Your Budget Sucks (EP.397)

23:57And coming out of the crisis, remember all the worries about Europe and the European Union and all that stuff? And he was so freaked out about that. And he's a bottom-up stock picker, right? But he got into macro, and he said, you know what? I have the majority of my net worth invested in this fund. I am getting ultra-defensive, and I'm going to stay defensive because all of my money is invested in it. Is it possible that Klarman just made like a billion dollars and said, you know what? I'm not taking any more risk. Like it's mostly my money anyway. Who would know? I don't know. You know, I was also pretty conservative in 2012.

24:26You should have seen my portfolio. Shorting Amazon. I think I was shorting Green Mountain Coffee. That ripped my face off. So you've heard of Klarman's Margin of Safety book? The Value Investing. It sells for like$2 ,500 on Amazon. I looked it up. And it's always had this mystique about it because it's impossible to find. I mean, that is comedy, right? Have you ever? So someone a number of years ago, I mentioned this, that I'd never read it. Someone sent me a PDF of it. Yeah, it's a PDF. Yeah. So someone sent me a PDF and I read it. I don't know if you've read it before. The price got the expectations way too high.

24:56I mean, it's a pretty good value investing book. But like nothing you've never heard in a Buffett, any of the Buffett books before. So not to kick the guy by his down again. Although I did see a tweet that said basically like, yes, Klarman made 4 % for a decade on his fund, which is, you know, cash-like returns, I guess, basically. But he probably earned over$300 million in management fees on his$20 billion in vested capital. So he probably did okay still. Here's one that my brother sent me. He said, did you see this hedge fund story? I did not. Hedge funds have, this is from Reuters, hedge funds have charged their investors $1.8 trillion in fees from 1969 to the end of December 2024.

25:32So I guess 1969 is when the, what was that guy's name? And more money than God, the first hedge fund guy? Oh, Alfred Winslow, I think. There you go. Over the past 55 years, hedge funds have kept roughly half of the money they made from trading profits. So from fees, all the profits that have ever been earned in hedge funds, the hedge fund managers have kept half of that, which is an insanely high number. And look at this. They show the top 20 managers and plus all other managers in the total. And basically, if you weren't in the top 20 managers, they themselves earned, I don't know, a third of the total gains just in the top 20 managers alone.

26:12So, I mean, we know this, right? If you can get into one of the top performers, you're going to have fantastic returns. And the fees will have been well worth it. And if you can't, it's not going to... And they said those ones charge even higher fees. They could be like 3-30 or 2-30 or whatever it is. It's the whole Ray Dalio thing. He said there's 8 ,000 planes in the air and 100 good pilots. Yeah, I don't believe that. That's made up. What is? How does he know there's 100 good pilots? I mean, listen, it's a good analogy. It's a good baseline for an analogy, but it's completely made up. Remember the Justin Timberlake movie with Mila Kunis, like the Friends with Benefits one?

26:51And his whole shtick is that there are no good pilots. The plane flies itself. The pilots aren't as good as they say they are. I don't remember that line. But I will say, Justin Timberlake, I enjoyed him on screen. One of my favorite movies, one of my favorite garbage movies of all time, like truly, Alpha Dog. You ever see that one? Bruce Willis? It's a bad movie. I forget the name of the kid who plays it, who's the main character. But I agree. There's got to be good pilots out there because you've had a rough landing in your time before, right? I feel like the landing itself, that alone, even if the plane is flying itself the whole rest of the time.

27:24Have landings gotten better over time? I feel like it's been a while since I had a rough one. Did you see the tweet that was going around over the weekend about this guy saying like, oh, everything's so hard to navigate these days and nothing works. Now, this guy is an anti-monopoly attorney, I believe. So he's got a vested interest in seeing these things. Life is so much easier now than it has ever been. Like just even last night, this is a minor example. I put air in the tire. And remember back in the day, you had these stuff like fine quarters and you would go from machine to machine and they were always – You had that measurement thing that like the thing would come out at the end.

