess Hawaii is the worst. And they said, what's the deal? And it's basically just price to income. That's the thing. West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Minnesota, they all have very good income to average sales price ratios.

39:42But the prices are, average price in Minnesota is like$300 ,000, right? And in Kentucky, it's$225 ,000 or something. So there are still places. Like, do you see this at the Pope's Childhood Home in Chicago? So someone found the Pope's Childhood Home is for sale. It's$199 ,000. I think it's in the south side of Chicago. Three bed, three bath, 1 ,200 square feet. Look at this thing. Unbelievable. yeah houses were affordable in the 60s yeah okay no offense but this is the 1960s house and it's still affordable today it's just how many young people would be willing to to buy it and some people will but most people probably won't all right i have some housing renovation anecdotes go ahead i feel like i'm seeing housing renovations everywhere i i'm seeing you know you see the big dumpsters in the garage in the driveway yeah and you see a big addition going on, or I feel like I'm seeing, and maybe it's just the time of year, and people decide to do these projects in the spring in Michigan and not have to do them in the winter, but I feel like people have finally said, enough's enough.

40:45I have my 3 % mortgage. I don't care if the HELOC rate is 7. I'm doing something because I'm going to end up being in this house for 10 more years or whatever it is. So I'm seeing renovations everywhere. I think people have finally said, I'm not going to move. I'm going to fix my house up. I don't care. I don't have any data to back this up. It's All anecdotes. Okay. That works, I guess. That's going to be you with your rental house. So you mentioned the quarter stuff. I use this because I talked to Michael Stichmore last week and asked the compound. And he talked about how all the private equity calls these days for KKR and Apollo are talking about putting private equity into target date funds.

41:25And so I looked this up and I typed it in, private equity managers mentioning target date funds. And it pulled up, as you mentioned, it pulled up the actual presentation. And the co-CEO at Apollo and Mark Rowan from Apollo and Scott Nuttall from KKR all talking about how, like, listen, there is a huge opportunity. There's$15 trillion in 401ks. We want to put these into target date funds. And I just, I can't help but think that retail is the bag holder here. I'm not saying that the results are going to be completely awful. but Bloomberg had this story saying institutions are selling. Harvard is selling.

42:02So you're not a skeptic. You're a cynic on this. I don't think it's going to be like, oh, it's a private equity is a bubble and it's going to burst. But listen to this. Matt Levine wrote about this. So this is Matt Levine via Financial Times. The Financial Times says, big private equity investors are taking advantage of a flood of capital from wealthy individuals to cash out their buyout fund holdings at higher prices despite the industry's year-long downturn. Some of the largest evergreen funds, and they're saying these evergreen funds, they put all the money in, and instead of waiting for a capital call when there's a deal to be made, they have to put that money to work right away.

42:35So these interval funds and evergreen funds have bought large swaths of private equity funds from institutional investors who are seeking liquidity after a dearth of distributions. That extra demand has helped prop up prices for stakes in private equity funds in the secondary market, even as institutional investors have cooled investing in new funds because buyout firms have had trouble exiting their investments. One advisor said there's a lot of money flowing into these evergreen vehicles, and they're under pressure to employ it quickly. So I just think that the returns in these funds are going to be far lower than people assume.

43:05Yeah, yeah. Because they have to put the money to work right away. But they are also the bag holders for the institutions. Don't you think? In some cases. I think it's going to be a lot of cases. They have to put that money to work right away if it's an evergreen interval fund. It's not like you wait because the institutions, they have a capital call when the deal is ready to be made and they don't know when the deals are going to happen. And they invest the money when the deal happens. These funds, they have to put the money to work. It's like an ETF or mutual fund. Yeah. I'd be happy if someone wanted to poke holes in this, but I feel like retail is going to be the bag holder.

