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Live From Miami (EP.404)

2025/3/19
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Animal Spirits Podcast

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Ben Carlson
一位专注于投资教育和策略的金融专家,通过博客和播客分享投资见解。
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Michael Batnick
作为 Ritholtz Wealth Management 的管理合伙人和研究总监,Michael Batnick 是一位知名的投资专家和播客主持人。
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Michael Batnick: 我认为短期内不会出现熊市,但这只是一个概率判断,并非确定的预测。我承认今天的播客录制有点慢,表现欠佳,主要是因为准备不足。面对现场观众时,即使讲笑话失败了,也能快速转移话题。我亲眼目睹了机场有人上厕所后不洗手就离开,这让我开始重视洗手消毒。我经历过在酒店找不到灯开关的糟糕体验。有些酒店的特色饮用水很好喝。回复邮件时,应该及时且礼貌。不恰当的邮件回复方式可能会影响人际关系。过于强势的邮件回复方式是不合适的。经济形势相关的民调结果容易受到政治因素的影响,独立选民的观点更值得关注。关注人们的行为而非言论,才能更准确地判断经济形势。迈阿密是一座被低估的电影城市。 Ben Carlson: YCharts 的新AI工具可以提高金融顾问的工作效率。面对现场观众时,即使讲笑话失败了,也能快速转移话题。由于准备不足,今天的播客录制不太理想。我不认为市场会在本周崩盘,市场的大幅波动可能会对客户和播客录制造成负面影响。大选后市场的初始波动可能是一种过度反应,目前市场走势已逆转。由于市场结构和信息传播速度加快,市场调整速度也加快了。市场调整往往伴随着去杠杆化和风险规避行为。我们有可能在2020年代经历第三次熊市,很可能会在本十年末之前经历一次熊市。零售业ETF(XRT)近期出现反弹,市场反弹可能仅仅是因为之前的下跌速度过快。欧洲股票近期受到投资者青睐,市场调整期间,人们往往会质疑60/40投资组合和长期持有策略的有效性。媒体报道中关于投资策略失效的观点往往基于个例,缺乏普遍性,并且存在市场情绪的影响。市场时机难以把握,仓促的投资决策往往会带来负面后果。酒店在水中加入水果的做法没有实际意义,只是为了好看。当前经济形势与2008年金融危机后的情况存在相似之处,可能面临经济再次衰退的风险。企业资本支出和消费者支出计划出现逆转,预示着经济可能放缓。消费者信心下降,裁员增加,企业经营状况恶化,这些都预示着经济可能衰退。消费者情绪的转变是否会体现在经济数据中,还有待观察。失业率预期上升,人们对加薪的预期降低,这可能会加剧经济衰退的风险。即使经济衰退,其严重程度也可能有限,政府政策可能对经济衰退起到缓冲作用。IPO数量大幅减少,这表明市场环境低迷。私募市场投资规模巨大,短期内可能不会对投资者造成太大影响。忽略市场噪音对于金融从业者来说至关重要,民调结果往往反映的是政治立场而非真实的经济状况。人们容易受到错误信息的误导,对经济形势的判断不够理性。算法会放大负面信息,导致人们对经济形势的评价过于悲观。洛杉矶是最好的电影城市,Apple TV的新剧《Dope Thief》非常精彩。Lorne Michaels的传记《Lorne》是一本优秀的管理类书籍。

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Chapters
The podcasters Michael and Ben are reviewing their live podcast recording in Miami. They discuss their unpreparedness and rate the podcast as a low grade, acknowledging its slow pace and lack of preparation. They also share their opinions on the future of the market and discuss the possibility of a bear market.
  • Podcasters reviewing their live podcast recording.
  • Acknowledging unpreparedness and low grade.
  • Opinions on the future of the market.
  • Possibility of a bear market.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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Today's episode live from Future Proof Citywide is brought to you by YCharts. Who else? The new YCharts AI tool is now live and it's going to change the way you work as a financial advisor. It's not putting people out of jobs yet, but it's making you more efficient. What are some of the features? So it takes SEC filings, financial news, economic data, and just allows you to find them much quicker, integrated into your presentations and your practice. Yeah.