28:00Well, true. But then in came the air machines at the gas station and they never worked or they lasted for 30 seconds. Now, you tap your Apple Pay, the machine goes on, it lights up, you set the tire pressure. Yeah, you set the PSI. It shows you what it is. It's so easy. And there's just a million examples. I was listening this morning to the rewatchables before sunrise, which I've only seen once. And it was one of the most enjoyable movie viewings I've ever had in my life. It was just, I don't know, I probably saw it five years ago. The first two movies are two of my favorite movies of all time.

28:31Unbelievable. So anyway, on the podcast, they were talking about like life pre-internet. and how if you met somebody like, and you had a great connection and you lost your phone number, like they were just gone forever. There was just no way that you would find them again. I remember if you'd try to meet a friend somewhere and if you weren't at the same right place at the right time, like you just sat there and waited. There was no like, hey, I'm over here, text. Yeah, I was - You just sat there. So I didn't experience that because like in 1999, I was 15. So you were a little bit older than I was.

29:00But yeah, life is easy now. Come on. It is much easier. All right. But we got, you know, it's been a while actually since we got a question about levered ETFs. Did you see the NVIDIA ones yesterday? The NVIDIA three times levered ETF was down 50 some percent. The two times was down 30, whatever, which you would expect. But I'm not going to lie. I was tempted to buy NVD all at the close. I didn't because I just don't want to go down. The two times one or three times? I don't want to get into that behavior, but I thought about it. Just buy it for a quick bounce. Yeah. So, all right. You know, like I'm a young person.

29:30I'm contributing. Why wouldn't I just buy? And I think the ticket that they gave was UPRO. No, UPRO is a triple levered ETF, I believe. Is that right? UPRO ETF from ProShares. Yep, three times daily performance. Okay, so I went back three years. And over the last three years, the S &P is up 45%. ProShares is up, I'm sorry, UPRO is up 70%. So barely, barely twice as good. In fact, barely, really not even close to twice as good. with a drawdown that, with a 45 % drawdown, 50 % drawdown. Who needs that? Come on. Who needs that? These products are not meant to be bought and held. I don't know how many times we could say that.

30:15Even the purveyors of these products say that. These are not, these are trading vehicles. We've had on people from Direction many times and they basically invented this category. And they're like, this is a trading vehicle. Do not buy and hold this. That's not what it's for. The thing is, if you look at like the two-time NASDAQ 100, the performance is otherworldly. But it's also, you put it in context of a time when a raging bull market with not a lot of volatility. How about this? In 2020, this thing lost 65%. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. In 2020, it lost 77 % in three weeks.

31:00could you freaking imagine that's great depression in three weeks yeah you can't stick with this what are you nuts so we're recording this market just opened on tuesday and nvidia is up you know one percent or so at the half a percent okay i you must be uh is one of us behind or is one of us ahead what do you think i don't know you definitely use uh 15 minute delays no offense no way mine's mine says real time, 933. I would have expected like a 5 % bounce today in NVIDIA after falling almost 20 % yesterday. I don't know what that means. But yeah, maybe your levered one, you would have got out for like a little minor gain and that's it.

31:44Yeah, so, all right. Interesting, interesting from Ben Johnson. Man, remember when SPY was the king of the world, of the ETF world? It's still the ETF. It still is to me. When I plug in an ETF into any of the, into Y charts, whatever, SPY is the one I use the most still. Yep. Sorry. VOO, IVV, nothing but respect for you, but it's still SPY to me. However, Ben Johnson shows that, and Ben Johnson is at Morningstar. Remember a couple of months ago, I was like, I'm just throwing around these names, assuming that everybody knows who we're talking about. And I said that in the future, I was going to say who these people are.

32:24I don't think I've done a good job on that. Okay. Well, Ben Johnson, our friend at Morningstar, great analyst there, tweeted, the ETF S &P Preakness, not bad, started as a one-horse race in 1993 with SPY. Today, there are four in the field and the chase for the market share is setting up for a photo finish among the top three. And he looks at the market share of IVV, SPY, VOO, and SPLG, which, you know, not even worth mentioning. and wow SPY had again 100 % back in the day and it's about to be eclipsed by what passes it for us? I'm going to say VOL. So I suppose this chart is really showing is the massive importance of the platforms for BlackRock and Vanguard.