43:42Yeah, for the record, I'm not taking the other side. I'm just, we'll see. I'd be happy if someone could point me to say, Ben, no, you're wrong. This is, it's going to be fine. And maybe if so much money is pouring in to the RA channel and the wealth manager channel, and they do get target date funds, maybe there's going to be so much money pouring in that it's not going to matter that much for a while. I just think the results are going to be, it's going to be lower than people have in their assumption. It depends. What are we talking about? Infrastructure, private credit, real estate, private equity, secondaries, like buyouts.

44:13What are we talking about? All of it. If trillions of dollars is flowing in, all of it's going to have lower returns, you would think, right? Or they're going to be forced to use higher leverage to make those returns. But I'm saying the idea that retail is going to be the bag holder for institutions, I think yes, in some cases, no doubt. There's no doubt about that. And I think that there are, so not to get bogged down on that comment, because there are a host of issues with private investments in 401ks, but I think it's inevitable. I mean, it is coming. Right. That's the thing. You might not like it, but it's coming regardless.

44:52Yeah. All right. We've talked about Jonathan Clements before. About a year ago, he received the news that he had life-threatening cancer. He doesn't have a long time to live. I think they gave him a year. And he decided to start a program. And Jason Zweig wrote about this and Mike Piper wrote about this at the Oblivious Investor. and he's going to try to help young people age 18 to 24 start their own Roth IRA. And they have to go through like a personal finance class to do it and they're going to help assistance opening a Roth IRA and a thousand dollar grant to fund the account, which I think is just a fantastic and I guess the Bogle Center is helping.

45:32We'll put a link in the show notes, but there's a way that you can give money. So I gave some money to this. I'm not asking anyone else to do it if they want, but I think it's an awesome legacy that he's putting through. Yeah, that's what I was going to use. What a wonderful legacy for Jonathan Clements, who has done a lot for tens of thousands of individual investors over the years. And I love that Jason has helped me spread the good word here. So I also will be making a contribution. And he has a new book out called The Best of Jonathan Clements, Timeless Wisdom. And it's all this old Wall Street Journal articles that I grew up reading.

46:05And so William Bernstein and Jason Zweig, I put this off the ground. I actually did a blurb for the book, which I was happy to do. But check that out too, especially for personal finance people out there. So Ben, I traveled yesterday. I'm at Future Proof Colorado. And I'll see you later in the week, actually, on the West Coast. san diego which means what's translated roughly to whales vagina of course um it was all right so the real id i was a bit nervous because of course my passport is also expired i don't have a real id it's an overnighted birth certificate um so the good news is that if you have a passport that is at least in new york i don't want to speak for the rest of the country i don't know what it is wait a minute am i gonna be stuck in california uh anyhow um if your passport is not more than a year old, TSA will let you through.

46:55Clear would not let me through. And I only mentioned that to say that the line for clear was by far, by far, by far, by far the shortest I've seen it in years. Clear wouldn't let you through, huh? Interesting. No. You'd think the scan of the eyes would be better than would be more would Trump the ID. Yeah. But we already know that. I think clear is a scam. I'm of the opinion clear is a scam. It always takes way longer than TSA pre-check. It never works for me. This time it would have worked phenomenally because there was like three people in front of me. I only mentioned that just as an anecdote for travel because we know travel is travel soft.

47:33Actually, this surprised the shit out of me. I was listening to the Disney call and they're talking about the theme park. All right. Hugh Johnson, the CFO said, bookings right now for Walt Disney World for the third quarter are up 4%. And that's with about what we would say is 80 % in. And then for the fourth quarter, bookings are up 7%. That really surprised me. That it's still rising? Bookings are up 7 % in the fourth quarter. Yeah, I would have thought Disney would be falling off by now. Right? Then I saw, remember a few weeks ago, I made the grand proclamation that Cops is my favorite show ever.