So for advisors, that's talking quicker proposals, quicker feedback for clients. I think AI is just going to make us all more efficient, right? So check the link in the show notes. Try out the AI chat today. And when you sign up for YCharts, what do you get? 20% off. New subscription only. Welcome to Animal Spirits, live from Future Proof Citywide with Michael and Ben. We did one live show already today. How'd it go? Let's set the scene. Should we rewind? Yeah.

Yes, let's rewind. So last night we celebrated your 40th birthday party and Josh went out of his way to pick one of the cooler steakhouses in Miami, Poppy? Poppy. Poppy Steaks and it was an experience. Yes. What was your experience with it? So there was about 20 of us and at one point,

Like, lights come on and loud music. Dinner was over and it was time for a cake, right? And all the lights start flashing, the music picks up. And everybody starts looking at me and taking out their cameras and I wanted to die.

So you initially, I think, were very embarrassed, turned a little red. Well, it's just everybody looking at you was taking forever. And I'm just like, I grabbed you. I'm like, here, save me. So I sat down and not, it wasn't just our whole group of 20. The entire restaurant kind of stood up. People were filming and there's sparklers going and the people who work there are going crazy. And it's this whole big thing. And it's, the music was bumping and the lights were flashing and it's like, oh, there's smoke. And then the...

surprise, the reveal was that it was a steak for another table. That was next to ours. It wasn't for you. So you went from embarrassed to actually like being the center of attention is kind of cool to it's not for me actually. And it went to some other table and we kept thinking like, what were they thinking as we, everyone. Why are they celebrating? Yes. Everyone thought it was coming to you, but then

Ten minutes later, they did do a birthday thing, which is kind of funny because at that point, we'd already celebrated enough. And they did do the sparklers and the big sign that said, Happy Birthday, Michael. It was cool. Remember, Mr. Deeds, we wasted the good surprise on you. It was sort of like that. It was the, yes, total rug pull for you. It was just, it was perfect. So we were moving a little slow this morning. We were lucky enough to draw the 8.30 slot at Future Proof, which I'm told is actually a good thing.

Because it's not an... You're a draw. You're a get. We want people up and out early. So it's actually a compliment. So we were the very first ones on stage. It was a little chilly. I'd say our brains were operating at... 40% speed? 40. I was going to say 60, but maybe 40. So how would you grade this podcast that our audience is about to listen to? Or turn off? Was it a...

Like, okay, real talk, it was probably like a D+, but I think we acknowledged it, that it was a slow-motion train wreck, which elevated it to maybe a B-, maybe a strong C+. I think the YouTube viewers are going to like it better, because we did a lot of charts, and we couldn't have them on the screen. That's true. That did slow us down. But the other thing is, it's interesting when you're in front of an audience, and

And if I say a bad joke to you, we just move on, right? Like, there's nothing like just blank stares, especially if people in the audience don't know us. And they're like, who are these assholes? Who gave them a mic? What are they doing? What's happening right now? So during the episode... So here's what happened. You know what? I'm going to take the L on this one. My bad. We were...

a bit underprepared, would you say? The doc was light. We've been busy for the past few days at the conference. So yeah, we didn't have as much as we usually have. The document was light. So about 15 minutes into the show, I'm like, uh-oh, we're almost done. We're almost done. Duncan texted us, do your 100 favorite movies on an airplane. So anyway, one thing that

We didn't get to, I think because I was, I think I'm going to, I'm going to blame the 40% capacity thing, the 40% speed that we were operating on. We spoke very quickly about my feelings on the future of the market. And I said this on the show, I have opinions on where the market's going to go. I think everybody has opinions. Like, I don't think I would like, you know, they might happen. They might not. Um, so I said, I don't think we're going to have a bear market. Obviously that might be wrong in a week. Who knows? Um,

But what I didn't say, which I want to say now is that I'm definitely not like stamping a clong about him. Cause I think that when you get a sharp rally off the lows, like we had, not always there's V's, but it's pretty common to roll and retest the loads. Right. So not a, not a prediction, just a more of a, Hey, this is a grand rapids hedge. That's what this is. Put a probability on it. Right. Probability on what? No bear market. Cause you like to do, you like to think in those terms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So probably have a no bear market. Um,

Let's go. I really do believe no bear markets. I'm going to say 74%. All right. That's pretty good. That's like, right? Yes. I just, I don't know how anyone can think that they have this market handicap. I know exactly what's going to happen. Okay. So enjoy our live show from Miami. Now it's time for us to get a Miami Vice.