33:04And fees because SPY, I know it's not a big deal but they're stuck at nine because of their relationship with S &P like they just can't go lower so IVV and VOL are at three basis points Yeah Okay, this is I don't know if concerning is the right word, although it's not great. Kevin Gordon from Schwab tweeted, so far this month, there were just 98 companies where at least one insider purchased a company's shares versus 447, at which at least one insider sold. That buy-sell ratio is on track to be the lowest on record going back to 1988. So if insiders aren't buying their stocks as much as they're selling them.

33:41Do you think they were just waiting because of the 2022 bear market, though that they've been putting off sales until things came back? That I don't know. I don't know. But it also makes sense, right? Like, if you're an insider, probably already so much of your compensation is tied to the stock. And it's been nothing but up and to the right. So, like, why would they be buying their own stock? Right. Yes. Sitting on massive gains. Right? Because they're already probably getting issued a ton anyway. So. All right. Let's talk about the economy. This is from our friend Colin Roche at Discipline Funds.

34:14Is that a good bio for you? He says, one of the most important pieces of the news this week was the new tenant's rent index. NTRI leads the actual CPI rental data and came in at the lowest rate of change at this cycle, down 2.5%. This has been and continues to be the main reason why I'm not worried about inflation flaring up again. So there have been people who said, like, I'm worried inflation's coming back. Colin is not there. The rental index continues to fall. And again, it's negative on a year-over-year basis. That's good news, correct? That's great news. Rent prices are falling. I don't know how long it's going to last because they're not going to be building any more apartments with 7 % mortgages, but for now, it's great.

34:51Just talk to me again in two years when it's going back up. Bookmarked. Noted. We've discussed this in the past. This chart comes from... Wait, who is this from? Goldman Sachs, probably. Goldman Sachs, Goldman. Okay. Rolling 20-year volatility of U.S. real GDP growth. and uh yeah things are much calmer in the economy hard as that may be to believe than it was in the past like dramatically so there's a lot of people who really hate the fed and who really hate government spending but you could say that those two things have basically helped make the economy way less volatile okay counterpoint have you seen the price of eggs i'm just kidding but but seriously have you seen the price of eggs so uh i uh look at this chart from Mike Sicari.

35:41Throw it in the doc now.

35:46He shows the price of eggs. The three are average, where prices were in 2024, and where prices were in 2025. So I see this. A dozen eggs up$4 year over year. It's too much, Ben. I don't like it. So let's say you buy a dozen eggs a week, right? Let's call that fair for most families. I'm a dozen egg guy. And eggs went from$4 a carton, is that what you call them? A carton? From$4 for a dozen to$8 for a dozen. That seems like a huge price increase. That's$16 a month. $16. You can't even buy an Applebee's meal for that anymore. Is it really worth losing your mind over for$16 a month? I understand people buy a lot, but I understand people getting mad about gas prices.

36:28I don't understand the infatuation with eggs because how much of the needle is it really moving? You'd have to buy a lot of eggs for it to really impact your budget. That's all I'm saying. I don't think anybody's necessarily up in arms. It's just, you know, it's a chart. I think it's also just one of those things that people latch onto. And, okay, this is from the Wall Street Journal. They are a little worried about because Americans are carrying bigger credit card balances. So, J.P. Morgan said in its most recent quarterly report, higher revolving credit card balances where the amount of people don't pay off, right?

36:59Those are the amount that doesn't get paid off each month. The proportion of people making the minimum payment is above pre-pandemic levels. Same thing from Capital One's CEO said the same thing on an earnings call. You can see the revolving credit card balance fell dramatically during the pandemic. It looks to me like it's on the same trend as 2013. It's just kind of back on that trend. But they also show the share of credit card holders making only minimum payments. And it's up to 11%, and it's about as high as it's been since 2020. And my main takeaway here, now that sounds bad. My main takeaway here is that this number is always right around 8 % to 10%.

