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The Most Confusing Rally of All Time (EP.410)

2025/4/30
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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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Colin Roche
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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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Neil Dudd
一位小型企业主
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Michael Batnick: 我对最近股市的反弹感到困惑,我认为这没有道理。虽然我通常认为市场是正确的,但我认为这次的反弹与基本面脱节。这次反弹与2020年疫情期间的反弹不同,因为政府这次没有出手救援。我认为未来盈利、情绪和估值可能会受到影响。 我关注到上周出现的Zweig breadth thrust指标,这表明市场可能已经触底。然而,我们尚未看到关税的全部经济影响,因此我对这一数据持保留态度。 我认为,如果经济衰退真的发生,股市将再次测试低点。在市场波动时期,卖出容易,买入难。当前的反弹可能是熊市反弹,投资者应该避免情绪化交易。未来的市场波动可能源于白宫的声明或经济数据,糟糕的财报也可能导致市场波动。 我认为,大型科技公司可能能够更好地应对关税的影响,但关税对实体经济的影响可能大于对股市的影响。负面情绪可能比实际经济影响更严重。如果投资者在几周前感到恐慌,那么目前的市场反弹是一个降低风险的好机会。 我认为,人们对经济衰退缺乏经验,这可能会导致对未来经济衰退的过度反应。5月或6月的数据将是判断经济状况的关键。我承诺不会持续预测经济衰退,我们将关注每周的数据。 Ben Carlson: 我认为股市的下跌是有道理的,但这次反弹我不理解。我认为这次股市反弹是基于对政府政策会改变的希望。即使股市反弹,关税的影响仍然存在,并且对实体经济的冲击可能比股市反映的更大。 股市并非完全愚蠢,受关税影响较大的行业表现不佳,而受影响较小的行业表现较好。市场正在暂时忽略关税问题。市场情绪的转变(从恐慌性抛售到恐慌性买入)暗示着市场可能已经触底,但未来盈利、情绪和估值可能会受到影响。 市场变化速度可能比以往更快,因此以往的经验可能不再适用。股市可能正在等待经济衰退的出现,如果经济衰退真的发生,股市将再次测试低点。在市场波动时期,卖出容易,买入难。当前的反弹可能是熊市反弹,投资者应该避免情绪化交易。 对冲基金正在抛售股票,而散户投资者则在买入,对冲基金的抛售可能是由于风险限制,而非恐慌性抛售。一些投资者正在利用市场波动进行投机性交易。投资者对市场波动的反应各不相同,有人选择保守,有人选择激进。投资者应该根据自身情况和风险承受能力进行投资,而不是盲目跟风。 年轻一代投资者比以往更愿意承担风险,千禧一代投资者对风险的态度发生了转变,从之前的风险规避到现在的风险偏好。投资者类型和时间范围的多样性使得对市场行为的解释多种多样。“死猫反弹”没有明确的量化定义,其持续时间通常较短。 我认为,经济波动比市场波动更重要。只要人们有工作,他们就会继续消费。我认为,人们对经济衰退缺乏经验,这可能会导致对未来经济衰退的过度反应。如果经济衰退真的发生,人们的反应可能会比实际情况更剧烈。 一位小型企业主: 关税对小型制造企业的负面影响巨大,导致裁员和生产放缓。许多小型企业正面临困境,这可能会导致经济衰退。 Colin Roche: 认为需要彻底改革经济体系的观点是经济学上的无知。 Neil Dudd: 近期经济数据的强劲可能部分是由于提前消费行为。 Torsten Slack: 由于航运、卡车运输和货架空置等问题,到2025年夏季可能出现经济衰退。

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Today's Animal Spirits is sponsored by Innovator ETFs. We have had Innovator ETF founder Bruce Bond on the show a number of times on Talk Your Book. People are worried about tariffs and political uncertainty and market volatility. And Innovator ETF pioneered the Buffer ETF. I guess it was back in 2018. We talked to him right away, I think. And so these ETFs allow you to better define your upside and your downside. Yeah.

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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.

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We are coming to Chicago Tuesday, June 3rd, 6 o'clock. Ritholtz Wealth Management is opening up.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be on stage.