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. ♪

Thank you guys for showing up. I'm hungover too. Listen, anytime you can lock down the 8:30 a.m. time slot at a conference, the day after St. Paddy's Day, and the day after you celebrate Michael's 40th birthday, you have to do it. Yep. So Matt said you guys want the 8:30 spot, and we said no, we need the 8:30 spot. We have to have it. Let's start off with some banter.

I, on the way here, we walked through the pool and I told you I want to talk about this today and I pointed to the water with the cucumbers in it. Okay, do we uh... So I go for a run yesterday, not to brag, and I come back and I'm at the pool and I need some water because it's very hot here in Miami. And the only thing I see is the water with the cucumbers in it. Who is this for? Me.

I think it looks better than it. There's no purpose of putting fruit in the water. No one actually likes the water. If you put a regular water next to the cucumber water, which one gets drank more? The regular water. Nine times out of 10, I think you're right. It's usually a charade just for show. But the water at Lowe's Hotel actually was delightful. There was like a mint-

and a pink tasting thing. So I'm going to take the other side of that one. A couple of weeks ago, Ben was on the podcast talking about how there should be a standard hotel room. I think you're onto something. And I forgot to mention this last week, but I was in Chicago at a hotel last week, and I couldn't find the light switch. Like there was like, I'm looking around, there's no lights on the ceiling, but there's just like a fluorescent light coming out from like,

the wall area and I'm looking around and I just slept with the lights on. I was going to call to the hotel lobby, but I, uh, a lot of, a lot of blank stares. That's okay. A lot of blank stares. See, it's better when we're one-on-one. Ben always laughs at my jokes. Let's talk about the stock market. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I got one more travel thing. How many people are like, uh, like Josh chronic Purell users?

That's actually me. Are you? Well, since I had kids, because kids are just germ factories, so I use, yeah, I'm constantly using that stuff on my hands. I guess with germs, I'm like a what doesn't kill you makes you stronger type of guy. I'm not afraid of germs. Germs don't scare me. Until now. So I'm in the airport yesterday, and we're going to the baggage claim, and I see a guy, I'm walking into the bathroom, I see a guy running towards me. So he runs into the bathroom with me,

And I'm thinking, "Alright, this guy's about to have diarrhea." He doesn't. He just pees at the urinal next to me. Leaves without washing his hands. And then he runs back to the carousel to get his bag. This whole thing is bizarre, but I can't take my eyes off of him. And as the bags start to come out,

Nope, that's not my bag. And I'm like, oh, PB hands. This guy is touching multiple and he's touching like the handle. Like, nope. So now I think I'm a Purell guy. All right, now let's talk about the stock market. What do you got, Ben? Well, you were concerned that the market was going to be crashing this week as we're doing the podcast. No, no, no, no, no. No, I wasn't.

I didn't want that to happen. It's not like I thought it was going to happen. I was like, oh, guys, I'm telling you it's going to… But it would have sucked. Listen, we all serve our clients. And it would have just been shitty to be here. We had that at the first year of Future Proof. It wasn't fun. We had that… Was it a 9% inflation print? Like one of the highs? And so, yes, I was not concerned…

As in, I thought it was going to happen, but I didn't. It would have been a bummer if we're here smiling, having a good time and the market's just tanking. Who wants that? Someone reminded me. So the day after the election, I said, here's what the market is doing. And it was, remember, it was a big move. And I tweeted this and someone said, hey, Ben, I'm reminding you of this. And I, so the initial market move right after the election, S&P 500 was up big. Small caps were up big. The dollar was up.

Foreign stocks got crushed, gold went down, and rates went up and bonds went down. And I- Wait, say that one more time? I'm just kidding. And so I said, something here is an overreaction. I'm just not quite sure yet. But it seems like everything was. Based on what happened now, all of that reversed.