37:35I don't know how important these people are to economic activity. I'm not trying to marginalize a group, but if 2 % of the population is now just making the minimum payment on their credit card balance, I don't know if you'd call these people subprime or whatever it is, but are they really moving the needle? If you're forced to make just minimum payments on your credit card, are you actually moving the needle for the economy? And should you really worry about this? But I think that the second chart, the share of credit card holders making the minimum payment is much more important than the revolving credit card balance because the denominator is what matters.

38:12And to your point, Ben, it's higher than it's been in the past, but it's always like this. So it's always in a range of between 8 % and 10%, and we're a little bit higher than that now. So yeah, but it's not great. I mean, obviously, you don't want to see this. No, that's the worst financial move you can make, paying the minimum payment on your credit card and rolling a balance over. Yeah. Bar none. Yeah. Oh, this is a good substack. People were debating this on Twitter. It's called The Purse. And they have this home economics thing where they look at someone's actual budget. And this is the kind of stuff that always, always, always makes people on social media mad.

38:51I feel like some people would probably rather have their Google search history be put online than their budget. Because it's impossible to have a budget online and not get someone mad. So they went through all the numbers, and it's a 38 - and 39-year-old in Brooklyn. And they make like$400 ,000. And they say that their take-home pay after taxes and stuff is$25 ,000. They live in Brooklyn. And they go through their checking account balance, their emergency fund. I'm just reading this. So checking account balance. All right, what's the big takeaway here, Ben? So they have like, I don't know, $200 ,000 in retirement accounts between a 401k and a Roth.

39:28Their monthly contributions to retirement plans are almost$2 ,500. All right, so 10%, not bad. So 10%, so not terrible. A lot of people are saying like, you make$450 ,000 and you're only saving$25 ,000. That's a way small number. So they're saving$30 ,000 a year. I think that's actually pretty decent. It's good. Especially for Brooklyn. And then it says they own a$1.5 million townhouse in Brooklyn. and their mortgage is like$6 ,500 a month. Dude, people get really triggered when they see the economics of how people spend money in high-cost living areas. Yes. It's like, oh, if I made$400 ,000, it's like, dude.

40:05Right. Calm down. Everything. Yeah, I didn't get as, people were debating this one. I just think. What were the talking points? Just why aren't they saving more? Why aren't they wealthier? A lot of these things like that. But I think if you and your group of friends all wrote down your back-of-the-envelope budget for every month. Here's how much I make. Here's how much I save. Here's how much I spend. Here's what I spend on. I don't think anyone would agree like, oh, that looks pretty reasonable. Everyone would have a problem with someone else's budget. Yeah. Right? There's no budget that someone looks at and goes, perfect.

40:38That's nailed it. You're great. I feel like you probably have a perfect budget. Let's be honest. No, no, no, no. You'd look at my spending on clothes and shoes, and you'd say, what's wrong with you? Okay. Yeah, everyone has something like that. But I think everyone should have something like that. Yes, that's what the money is for. Yes, exactly. All right, I got one more thing on AI. I do feel like the money is to be spent however people want to spend it. As long as they're being reasonably responsible. All right, if you could be saving a little bit more, who cares? Yes, the only people who I have a problem with are like, you don't save any money.

41:14Pick up truck drivers, Ben, we know. I'm just saying, if you're spending extravagantly and not saving anything, Like, that's the problem. Yeah, that's irresponsible. It's 9.48 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. NVIDIA has undercut the lowest from yesterday. Ben, back to you. Okay. That was a good traffic update. Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, CEO, talking about regulation. And this number, I think, blew a lot of people away. Something blew me away. He's talking about regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each new crypto coin, do you still call that? That sounded really boomery, is totally infeasible at this point.

41:51They can't do one million a week. Are you saying that there's one million new coins being created every single week, which absolutely, to steal your phrase, blew my face off? If you would have told me a hundred or a thousand, I would have been surprised. A million? I mean, I guess the whole thing is that's the whole point of this infrastructure is it's easy to start and plug in. I never in a million years would have guessed. If you had said, guess how many new crypto tokens are being created a week, I never would have guessed a million, ever. Dude, there's going to be 100 new ETFs a week. James Seifert over at Bloomberg tweeted, Tuttle Capital just filed for 10 different leveraged crypto asset ETFs.