48:13I think I have to walk that one back. But... Okay. But I will say that without a doubt, Cops is in my top 10 for most hours viewed of any show of all time. Might be top five. Because it was on forever. I watched so many episodes of that show. So you were watching Cops when you shouldn't be watching. You shouldn't watch in Seinfeld. True. Anyway, there's a new show on Max, All Access PD in Grand Rapids. It's basically Cops in Grand Rapids on Max. Oh, really? Really? Okay. I hadn't heard of this. Right? You should check it out. All right. This is a wow. NBA and NBC announced this peacock. Michael Jordan will be a special contributor to the NBA and NBC.

49:03And I saw a table from Sportico. Top 10 highest pit athletes of all time. Jordan's earned$4.1 billion inflation adjusted. They've got to be paying him a fortune to get him out of bed for this. Yeah, because that's all from Nike, obviously. Right. Can I share a secret? He's not going to be any good at it. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. Remember how bad he was on SNL? I don't remember that. Can't be good at everything. There's a new movie coming out. Godzilla Kong Supernova. You excited for that one, Ben? 2027? My son will eat that one up. He's seen every Godzilla King Kong movie. All right.

49:43I appreciate a good take. So I don't want to do a take down here, but The Atlantic had a story saying, is this the worst era ever for pop culture? And I appreciate the take. So he says, according to a YouGov poll, Americans rate the 2020s as the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV and sports. Not TV. They also, so I got to push back here. So they said, in music, new releases accounted for a little more than a quarter of the albums consumed in the U.S. Every year, a greater and greater percentage of the albums streamed online is cataloged music, meaning it is at least 18 months old.

50:17Now, here's my pushback on this. Imagine going back to someone in the 1990s and telling them, you can get any song you want to play for$14.99 a month. You can play it across any device you want. We didn't have access to old music like this in the past. The reason we listen to new music is because it was the only thing on the radio or TRL on MTV. If I had access to old music in the past that I didn't have to spend$15 on a CD for, I would have listened to it. So, I mean, you could make the case music was better, because music was better in the 90s, let's be honest. But I don't think it's just the fact that we have less new releases out and people aren't listening.

50:52People are listening to old music because you already know it's good. Like, I used to buy CDs for one song. There'd be a good single. you'd buy the whole CD and you'd go, ugh, this whole CD sucks. But I bought it for one song. Plus, I mean, we have the biggest, one of the biggest musicians in history right now, Taylor Swift. So I will say movies are way, way worse. And so he made the point that all the movies are sequels. And I agree with that. Movies are worse. But TV shows are so much better. Think about it. We have movie stars in new TV shows all the time. They drop and no one's ever even heard of these shows.

51:24All of a sudden, Netflix, I'm gonna talk about this in my reviews, had a show with Tina Fey and Steve Carell and Will Forte. Nicole Kidman's in TV shows all the time. You could argue TV's never been better. Never been better. Remember in the past, it was a huge leap for someone to go from TV to movies? In the 1990s, no movie star in their right mind would ever do a TV show. No. That was like the end of the line for you. You can follow your favorite sports teams on like any time ever before. You don't have to wait for SportsCenter to watch highlights. My wife used to buy Us Weekly to watch like, hey, look, this celebrity's buying a coffee.

51:55Now celebrities literally post their own stuff on social media. You can follow every intricate detail of their life. Podcasts have celebrities on them. Celebrities have their own podcasts. So I'd say pop culture has actually never been better in many ways. Yeah, it's a good take. It's a good take. That's my take. Remember the Gateway 2000? We spoke about it the other day. Wasn't a cow the mascot for that? Everyone had a Gateway computer. In the late 90s, early 2000s, everyone had a Gateway computer. And yeah, singles were a thing, right? Like you would literally buy a single song on a CD. Yeah.

52:32It might have like three songs on it or something for like$5.99. Yeah. Things are not so bad. Somebody said that we should, that the opposite of canary in the coal mine is canary in the gold mine. Don't hate it. Pretty clever. That's not bad. I like it. Yep. Somebody email does. Isn't Uber mail just DHL slash FedEx? Someone should invent an Uber mail. They just pick up and drop off your mail. This is how you know Ben is a man of the people. You know, I didn't know that DHL and FedEx would come to your house either. Is that a thing? That's awesome. I just, I want, I hate going to the post office to do so.