The S&P is down. The small caps are getting crushed. The dollar is down. Foreign stocks are going crazy. Gold is at all-time highs. And rates have come down for bonds. So literally everything that happened the day after the election was an overreaction. So the MAG-7 is down, was down 20% at its worst. Severance is down 24% from season one to season two. I'm still holding out hope that it's going to come back.

What's the Ryan Dietrich story here? All right. So we've got charts in the dock down on the screen, so I'll walk you through them. Ryan tweeted one of the fastest corrections ever. And he looked at what happens one, three, six, 12 months after. And three and six months higher 100% of the time, 12 months, 83% of the time. Again, it's only happened five times, but

Ben, what's your... I feel like you've been banging this drum for a while, that everything just happens quicker now. Are we ever going to get like a 10% correction that just sort of, you know, takes its time? I don't... I think investors just... It's the structure of the market now. The information moves faster. The algorithms move faster. And I think it's like people just want to take their medicine and get it over with and rip the bandaid off. I think the market is biased to move higher in this current...

I don't know, the last 15 years, just with the relentless bid and corporate earnings going higher, like the market has a higher bid. It always does. But when something knocks it off its axis, it happens really quickly. And I think a lot of that has to do with structural issues. Josh and I were talking with Joe Terranova yesterday about the news, I don't know, news. Greg Zuckerman wrote an article about the hedge funds, Millennium, Citadel, Citadel,

blowing up a little bit and blowing up. They were down 1.1% for the month. But relatively speaking for them, that was their worst month in, I think, six years. So the de-risking, the de-grossing, the whatever happens just really quickly. Yeah, the leverage comes out. I looked at the every S&P 500 drawdown since 1950. And I got this cute little table here. Everyone in the audience should see it at some point. So...

There's 39 corrections, so that's one every two years or so. But the last time we had three bear markets in a decade was the 1960s. Before that, it happened in the 40s. It happened in the 30s, depending on how you count these things. So people are saying, well, could we actually get our third bear market in five or six years in the 2020s? And because the speed of this stuff, it wouldn't shock me at all.

if we just, again, have a big overreaction. And I think that's the thing is the pendulum is just swinging wider and wider these days. So this would be, like I said, this would be the first time we would have three bear markets since the 1960s. Not saying it's going to happen, but we're going to have one by the end of the decade for sure, right? Are we using like rolling 10 years or what are we talking about? Fiscal decades?

Yeah, just the numbers. All right, so we got a bit of a snapback, which is nice for now. We'll take it. The XRT, which is the retail ETF, equally weighted-ish, has put together its two best day rally of the year. That's from Mike Zuccardi after the horrific U-mish and disappointing February retail sales report. We're going to talk about sentiment later in the show, but we also had a very nice bounce yesterday.

Best day for the advanced decline line since December 2023. Any explanation for the bounce? I mean, we just went down too quick and people had to come back, right? There it is. European equities. Sorry, we don't have this chart on the stage, but nothing but just relentless outflows for the last three years. Who's this chart from? EPFR and Barclays Research. And investors are, in fact, piling in.

I think this has legs. For the first time, I think for the first time, and this is another one of those, no one ever could have guessed this in a million years. Even after the election, no one said, oh, foreign stocks are going to go crazy. Everyone thought the opposite. So for the past 15 years, it was US stocks go up, international stocks are either flat or go up less.

And this idea that like, what could happen where US stocks would go down and European stocks would go up? Could you give me a scenario, genius? And it was completely unimaginable. So one of the things that happens during almost every market correction is either the 60-40 portfolio is dead, although right now it seems to be alive again because bonds are doing okay.

And buy and hold is dead. And so the Wall Street Journal has this article. The title is The Days of Set It and Forget It. Investing Just Ended for Many Americans. And to be fair, this article is about two Americans that this happened for. But they go through these two. One's an older gentleman and basically said, I'm getting out of everything. Hang on. Don't paraphrase Yarmar Ariely. Okay. So for people in the audience that are new to our show, this really tickles our funny bone.

Whenever there is an article talking about like this, the days of set it and forget investing just ended. They like, they get two quotes from random people.