42:31So including the two-time long Melania ETF. Like, are you f***ing kidding me? Who needs this? This is just playing up to the degenerates. Two-time long Trump coin. Sure. Awesome. This is one of those things where is deregulation in crypto actually going to be a net positive or not? And a lot of people in crypto seem to think, of course it will be. So I don't buy the fact that like, oh, all of this supply is going to drown the market because nobody wants any of this supply. You know what I mean? Like the 850th ,000th, I can't even say that word. You know what I mean? People want Bitcoin and whatever, some other.

43:14but the amount of supply, yeah, it's wild. I guess it's like podcasts, right? There's a million podcasts, but the top 5 % of them drive all the traffic and revenue or something. I think so. Ben, I want to play from you a quote from Larry Fink. Larry is the CEO of one of the largest asset managers in the world, BlackRock. And the tone, his tone, like many others, has changed just a little bit over the past couple of years. Tell me if you could sense a difference, Ben, of what he used to say a few years ago compared to what he's saying today. I'm pretty sure I watched this on CNBC, but let's hear.

43:58Every time I hear his name, I think about, you see what happens, Larry? You see what happens, Larry? If you're frightened of your debasement of your currency or you're frightened of your economic or political stability of your country. You can have an internationally based instrument called Bitcoin that will overcome those local fears. And so I'm a big believer in the utilization of that as an instrument. And so if that becomes true and you see that it could be a proper hedge against maybe hope security or equities, the question is, could you see a 2 % or 5 % allocation? I was with a sovereign wealth fund during this week, and that was the conversation.

44:55Should we have a 2 % allocation? Should we have a 5 % allocation? If everybody adopted that conversation, it would be$500 ,000,$600 ,000,$700 ,000 per Bitcoin. I'm not promoting it, by the way. So that is not my promotion. Ben, how much can I put you down for? It is wild. I mean, all of these people were so negative. And I'm not throwing shade. But anyway, it goes to your point. Is deregulation bad for crypto? Could it be bad for crypto? No. is the short answer. Fair. Yeah, so it is funny. If the ETF would have just gotten approved earlier, people's opinions about Bitcoin would have changed quicker.

45:38Yeah. Right? Yeah. All right. The guys threw up a good survey on the YouTube channel. What type of work environment would you most prefer? And the choices were in the office Monday through Friday, a hybrid or a remote? And this is probably about what I would expect. I'm surprised that in office got 15 % because I would think like, who wants to be in the office five days a week? Remote got a third of the votes in hybrid, which is what I do. It's 53%. I can't tell you how incredible. And I understand I'm privileged to say this. I know a lot of people don't have this luxury, but everybody at our company does.

46:19The ability to work from home on certain days and then also be in the office with your colleagues and others is beyond words. It's Monday through Friday is really tough. You can't put a price on that, right? Yeah. I think there are some of the people who say in the office, I think there are some people who love the camaraderie. Oh yeah. Hey Jerry, how was your weekend? I mean, that's Barry. Knowing me that that is not me, right? But everyone knows that person who just spends their whole day walking around and socializing. Barry is Mr. How was your weekend? Yeah. Oh, yeah, good. Let me tell you about mine.

46:58Yeah, but that doesn't surprise me. And getting back to your comforts of today, the ability to work from home, I think this is the thing that people still don't appreciate enough coming from the pandemic. And obviously not everyone, as you said, gets that luxury. But the fact that we just kind of had a pandemic and this is the outcome is just, it's kind of amazing if you think about it. How many hours a week do you save of being on a train versus what your life was like before? All of the hours. Now, listen, anytime we talk about the pandemic and how lucky we are, obviously, I feel awkward about it because there are a lot of people that don't have the luxury that we do.

47:31And also, let's not forget that literally a million people died. So with that obvious understanding, it is just a before and after for sure. All right. This was an interesting email. Hey, guys. In the past, you've talked about the wealth horseshoe effect, where a certain upper bound of money becomes burdensome. It's a really entertaining discussion, not one that I'm remotely close to wrestling with. I think, you know, who among us are. Where do you think hiring a full-time private chef fits into the wealth spectrum? Whoa. Yeah, he went there. Okay. Can I tell you what I'm, you know, I like cooking.