A little teaser. Ben might hop on. He might do something a little extra for the crowd. Someone asked me last week. For the Spirits fans. Someone said, I might not be able to make it to this one. And I said, well, now that we have this Chicago office, we're going to be doing more stuff there. We're going to be leaning in. Absolutely. It's a great spot. One of the best cities in the world, as far as I'm concerned. And we're going in the summer, which is the best time to go. All right, Ben. The past couple of weeks, we've been...

switching around the doc a little bit, not like every show, but what I mean for the audience is Ben and I have a Google doc and we've got, I don't know how many categories we're up to at this point. Got to be a baker's dozen plus, right? Yes. And usually it's static, but a couple of weeks back, we put tariffs up front today. We're going to put the stock market back up front. Usually we don't do that, but these are crazy times. They call for crazy measures in the, in the Google doc. All right, here we go. The stock market.

is now back to where it was post-liberation day. In fact, the NASDAQ is even higher. And is the S&P higher? Let's just say it's right around there. So it's- Oh, wait. So I looked at this. The S&P at the worst closing was down 11.2% this month, just on a monthly basis. And now it's down 1.5% as of the close on Monday. We're recording this before the market opens Tuesday. This bounce doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I kind of-

So I've been relatively, I don't know if bullish is the right word, but like calm down. And I think, I think the sell-off made sense. I think perhaps was it overdone in some areas in the short term, maybe in some areas that made more sense to me than this bounce does. I'm having a hard time figuring out why the balance was so strong. Like to say that the stock market is in the same place and that there's going to be no impact to the

earnings, sentiment, valuations on a go forward basis sounds insane to me. And I am usually a, I'm wrong. The market is right type of guy, right? I'm not the type of person who thinks that a hundred men could beat up one gorilla. The market is right. I'm wrong if I disagree with the market. But in this case, I don't think I'm wrong. This doesn't make sense to me. That's a lot of guys, a hundred people. Is it too easy to say that this is like COVID because I put the, the Jim Cramer thing in here and

And this was the thing going around back then. And it was the heading was the Dow's best week since 1938. And then on the bottom, it says breaking more than 16 million Americans have lost jobs in three weeks. And the stock market was taking off in April 2020. The stock market saw over the valley. Is it just too easy to say, oh, it's just doing that again?

I hate that comparison. Are you making that comparison? No, I'm saying like that. I think that's the comparison that people are trying to make here that, oh, the stock market's forward looking. Everything's going to be okay. I'm with you on this one where I was the one, I think, in COVID who said we're going to get new highs again this year because of all the bazooka that Powell was throwing at the market. But the difference this time is the government is not coming to the rescue. And I guess the hope of the stock market is just, okay, he's going to cave.

He's going to cave. He's going to backtrack. And that's the hope. The question is how much damage has already been done or will be done in the next, I don't know, three, six, 12 months. It's not a matter of, it's not a matter of caving. The tariffs aren't disappearing. I get you've been in, you, you keep saying that if, if Main Street are publicly traded, it would be down like 30 to 40%. And I, I tend to agree with you there. And I guess you could say like the Russell 2000 being done more is kind of a, an example of that. But yeah,

I agree. The interesting part of this is just that the stock market rarely makes sense. Is that, that's a thing to be there. I mean, that is a, no offense. That is ludicrous. What's the other explanation? And we're trying to, we're talking it through. Just people keep, I think it, is it just people keep buying? We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Here's a potential explanation. Perhaps if we were to be more granular, take a scalpel out and really look at what's going on in the market. Cause not everything's moving. I'm sorry. I hate that word. Granular. Yes. Granular. Why? Why?

I've never liked it. I feel like that's a word finance people use to sound smart. No offense. I can't, you can't accuse me as trying to sound smart. Fair. All right. Um, but if we were to say, all right, if you use that word though, you do like, you're kind of like, eh, I sound smarter. Don't I? The, the word that I hate is grok. When people say I couldn't grok it or I'm still trying to grok, just say understand. What are you? A robot?

But I feel like if you're a finance person and you say granular or robust is a good one, if you say those words, you do smell smart. Orthogonal? I don't know what that means. I wouldn't be able to use that one in a sentence either. There's people that use delta in conversation. That's a punch in the nose, metaphorically. Right. Sorry. What do you want to get more granular about? If you were to look at different areas of the market, because I'm talking about the indexes.

And you would say, all right, well, this stock is down a lot more than the market. Look at like the casinos. That makes sense. Traffic to Vegas is falling off cliff. Look at the airlines destroyed. That makes sense. And then you look at other areas that are holding up Netflix. Well, that makes sense. CrowdStrike. That makes sense. So maybe the market isn't so stupid. Maybe the areas that are going to be impacted by the market are getting, by the tariffs are getting walloped and the areas that are going to be less in the eye of the tariff storm are holding it better.