So for example, the foremost authority on investing, Yoram Ariely, hadn't touched most of his investments, preferring to ride the stock market ups and downs. And no offense to Yoram. Last Tuesday, he decided he had had enough. The 82-year-old unloaded almost half of his stock investments, fearful of the effect of President Trump's economic agenda and tariffs in particular. But get this, he may get rid of more still. He might not be done.

He might not be done. One of the times we knew we made it as a podcast is when we were making fun of one of these people in one of these articles, and the guy actually emailed us and said, hey, that was me. I was the one they were talking about. But Ben, it's not just your Marielle. It's also Pat and Price. So Pat and Price said he expected geopolitical chaos in Trump's second term back when equities were still flying high. So he sold all the stocks in his retirement accounts around the time of the presidential inauguration on January 20th.

And so, let me just quote Patton because there's some gold in here. It's not like I have some fancy thesis and I think I know what's going to happen. Said Price, a 46-year-old musician and former political consultant. I just don't...

I just don't think anybody knows what's going to happen. I could not have said it better myself. So this is the worst part of it, though. It says he doesn't know when he will get the money back into the market. And that's why market timing is so hard because you go into it with no plan and you're screwed. So unfortunately, Yoram and Patton say that set it and forget it is over. It died. We'll see.

Do you remember coming out of the 2010s crisis? I don't know what you're doing. Were you still a waiter back then? Insurance industry? Like coming out of the GFC? Funny you should ask, Ben. What year are we talking here? 2008? I'd say 2010, 2011-ish was the big push for there's going to be a double dip recession. Remember that was everyone's parlay was going to be a double dip recession. I was at the library.

Studying for the CFA, emailing strangers, and day trading the triple leveraged inverse financial ETF, ticker FAZ. Shout out to Direction. Okay. So you weren't really up on the European debt crisis at the time. What do you mean? I had my trading journal. I was all up on it. So my take is right now, we're positioning ourselves for a double dip vibe session. The economy is slowing a little bit, but it seems like all the charts just say

the vibe session is back. So we have a bunch of charts from Torsten Slack, who does a good job of this, and he shows there's a sharp reversal in spending plans for CapEx by corporations. And consumers are getting more worried about their jobs being lost. - But, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. To me, this is, I don't want to hand wave this away. - No, no, so I got a point here. Give me a sec. - Okay. - Let me cook. Consumer sentiment is falling.

Jobs cuts have risen, so that's a real thing. This is the one that got me, though. Record high share of consumers think business conditions are worsening. And this thing shot up, like this is like the stock market going crazy. I just think these sentiment overreactions are happening faster, too. And that's where it's hard to know, does this actually mean anything? And are we going to see it in the data? We have to wait for the data still. Yeah, I completely agree with you. So we were waiting for retail sales on Friday.

what day is today? Monday? Did Monday we have retail sales? And we were like anxious that it was going to finally show up in the data. Now, again, like this just started, so it's early, but I totally agree with you that the sentiment shift and people spending plans, I think matters, but you got to, the data has to confirm it. Because it didn't confirm in 2022. Everyone was so negative on the economy, but they kept spending money. Is that going to happen this time around as well?

We will find out. But to me, that's it. If people pull back, if corporate capex pulls back, we will get a recession. So here's the difference. This is from Neil Dutta at Redmac. He said, expected change in unemployment is the worst since 2008. No one is asking for a raise in this environment. And I think that's the big difference. Unless it turns into deflation, I guess. But people could ask for a raise in 2021 and 2022. The labor market was scorching hot. That's not the case anymore.

And so I think that is where the self-fulfilling prophecy thing starts to happen. So if we do go into a recession, Torsten Slack has another chart showing U.S. household balance sheets are in excellent shape. A mild recession? Yeah, it doesn't seem like we're setting ourselves up for a financial crisis. And the good news is a lot of the wounds right now are self-inflicted, right? One of the reasons for the slowdown is inflation.

government policy. And so can't they reverse it and help if need be? Who knows? But when I say mild recession, I guess what I'm talking about is all recessions suck. But when history looks back on whatever we're going to experience, I think it will have been, if anything, a mild recession. 40% chance of a recession? Always. Where are we going next, Ben? All right. Oh, here's one. Mike Sicardi. This is from Goldman Sachs. Number of IPOs. So it was