53:06I want someone to put it in the envelope for me, put the sticker on, everything. That's what I want. Apparently that's DHL. All right, awesome. All right, I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had a run-in with a goose. The geese were coming after me, and I said I wouldn't mind stepping on one of their necks. These things are jerks. They poop everywhere. They're mean. This is from my office complex. Dear tenants, we are aware that the geese on the property become a persistent issue. It comes to the point where we can no longer realistic to keep up with the mess and disruption they cause. To address the problem, we have contracted a professional company that will implement a method known as goose hazing that will involve the use of trained herding dogs that will be brought on the site, unleashed to chase off the geese and discourage them from returning.

53:49This is a humane and effective method, Duncan. The dogs and their handlers will be on site at random time, 20 times per month through mid-December. Do not interact with the dogs. So, these dogs are going to scare the geese away, which I've never heard of goose hazing, but I would have thought it would have been meaner than it actually sounds. Okay. All right, what do you got for recommendations? All right, I've got a bunch of stuff. Ben, where are you with the studio? I'm probably six episodes in, and I think it's a very hit or miss show for me. Some of the episodes, I'm like, eh. and some of them I think are great.

54:23Like the one I told you where he goes to a gala with a doctor girlfriend and he's debating on how the entertainment industry is just as important as being a doctor. And I thought that episode was great. I thought they totally nailed it. Some of the other episodes I can take it or leave it, but it's a hit or miss show for me, but I still am enjoying it. All right, so I love the show even if I don't love every episode. I like that it's contained, but I agree with you. Some episodes are better than others. But like, I just - You're right. Every episode stands on its own. You don't have to watch the other episodes to know what's going on.

54:56So at the end of the most recent episode, they do an award show. And at the end of the show, there's no spoilers. At the end of the show, Seth Rogen gets in the car. And I just love, and there's like just Hollywood trumpet music playing. And I just love being, I love being in Hollywood with him. I really, I'm really enjoying it. As a matter of fact, the most recent episode at the award show, they got Ted Sarandos. To be in the cast. Like, he had a pretty sizable role in the show. And I thought, like, huh. Every episode has one or two really good cameos. But the guy who fucking wants Netflix. Is on Apple.

55:38Is on a show on Apple. That's interesting. Yeah, but he's kind of a celebrity himself. Couldn't you see him leaving Netflix someday and running one of these other studios? Sarandos was courtside last night sitting next to David Zaslav at Madison Square Garden. How mad were you that you had to miss the game and not be there for that last night? It's the best game in the garden. I'm trying to think of the last best game in the garden. Because were you there on Saturday when they got smoked? Yeah, it was not fun. Okay, so are you allowing, now that the Knicks have won, and they would have won it regardless if Tatum got hurt, but Tatum's hurt.

56:12I don't know if he's coming back. Are you allowing yourself to think about. You don't know if he's coming back. We know he's not coming back. He ruptured his Achilles. We're not ESPN. We're allowed to say it. Okay. Are you allowing yourself to envision going to the finals now? Are you not even? Okay. No, I am. I am. Like I'm, you could be thinking like I could be going to a Knicks game in the finals. Yeah. So I am a very emotional Knicks fan. Yeah. You told me your wife made you take a walk after last week's game. My texts are insane. I'm not like, I'm not like, don't worry guys, we got this. That's not where I stand.

56:47I thought this Knicks team underperformed all season. In fact, not I thought, this Knicks team underperformed all season. Our defense was alarmingly bad. I did not think that Mitchell Robinson coming back was going to change the defense as much as it had. But there was just something missing. There was something not clicking about this team all season, including throughout the playoffs. We were down 20 points in the first three games against the Celtics. Pistons gave you guys a good game every game. Yeah. so the Celtics are obviously the better team like I'm not an idiot so yeah so going into the series I thought we were 8-1 and I was not I'm like that's not attractive I'm not doing that I'm not betting that Josh bet that credit to him so yeah I thought we were going to get smoked even after like I thought we were going to get killed in game 3 or I'm sorry game 4 so now that we are up game 3 games to 1 the series is over whether or not we win it in 5 or 6 whatever the series is over obviously I feel bad for Jason Tatum etc I gotta say that but I really do uh But yeah, no, I'm there.