48:11You know what I did last night? Not that you asked, but I'll tell you. I made, sautéed some shrimp in like teriyaki sauce. and I made my own cauliflower rice. Not that it's that hard. You just put it in a blender and you just shred it up. But I like cooking. That's not even, a private chef is not even like a 0.1 % or not a 1 % thing. It's like a top 0.1 % thing. That's pretty upper echelon stuff. I don't know how much it would cost. How much does a private chef cook? I mean, that's crazy talk. Let's put it this way. We have a range of clients at our firm in terms of wealth and having conversations with them.

48:54I've only ever heard of it one time with one of our clients. You know, interesting question, but this might be the question that has the least relevance to anybody listening. Yeah, yes. I don't think a single one of our listeners has a private chef and no offense to all of you, including Ben and I, I don't think any of us will ever have a private chef, but it is interesting, I guess. Yeah. I think it could actually be kind of awkward. just walking in and have someone in your kitchen. Yeah, how many meals a day do you eat? What do they do the rest of the time? But I mean, it would be pretty amazing to be like, just give me my favorite tonight.

49:28Give me the usual. Part of it would be pretty cool. Counterpoint, it destroys like the joy in eating, right? If you have like great food for every meal, it's like. That is true. There's something. Like you have a peanut butter and jelly and then you have like a steak and like the steak is like, oh, it's like a treat. Yeah, make it a treat. Also, if you have a private chef, do they clean up for themselves? Like, who does the dishes? Like, if I have a private chef, I don't want to do the dishes, too. I want them to do the dishes. I'm a big dishes guy, as you know. You saw my dishes last night. Ugh.

50:00Like, a bomb went off. Honestly, if my wife did that, I'd talk—I'd give her divorce papers. If my wife loaded the dishwasher like you do. They come out clean. No way. There's no way. It's like dishes on top of dishes. I don't know how it closes. Do you take your top rack off? No. Okay. All right. I will take a video unveiling of the dishes and show you. Spotless. All right. You must have a really good dishwasher. Story time. Monday nights are pretty busy for us, the Carlson family, as far as practices go. Right? My daughter has soccer and basketball back to back, and my other daughter has soccer.

50:38So it was my night to drive last night. So I pick up one of the teammates, drop the older daughter and her teammate off at basketball, then take the younger daughter to soccer. Right? And then I'm going back to get basketball and then back to soccer, picking her up. So I'm waiting for my daughter at soccer, but it was like a blizzard last night. It was dark and it was windy and snow everywhere. And I'm parked right in the front, ready to go. Yeah, the Midwest is going to take over the world. Fair. Hey, make it a treat, right? We appreciate summers more. True. So there's this guy trying to back into a spot.

51:09And he's holding up the line trying to back into a spot. Oh, come on, man. Right, yes. There's a line of people waiting and he's trying to back in right next to me. What type of car are we talking? SUV. a Chevy Traverse or whatever. And he's backing up and backing up, and he's so far off that he is literally backing up right into me. And he probably gets within, it looked like he was within three inches of hitting me. And I'm sitting in my car, and I'm like... And, you know, objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear. Yes, but you have the, everyone has the camera now. So then he straightens it out, and he does it again, and this time, he is within a paper's razor's edge of hitting me on the side.

51:42And I'm sitting in my car going, oh! You're going to honk? And then finally he repositions it four times. How are you not honking? Okay, this is what I was going to ask. Finally he gets in, and he's so close to my door, I literally cannot get out of the car. And he like sits in his car and goes, like nailed it. Should I have honked? I did not honk. Should you have honked? I should have honked, huh? Should you have honked? I didn't want to scare him and have him hit the gas and nail me. You should have put your head out of the window and screamed. I was screaming inside of my car, but yes, I was not.

52:18Obviously, he didn't know that I was in my car, right? Anyway. Wait, so how did this resolve itself? You get out of the passenger side? I literally had to climb out over of the passenger side of my car. Dude, come on. Yes. Have some self-respect. You climbed over the pit. Yeah, that was pretty bad. All right, recommendations. Oh, I got a question for you. Okay. So I'm doing a little remodeling of my office. So my kids, you can't see it. I'll send a picture for YouTube to Duncan. But my kids said, hey, your walls are too white in your office. You need to hang some stuff. And so they, for like the last two years, every time they come to my office, they hang a picture of theirs.