140 in 2020, which is kind of bonkers to think about in 2020 that there was that many IPOs. 260 in 2021 and then just falls off of a cliff. And there was 50 last year. There's been a dozen so far this year. This seems like one of those things that for sure is a sign of never going to happen or not happening for a while. What do you mean?

that the IPO window is going to all of a sudden open and the floodgates are going to go crazy. Like in this environment, I can't imagine that IPOs are going to go crazy. Plano just filed. So we have a lot of private investment managers here. Does this ever trickle down to where the investors in these funds start getting worried? Like, when am I going to get my money back? I don't know. Don't you think it's happening? I mean, there's been a lot of articles about end investors. A lot more money has gone into private markets than has come out.

I guess there's just so much more money there these days that it doesn't matter until it does. I don't know. I got to be honest, Ben, I'm getting a little bit nervous. Not about the market, but about our, about this podcast here. I feel like we underprepared. The doc is a little bit light, ladies and gentlemen. So we're going to do our best to fill in the time. We're not done yet. We're not done just yet, but let's slow it down. We're on cruise control. All right. Um,

Okay, so I think I put you on this. Here's one. Okay. What do you got? No, but like we look back at this in five years and does this turn into a bear market or recession or is this just the freak out du jour and we move on? I told you when this started that I don't think we're gonna get a bear market. My opinion hasn't changed, but I'm also like really afraid to say that out loud in front of all you people because

I don't really think, I mean, I think that, but I don't believe it. You know what I mean? Like, I actually think that, but I don't really believe my own feelings. I'm always wrong. Take you literally not seriously? Yeah. No, but no, I don't think that we're going to have a bear market. And I don't know. We'll find out. All right. Switching gears here. We've been talking a lot about the inheritance thing. And last week I made the point that millennials shouldn't count on the inheritance because they're not going to get it until they're like 65 years old. People are just living longer and

they're probably not going to get it when they need it to help them. Here's a new report from Bank of America showing that women will be the big benefits of the wealth transfer. So this is I feel like the estimated number is different every time you read it. They say one hundred and twenty four trillion by 2048, 80 percent of which is going to go to women. How do they figure that? Because women live longer than men.

So most of that money is going to trickle down to women. So they say that could drive growth in women's sports, refashion the travel industry, and narrow long-term gaps in health care provisions. This is from a Bank of America report saying women will control more money than ever before. Is this something that the wealth management industry is ready for, prepared for? The wealth transfer? No, not the wealth transfer. Just the fact that women households are going to be controlling more money. I'm saying from a relationship advice side of things.

You don't know what I'm going at here? I don't know if I'm qualified to talk about, is the wealth management industry handled, equipped to handle the wealth transfer to that micro? Yeah, I think so. I don't see genders. I think we're equipped. I don't know. Can we talk about your hat real quick? Please.

So I've told this joke already before, but my kids heard that we were coming to this event and they said, well, what are you doing? And I said, we're doing a live podcast and we're doing all this stuff. And Monday night, we're going out to celebrate Michael's birthday, which we did last night, which was a great family affair for everyone. And they said, how old is he? I said, I was 40. And they said, Michael's older than you. When you put that hat on, you look like you're 80 years old, my friend.

You look like you've already... I mean, you might as well just go on the beach and get the leather tan and start looking for... Get the metal detector on the beach. That's a retiree hat right there. I'll take it. Thank you. Okay.

Hang on, I have a real estate thing. Okay. So we were in the hotel bar yesterday having lunch, maybe sipping on Miami Vice as one wants to do in Miami. And there was a mortgage industry, the top 50 mortgage brokers in Miami. They all posed for a picture. And I was just kind of thinking, how are they even celebrating in this environment? Like there's no activity, there's nothing to do. I talked to a friend recently who has been a realtor for a dozen years.

and said he finally just had to take a job in sales for something else because there's literally no activity anywhere going on in the industry. Does that actually, if there's a slowdown and mortgage rates go from seven to five, does that help the real estate industry at all? Yes. Don't you think?