Okay, get into some stats here because I feel like if you just took all the tariff stuff away and you looked at just the way the market is reacting, this seems like the market is deciding to look past this for now. Yes. Yes, it is. All right, so there was a Zweig breadth thrust last week. That was a mouthful. A breadth. A ZBT. Breadth thrust. And what that means, it's when the 10-day exponential moving average

of New York stock exchange advances minus declines or advances and declines. I'm sorry. It moves from below 0.4 to above 0.615 within 10 trading days. So in English, what that means is stocks go from really oversold to

right? Like washout to really overbought in 10 days. So a huge reversal. And what you're measuring is panic selling to panic buying. And when panic selling to panic buying happens in a short period of time, historically, quantitatively, that has been the bottom. So Ryan Dietrich has a chart showing all of these instances and the market was higher 100% of the time, both six and 12 months later. And it looks like, I don't know, what is there like close to 20 on this list?

Ryan also says he has two more data points, all saying the same thing. To say this one more time, what we've seen the past two weeks isn't what you see in bear market rallies. More than 70% advances on the New York Stock Exchange six times over the past 10 days. Never lower six and 12 months later for the S&P 500. And then finally-

The S&P 500, awesome for Ryan. The S&P 500 is up at least 1.5% for three days in a row. This is not stuff you see in bear market rallies or short covering rallies. You see this before times of strong performance, higher 10 out of 10 times, and a year later, up 21.6% on average. Now, I love these data points because this is capturing

psychology of the market, right? It's capturing what happens when the crowd goes from, oh my God, get me out to, oh my God, get me back in. And Ryan charts us out and a hundred percent hit rate does mean that this can't be the time where, um, that it fails. I guess what I would say is like, there will be an impact on earnings shortly. No. And you would think that sentiment, uh, valuations should get compressed. We shouldn't be trading at 21 times, uh,

earnings the same way we were before all of this happened. Like there should be some sort of impairment. Now, I guess maybe, maybe a counterpoint is like, all right. I mean, this is, this is ridiculous. I'm grasping at straws. I'm just throwing shit against the wall. While the S&P 500 is down 5% year to date, that's still, I don't know, 900, I'm making this up, $800 billion in market cap wiped out, whatever the number is. It's still like not nothing.

My devil's advocate here would be just that markets move faster than ever. When trying to put these moves in the context of past moves, that'd be my only pushback that, well, what if this is different?

I guess the other thing would be maybe the stock market is saying, you know what? I'm sick of all the sentiment readings saying we're going to go into recession. It doesn't happen. Show me a recession this time. If we get a recession and earnings do slow considerably, then I'll fall out of bed. But show me first. Nah, it doesn't work like that. Too cute? It doesn't work like that. But you're right. If we get a recession, the stock market is going to test the lows again. It has to. You would think so.

All right, let's talk about this. One of the things that we were saying during the heat of the sell-off was easiest thing in the world is selling, right? You're scared. You want to make yourself feel better. You want the pain to stop. Easiest thing in the world is to sell. Hardest thing when it comes to investing is getting back in once you've panic sold. Now, what do you do? I'm not trying to be cute. Seriously, imagine if you sold two weeks ago, what do you do now? Because we're having this conversation academically just for fun, but for the person that's like,

I can't believe that rally. At this point, that's why it's so hard because you can't psychologically admit defeat. You can't say, oh, I'm going to buy back in. If you sold two weeks ago, are you getting back in today? No way. Okay, so what if this is a massive dead cat bounce? That's the idea. So ChartKid Matt did this one for us, and he looked at it in a dot-com bubble, which is not the perfect description, but I think the action is worth considering because I think you could make the case that this year could just be a –

Big rallies, big falls, big rallies, big falls. And we go nowhere kind of deal. I would take that. So he looked at the market rallies of at least 5% during the dot-com bubbling shaded them here. And there's what? Seven or eight of them. There's 10. It says that right in the header. Can't fool me. So this is, this comes from exhibit a, this is our chart of the week. So if you are a subscriber to exhibit a,

This will hit your inbox. Is it Thursday? I think, yeah, Thursday, every Thursday morning. It's a topical, timely chart that you could use to show to clients. Exhibit A for advice.com, seven-day free trial. But the point is- Wait, and we heard some feedback from advisors who were using these charts saying, I love the chart. I also want a description. So we're going to be providing some commentary as well. Yeah. The point is, with these bear market rallies, and now that we're predicting them, it's that

in heightened uncertainty, you can't let yourself get too high or too low because this is possible. And imagine if you got all balled up every time you thought you were out of the woods.