52:58And so my whole wall now is just kids' pictures from school that they've drawn. It actually looks kind of cool. But I said, I need to like class it up in here a little bit. And maybe this is college dorm room classing it up. but I bought three posters from Amazon of my favorite finance movies. What are those movies? Okay. And again, this is maybe college dorm room, but I don't care. So tell me what movie posters did I buy for finance movies for my office? Okay. I've got like five, but I think within the five, I'll get the three right. Wall Street, Margin Call, Boiler Room, The Big Short. Okay.

53:35Stop at the first three. You got me. Not too easy. That was it. So Wall Street boiler room margin call? Yes. Can I see these posters? Oh, I don't. They're wrapped up. I still got to hang them all around. So you have to frame them? Do you get them framed? Yes. College dorm room? Maybe. Do I care? No. Very much. It screams, I'm in finance, but I also won't honk at you if you back your car into me. Exactly. All right. Gladiator 2 came out on Paramount+. My wife and I watched it. Two and a half hour long, I think. gladiator one the first one is one of my i think it's one of it's i think it's probably the best movie of this century if not it's in the running yeah absolutely love it so this movie was totally unnecessary i actually thought the first hour or so i was like oh this is pretty good then we kept watching and um they get to the part where they put sharks and water in the coliseum i don't know how how they ever would have gotten sharks back in the day like how they would have caught sharks and then put them in the coliseum and take them out of the coliseum maybe i'm nitpicking it wasn't good.

54:35It wasn't bad. I thought Denzel... It wasn't bad? I thought that there was enough breadcrumbs to the first one that I thought it wasn't bad. It wasn't good. It was an abomination. I know there's a lot of people who hated it. I didn't hate it. I was kind of entertained. Here's the other thing though. Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors ever. He mailed it in, didn't put a self-address on the back, didn't put a stamp. This was one of the most mailed in performances I've ever seen from a good actor. So I was entertained. I didn't like have a bad time watching the movie. That's what I mean.

55:08I was still kind of entertained. The CGI baboons were horrendous, but okay. But I could say that I had a decent time watching it, but it was a piece of garbage. It felt like a movie that went straight to HBO back in like 2006. Yeah. It felt like a gladiator knockoff. I agree. Like, the quality was just horrendous. And Ridley Scott, I mean, I know he's an older gentleman, but he's a, you know, he's a... That is the biggest thing I thought, like, the quality of the first one was so good. The script was terrible. It was so bad. Again, I had a good time watching it, but it was a piece of shit. That's what I mean, yeah.

55:42Totally unnecessary. All right, so we watched a few 80s movies with my kids. I love sharing my old, some of my favorite movies with my kids. We watched Goonies with my kids. And my kids absolutely loved it. My daughter was like, when's Goonies 2 coming out? I'm like, well, this came out in 1985 or something. So maybe they'll make a new one. Probably not. Can I tell you the last time I saw Goonies? I was eating magic mushrooms, which I think is perhaps socially acceptable now. Only if you micro-dose. Okay. If you macro-dose, no, it's not. So I macro-dosed. This was in 2000 and what year did I graduate high school?

56:132002, I guess. And there's one scene where a skeleton prop like comes out of the wall to scare them, whatever. And my friend said, is that Willem Dafoe? If he'd said it straight face, that's pretty good. The part where they ask Chunk to tell all the bad stuff he's done and he's crying and he's talking about how he did fake puke in the movie theater and then everyone else puked. Perfect acting for the, I mean, I don't know. I love that movie. I should watch it with my kids because yeah, I don't really even remember the movie that well. And another one I watched with my daughter, Adventures in Babysitting.