57:45I think that we can beat the Pacers for sure. And it's wild. Pacers-Knicks would have been like a, even before these series, would have been like a 30-1 probably, right? 20-1? Yeah. Yeah. Who'd have thunk it? I'm very happy. I'm very, very happy. It's been a long time. It's been a long time. My daughter's been staying up with me watching NBA playoffs. And she has to, usually it's her bedtime and there'll be a game on at the end in the fourth quarter. but can I just stay up? And I let her stay up. And it's been an amazing second round. I don't mind the bandwagon fans. I love it. But I never stopped in the last decade in the Tracy McGrady, Penny Hardaway, Michael Doliak, Othello Harrington.

58:31I could go, I can name 150 players that were absolute dog shit. I never stopped. So to be - I can tell based on your wardrobe, you have more Knicks gear than any person alive. So to be on the other side of the mountain. I mean, I'm going to cry if we go to the finals. I'm going to cry if we go to the Easter concert finals. Yeah, it's very special for me. So I'm enjoying the shit out of it. All right, what else we got for recommendations? I listened to two episodes of The Blocks podcast with Neil Brennan that I've mentioned in the past that were both phenomenal. Neil deserves to give us some tips or something because we're going to keep sending people to his podcast.

59:07It's so good. I listen to Johnny Knoxville and Jim Norton. And Jim Norton is an absolute filthy maniac. And I mean that in the best way possible. He's a stand-up comedian. He's something else. All right. Credit to The Last of Us. Did you bail, Ben? Are you still watching? I'm still watching. Give me your take and I'll give you mine. Okay. So I'm not a diehard. I very much enjoy the show, but I'm not on Reddit. When I finish the show, I'm not thinking about what's going to happen next week. I enjoy it. And after Joel died, I was like, wow, they really didn't, actually, hold on. Let's rewind. Actually, you know what?

59:42No, we don't need to rewind. It's episode four already. Sorry. We're keeping going. So after they killed off one of the main characters in episode two, I was like, all right, let's see how they do it. And I faith in the writers and the faith I think was rightly placed because I thought episode three and four did not skip a beat at all. Okay. I have a totally different take. I think it's one of the dumbest TV decisions that's ever been made. Well, they're following the video game. Great. Piss off the video game people. He was one of the only reasons I liked the show. I'm still going to watch. I think it's okay.

1:00:14I do not think that the young girl, she was a sidekick. She's not a main star. I know they're going to bring other people in. They brought Jeffrey Rush in and Catherine O 'Hara. I think it's... Or why not wait to kill him at the end of the season? I think it's... He was the best part of the show. Why? Who cares what happened in the video game? Did you like it since 3 and 4? I think it's one of the stupidest TV decisions I've ever seen. and I'm still going to watch it, but it totally makes the show not as good for me. All right, well, let's see. That's a premature take. There's six more episodes.

1:00:45All right. The first two back, it's like they're okay, but it's not the same. That's where I'm at. All right, two more. I was listening to Nicolas Cage on The Big Picture with Sean Fentany. He has a new movie called The Seraphir, which I have not seen. And he said, he told Sean Fentany that he almost, oh, Sean Fentany said, which one of your movies do you think is underappreciated? And he said, matchstick men, which is one of, I think my favorite Nick cage movie ever. Maybe I would have to think about that. Um, phenomenal movie. I absolutely, I, that rocked my world when I saw it. Come on, man, Nick cage was in the rock.