And then, holy shit, I can't believe I fell for it again. Yes. That like a whipsaw seesaw back and forth is dangerous. Psychologically. I looked at this, this, I looked at this last week and it was 15 trading days that we'd been through through April 24th. And in four days we were down 12%. Then we had that big 10% up day. Then over the next seven trading days, the market fell 6%. Then over the next three days, it was up 6%. It felt like four months and 15 trading days.

Those are the kind of, and that's why this is now the calm before whatever comes next, I guess. Like the market is kind of chilling out and taking a breath and then. Well, also the VIX is below 25. So do you think that the next bout of volatility is going to also come from announcements out of the White House or is it going to come from economic data?

I think once we first hear the... I think it could be a bad earnings report. I guess that's going to be why I own it. Well, here's an example. So UPS just reported, I think they're laying off 20,000 workers, citing declining demand. The stock is flat pre-market, but the stock has been obliterated. I mean, absolutely destroyed and no bounce whatsoever. So we could go from a period of...

Remember, the inflation report was the most important economic data point. I think we're going to go back to labor markets where the unemployment rate every month is going to be really important to pay attention to. And if that sees a huge tick up, I think you could see a massive sell off. How's that? Yeah, I think that could be. So the Wall Street Journal has done a really good job of talking about investor behavior.

And I love it because they're pairing anecdotes, our favorite, with interviewing the people on the street or whatever, with actual data. So they said, because last week we asked, well, who's selling? If retail's buying, who's selling? So far this year, hedge funds have sold over a trillion dollars more shares than they have purchased, even as individuals have made $50 billion a month in net stock purchases, little interruption, according to JP Morgan. So hedge funds are getting out. Now, is this the idea where

Because people want to figure out who's the dumb money here. Is there dumb money or is this just completely different time horizons? Yeah, that's it. I think a lot of the degrossing from the hedge funds was just like these companies have risk limits. And so they're not making like fundamental buy-sell. They're not like panicking. It's just trend following stuff, right? Yeah, this is just like, okay, our risk limit's triggered. Boom. Oh, Besson is speaking. He reminds me of Will Ferrell.

In SNL, what character was he playing? Where he had like kind of like the smushed face. He was like the scientist. The Harry Carey one? All right. So another good one though, they talk about how the YOLO traders are still here. And they interviewed a few people. Yes, yes, that one. Yeah. Harry Carey, okay. Harry Carey, not a scientist, but he played a scientist. Okay.

Okay, so they interviewed some of these people who are just saying, listen, I could see the building burning, but I'm running in. And so they interviewed this one guy who says, it's a streaming buying opportunity. And they're talking about when the stock market really got crushed here. He keeps 90% of his seven-figure portfolio in a cryptocurrency and related stocks, such as Bitcoin buyer strategy. I'm running straight into it, he says. 37-year-old marketing director said he wouldn't mind if the price of Bitcoin sank 6% a day.

Um, he says, that's what I'm after making decades of returns in weeks or months. I truly think volatility is where fortunes are made. Not untrue. Now this easier, something dumb, but not untrue. Yeah. So this, this one made me want to crawl out of my skin. This guy, Patrick Weiland, who is a content creator and day trader said the kids, the kids these days say no risk, no Rari. And then they say that, um, Rari is slang for Ferrari. And this is, I don't, I don't believe the kids are saying that.

Um, this is one of those things that the things you say on the internet don't translate into real life. Remember on the curb and Larry David said, no one says LOL in real life or actually, you know, like some things don't translate. And again, if I said no risk, no Rari, I think I'd have to crawl out on my own skin anyway. So they, there actually, there are no risk, no Rari posters. Should I buy one for you? It sounds awesome. So he says you have to be aggressive when you have such big swings in the market. It's hard to be risk averse. Now there's two camps of looking at these kinds of statements. One camp goes, just wait.