56:48For some reason, this was a big one in the Carlson family household growing up. Never heard of it. It's not the greatest movie ever. It's a Chicago movie. Elizabeth Shue plays a babysitter. And honestly, without her in it, she's so good in it. It wouldn't be that good. But the whole thing is, she has to pick her friend up from downtown Chicago from the suburbs. And she has all these kids with it that she's babysitting. And then hijinks ensues. Great 80s premise. Yeah. But the whole thing is that she gets a flat tire on the way and they need$50 for a tire. And the whole movie is like how they can't come up with$50.

57:16$50 for a tire. This is in 1987. And again, I said I spent$3.50 on one a couple weeks ago. It's just funny to hear that number to be like,$50? Yeah. And that was like a big deal. Okay, that's all I got. Okay, I watched on your recommendation A Real Pain. What did you think I would think of the movie? I thought you would like it. Okay. I very much liked it. However, I know that we're very attuned to this, more so than most, I would say. More so than most movie viewers. I pride ourselves on the ability to distinguish where and how you watch a movie matters a lot. Hence me going to the theater, our airplane movie discussions.

57:57If I went to the theater and watched A Real Pain, I think I would like it. If I was on my couch and strictly watched it as a standalone, I don't know how much I would have liked it. But I watched it on my iPad with the Knicks game on on my main TV. Oh, that's a horrible idea. No, no, no. The Knicks game was on mute. the next game was on mute and I was back and forth so in that setting I very much liked the movie if I was just glued to the screen for 90 minutes or whatever I probably would have been like yeah it was good but I really enjoyed it it's a slowish movie not a ton happens but two great actors okay Conclave not for me that doesn't surprise me yeah just not for me I watched it yeah not for me Anyway, it was nominated for Best Picture, which I guess, you know, makes sense.

58:50So here's the list. Honora, The Brutalist, Uncomplete Unknown, Conclave, Dune Part II, Amelia Perez, I'm Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked. Any movies that you feel particularly strong about winning? I mean, the only thing I feel particularly strong about is this is one of the worst lists in a long, might be one of the worst lists in a long time. Are there any movies on here where you go, man, I mean, I saw Wicked and Dune. Dune Part II was incredible. I just there's no like stand up like in 20 years when you look back at this movie and be like that movie was amazing I don't think there's any on this list that are going to be like that I loved Anora is it like best picture I don't know yeah you're right pretty weak list although I didn't see I didn't see a bunch of these my kids have watched Wicked like five times already and they listen to the soundtrack all the time so they'd give the shout for Wicked here okay so I watched Meet the Parents for the first time in a long time like in full.

59:44I watched it in full. Why did I watch it in full? Robin was sick last week so I was sleeping in a room by myself and fired up. You know, you told me that you did that and then my wife got sick, had some sniffles and coughs and I said, I'm out. I'm sleeping in the basement. Yeah, and I didn't get sick. She had the flu. I didn't get sick. I know we know this. This is not breaking ground but holy shit, is that movie so funny. I rewatched it recently too. I Have Nipples, Greg, Can You Milk Me is really one of the best lines of all time. And the whole thing, the whole thing, it's just so, so, so good.

1:00:20And I haven't seen it for 20 years. It's like, you know, we saw it a hundred times when it came out. So if you're a young person, if you graduated high school in 2015, watch this movie. Perhaps peak Ben Stiller, like one of his better performances ever. What a run. All right. So almost 10 o 'clock as we're finishing this up. NVIDIA is up 1%. The NASDAQ 100 is up 60 basis points. Not like a coming back, storming coming back, but putting up a fight. I think this kind of thing happening is, I think it's really, it can't be too easy. Like the whole like, I didn't like the fact that it was seemingly too easy for this AI stuff.

1:01:01To be like, just add mag seven, here, have it. Control this space. Yeah. I kind of like the way this is playing out now. I want to see the back and forth. Yeah. The 2020s has to be one of the most exciting decades ever for financial markets. And the fact that we have social media to follow along, for all the bad stuff about social media, and you and I have talked a lot about it, there is a lot of downsides to social media. Being able to watch this stuff play out in real time is absolutely one of the better parts of social media. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. All right. Keep the emails coming. Animal Spirits at the compoundnews.com.

1:01:37Personal emails, personal responses. We'll see you next time.

1:01:45Don't go.