There has to be a lot of pent-up demand. Well, it's like a push and pull. I guess what you're saying is if there's a recession that drags rates lower, is that also going to kill housing activity because people are not spending money, afraid of losing their jobs? I don't think so. I think there's such a backlog of people, 35 to 30, whatever, 40, that need to get into a house. First-time homebuyers. There's still so many of them. So I don't think so. So this is also where the sentiment piece comes in because my whole thesis has been

There's $35 trillion in home equity just sitting there. And people can't use all of that, obviously. But I think the number is like 15 to 20 of it is money that people could take out and use for something if they wanted to, for home equity on a credit or cash out refinance. And will the sentiment of the environment allow that if it's happening because of a slowdown? Will people tap that equity and use it or not? Why wouldn't they? Because it'd be harder to pay back?

I guess, yeah, worried about taking on debt in a slowing economy. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Good question. All good questions, Ben. The consumer balance sheet and the potential for the real estate industry to be like the counterbalance actually is another reason why, to your point, if we got a recession, it would probably be a mild one. Yeah. All right. I want to talk about email etiquette for a second. I haven't done this in a while on the show, but a couple of years ago,

I sent, and this is filler, by the way. I sent an email. What happened? I sent an email to somebody. Oh, somebody sent me an email and I forgot to respond to them probably for about a week. And I apologized because I do the right thing. I said, I'm sorry, I dropped the ball on this. Would love to talk next Thursday, Friday at these times. This person responded a week later and said, now it's my turn to drop the ball.

dot, dot, dot. Can you talk? Whatever, whatever. And there was a debate amongst our audience. I think you were in the, nothing wrong with that, right? She's just being funny, right? Yeah. She was not being funny. She was being very rude. And my suspicion was confirmed because on the call, her body, it just, it didn't go well. She was being very rude. I did another run-in with a weird email etiquette last week. Here it is. Okay. I documented this. 844. I get a LinkedIn message.

At 9:14, I promptly respond. That's how you do it. Less than 30 minutes? Come on. Sure, shoot me an email. 11:22. Awesome. We'll have my assistant email you. 11:33. So 10 minutes after that. Email sent. Check your inbox. I'm out. Right? Right? You don't think so? - Wait, I'm missing something here. What are you so mad about? - I'm not mad. I'm just out. It's overly aggressive.

This guy says, I'll have my assistant email you. Now, I'm not an assistant shamer. Fine. A lot of people have assistants that do their email. But then she sent me an email. By the way, the email was absurd. I didn't grab her email, but it's completely absurd. Validating my suspicions here. But then 10 minutes later, he says, like, don't confirm that the email was sent. 10 minutes after you tell me this could be sent. And how dare you tell me to check my inbox?

You're the Jerry Seinfeld of email etiquette. Remember on Seinfeld, you didn't watch much Seinfeld, but the running joke was always that his standards were always too high. He'd find something wrong with every girlfriend or person that he wanted to date with. That's you with email. You look for something that's wrong with these people. Nope, the exact opposite. It's a good thing you're not dating anymore. Your standards are way too high. The exact opposite is true. Could not be further from the truth. I answer so many emails.

that I know what's proper and what's not. And it's one in a thousand. I haven't had a bad email like that story in three years. This one got the flag. - All right, I feel like you need to write a blog post of Michael's 20 rules for emailing me. All right, I got a survey of the week here. - Okay. - Back to our sentiment stuff. This is from CNBC poll.

Would you say the current state of the economy is excellent or good? Number of people, and they break it out by Democrats, independents, and Republicans. And this is going from October 2024 to March 2025. The only options are excellent or good? Yes. The number of people that say the economy is excellent or good. Got it.

So in October, right before the election, 50% of Democrats said it was good or excellent. Now that's down to 10%. For Republicans, it was like 3% before. Now it's up to 25%. But independents went down from 20% to 10%. And so I think that's the one that you look for, I guess. I think you throw out the two left or right because that's obviously telling you nothing. It's just who is in office.

But the independent now is down from 20% to 10% saying the economy is in worse shape. I don't know. This is why the sentiment stuff to me is just so hard to use as a gauge of anything anymore because it changes so fast. I said yesterday with Josh and Joe that tune out the noise is like the dumbest thing a financial professional could say, especially to their clients. I don't think many people do, but like,

But this is the noise. This survey stuff is the noise because it is 100% political and it's really hard to unscramble it. But like, I don't, I just, it's all political. That's it. So tune that out. Complete garbage. Tune out the surveys. The thing to me is that only 20% of the people said the economy was good back then and now it's 10%.