1:01:25The rock, the rock Conor and snake eyes and face off. That was a run. Uh, anyway. Um, but he, but he took that role instead of Tim Robbins and mystic river. That would have been weird. Oh, yeah. That wouldn't have worked. Him trying to do a Boston accent? No. I don't think so. All right, anyway, finally, on the airplane, I had a lot of work to do in the airplane, not to brag. So I watched in the background a perfect airplane movie. Two hours and 15 minutes. Not great action. You could look up whatever. You're not really missing much. Den of Thieves, Pantera. I just watched the first one recently, so should I watch it?

1:02:01Okay. On an airplane. like it's not you know it's not like I wouldn't say fire it up on a front I do like to do that so I have a long flight to San Diego later this week so I do like to put on a movie in the background even if I'm doing answering emails and yeah this is this is like this is perfect for that so I'm we talked about how TV is better than movies now and so I think a lot of the shows you said your friends and neighbors could have been a movie I still like it I think the one where they went to Princeton recently I thought that was a great episode of TV did you watch that where they took their daughter to Princeton I think John Hamm and Amanda Peete have great chemistry.

1:02:35I think your Dope Thief show could have been a movie too. I thought that one kind of went off the rails a little bit. Oh, did you watch it? I'm still watching. I'm not done yet, but I feel like at the middle of it, it kind of lagged. Like that could have been a movie. Here's one, four seasons on Netflix. It just showed up. It's Steve Carell, Tina Fey, and Will Forte. And it's three married couples who go on like four vacations together. And each, every two episodes is them going on another vacation. I'm only three episodes in. And it's just, it's a half hour show. It feels like a movie. And Steve Carell is great.

1:03:08Tina Fey, I'm a huge Will Forte fan. I feel like The Last Man on Earth, which was on Fox, is one of the most underrated TV shows of the last 10 years. It was hilarious. And I'm into four seasons. You know, it's so funny. So we're watching it too. Although watching it, that's a stretch. Is the house in upstate New York? It looks like an upstate New York house. I haven't I don't think I've got there I think I watched the first episode and a half and we were watching it that's what it is they're at the house on the lake okay uh I'm not I was like falling asleep but we were saying to each other like who is this show for it's like it's just I don't understand it's for me audience I'm thinking like is it like it's for my dad I think and uh no it's for Ben apparently oh my wife and I love this show it's like the fact that the husband gets mad at the wife for playing video games on her iPad all the time.

1:04:00I don't know. Maybe it's just a lot of quirky things that we noticed that are realistic to us, but I love it. I think it's great. Okay. Maybe I'll just, it's, it's just a, it's light. It's very, it's very light. It's not too deep. I don't know. Sometimes I don't want deep shows. I want just light and happy and fun. Yeah, no. So for me, it's a perfect sleeping show. And I guess it's a Ben show. That's who it's for. You know, I have a feeling that you don't pay attention to a lot of shows because I mentioned Johnny Knoxville being on the studio the other day, and you said, when was he on the studio?

1:04:29And then literally the whole first two episodes of The Four Seasons are at a house on the lake, and you're like, oh, I must not have got there yet. Are you even watching these shows? I think I was following the four seasons. But wait, hold on, hand up. I admitted last week I am a very bad watcher. Apparently. You're probably just – you're a phone guy. I always get mad at my wife for not paying attention to a show when she's on her phone because she misses stuff, and she asks me what happens. And I said, get off your phone and pay attention. This is a no phone show. This is why airplanes movies get a 30 % premium for me because it's the only time where I'm like locked in.

1:05:01You actually pay attention. And that's why I go to the movie theater. It's a hack against my attention span. All right. Any closers here? Are we good? Is the volatility completely gone for the year? I don't think I'd be willing to say that quite yet. Market's up again today. Is the tariff-related volatility gone? Okay. That's a good question. That's a fair question. And I would say maybe. Okay. Personal emails, personal responses, animal spirits at the compound news.com. Thanks to our production team as always. Remember, we got video on Spotify, video on YouTube at the compound. What else? I don't know.

1:05:43That's it. See you next week.

1:05:54Thank you.