Shouldn't that number have been higher or shouldn't be higher now? Like that it's that low is just is the negativity of the world just that we're never going to be in a period where people are happy about the economy.

We showed a bunch of charts from a survey that people like, the opinions were so extreme that people thought that like the job market was worse in 2022 than it was in 2008. I think people are like more naive than ever and it's not their fault. They're just overloaded with bullshit information at all times. So I just disregard all of it. I think that's kind of where I'm starting to get is people

You have to watch what they do, not what they say. And that's why we have to wait for the economic data to kind of prove this sentiment out. The algorithms that control the dialogue, they reward negativity. And so there's never going to be a period in time where everybody's like smiling and we feel like the mood is good. It will never return to that. I don't know if that was ever a thing that happened anyway or if we just make believe that it was, but that will never, ever happen. It will never not be like it is today, unfortunately.

I think it'll ebb and flow and sometimes it'll get like more loud and violent, but it's never going to be like kumbaya. But if you, but I feel like if you look at the responses to these surveys and how negative they are, and then you look, you go and talk to actual people. Right. It's, it's completely different. Right. People are, people at this conference are in a pretty good mood. Yeah. They should be obviously. Yeah. Um, but anyway. Um, all right. So we're in Miami. Ben and I are big movie fans. We do, uh,

We do some recommendations at the end of every show. We have different tastes, I would say. Would you say? Yes, we have completely opposite movie tastes. So is Miami an underrated movie city? Because you think about like, so I went to ChatGPT for this. What are the best movies in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and mile long? But Miami, not a bad city. You were very excited when we saw the Something About Mary restaurant the other day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right over there. Yeah. All right, so Miami has produced...

Ace Ventura, not bad. Scarface, bad boys. The Birdcage, there's something about Mary, out of sight, and Miami Vice. Not bad. Not a bad list. Okay. That's it? Okay. Ben, as we come to a close, what have you been reading, listening, and watching?

So my the entertainment options on my flight were down. So I brought my Kindle with me and I've been reading the new Lorne Michaels book by Susan Morrison. And I've always been a big SNL guy. And the structure of the book, it almost reads like a management book. So I think that there's a lot of business implications from the way Lorne Michaels manages. And they talk about how he manages talent and he's dealing with, you know,

Very volatile talent, obviously. People who want to be stars, but they all look to him. And so it's actually a pretty good business book for how he manages through the chaos of these big personalities and a lot of stuff going on and things never working out. And it's a really good book. I highly recommend it. It's just called Lorne. That's it? That's it. That's all I got. Has anybody... I know we've been in the comments, but has anybody seen the newest episode of White Lotus? Show of hands? This guy. Okay, a couple. Amazing, right?

All right. Everybody else is in for a treat when they get to it. Daredevil? No, I wouldn't say Daredevil. There's a new show on Apple TV. Dope Thief. Here's the premise. Let me see head nods or just blank responses. We'll gauge this one out. Two guys. They pretend to be DEA agents, but they're not. They do some drug busts until they bust the wrong guys. What do we think? It's really good. Thumbs up, Big John. Thank you.

All right. Oh, wait. So you put this thing in here of the best movies in the city. So you asked me, what's the best movie city? And you never gave me an answer. Los Angeles. Okay. Is that? Wait, hold on. What was that? Atlanta. That's where they film a lot of movies. No, no, no, no. It wasn't like. But what movies take place in the city of Atlanta that, like, you know it's in Atlanta?

Well, no, the real answer is movies are better in Europe than they are in America because the car chases are better over there. The sights are better, right? It's European. Better's a stretch, but shout out to Europe. Good movies. Okay, that's it for the show. Thank you, everybody, for coming to Miami and watching us. We appreciate it. 8.30, showing up after St. Paddy's Day. Let's go. Thank you, everybody. AnimalSpirits at TheCompoundNews.com. Personal emails, personal responses. Go to...