Oh, just wait. These people, when their comeuppance comes, they're going to get slaughtered. But what would you rather have them do? Rush for the exits? I think that for years, it's been beaten into people's heads. When there's volatility, it's a good thing to buy. When stock prices are down, that's when you make your money. So you could quibble with the vehicles they're using because these people are using levered ETFs and they're trading very speculative stocks and

But who would quibble about what kids are doing with their money? Isn't this what kids are supposed to do with their money? Aren't they supposed to take risk and learn? Well, these are, these aren't kids. These are 37 year olds. And you know, these are sounds like kids to me. So, but I think on the, on, on the net, this is a positive development. People have learned. Now you could say, listen, just wait until there's a lost decade. These people are going to be sorry, but who has a good experience during a lost decade? Who likes that period? Yeah.

Right? Who is that good for? Oh, what was that saying that an old person said either to us or to our inbox or on the internet? Damn it. This is a weekly occurrence now. You trying to pull something from that middle-aged brain of yours. Oh, man. It is just not happening for me, Ben. Oh, Buttercup. Buckle up, Buttercup. Okay. That's right. Where did that come from?

I don't know. Isn't it just a saying? Okay. I feel like there was somebody that actually said that. But I, the thing of like. Yeah, buckle up, buttercup. Oh yeah, asshole. Yeah. What are you going to do? Old people tisking you like just, you just wait. Like. Yeah. What are you going to do in the last decade? Yeah. So that's, I would rather have this than people who are cowering and scared. I wrote a blog post about this saying, if you look at UBS did a study of millennials in like 2014 and their risk aversion was insane.

So high. They wanted nothing to do with the stock market. Duncan's getting out of the game. He just said, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. You've always been great with your sayings. Uh,

But millennials in the 2010s following the great recession, because they lost money or their parents lost money, they wanted nothing to do with risk. And now it's all anyone wants. And so which one would I rather have people who were in the fetal position and wanting nothing to do with the stock market or people who are rushing into the, you know, building while it's burning. I'd rather have people who are taking advantage of volatility, even if they get slapped on the wrist every once in a while. Um, this idea that like people need to do this or investors need to it's hello.

Which investors there are like 1400 different pockets of the, of personality types and time horizons. And if you are looking for confirming evidence or evidence that you want to fade or whatever, like you could find it anywhere. Yeah, I agree. All right. Here's one from the compound. Duncan put this out. I asked for this one, almost 4,000 votes. Is this a dead cat bounce? 58% say yes. 42% say no.

What is, is there a definition of a dead cat bounce? Like a quantitative definition? I think it's one of those, you know it when you see it kind of deals. I don't think there is a- Let me ask you this. What if that, what if we just saw the lows for six months and we retest them in the fall? Then this is not a dead cat bounce, right? Because to me, a dead cat bounce rolls over pretty quickly. I would agree with that. It's got to be within- All right. Well then, well then in that case, yeah, I don't know. I would say, I would say the lows that we put into Xeo are good for a little while.

Maybe not, but I don't know. It's just weird how quickly it happens now. I think that's what messes with people. I just think that was a pretty quick panic. That was a gnarly bear market in a really short amount of time. Oh, just busting balls. But seriously, that was only a 19-ish percent decline. Is that not a bear market? Give me a break. I mean, the textbooks will say no, honestly, because they have to draw the line somewhere.

I'll give it to him. All right. This is like, this is like Bill Simmons always like getting annoyed about how Carmelone is always in the record books and he'll draw the line at like a random stat, like a PR of like 43 to like cut Carmelone off from all the things. How about this? What if, what if, what if we, the people change the definition of a bear market to 19%, we get three more bear markets in there. No, it'd be like five. I look at this. It's a seven. It's like five times. All right. This is a citizen's arrest. Bear markets are down 19%. Stamped it. Boom.

Bang the gavel. All right, let's move on to tariffs. I think this is good news. This is from Jake Sherman. He says, Amazon will start displaying how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs right next to the product's total listed price. I think this is a good thing because my worry here is that companies raise prices from tariffs, and some of them just, when the tariffs, if and when they go off, just kind of keep them on, keep them higher.

And take the margin. So I think restaurants should be doing tariff surcharges. Car dealerships should be doing tariff surcharges. Oh, I like it. Wait, because they could take away the surcharge. Yes. Because if we don't make a surcharge. So that's, I think this is good news. I hope all companies do this. And guess what else it's going to do? Wait, wait. Was that a Ben Carlson take or did you lift that from somebody else? Hey man, this is organic. I'm getting granular.

That's a good take. So I saw the story and I thought, yes, because I'm worried about companies that are going to keep prices higher. This happened, remember when commodity prices shot up during the Ukraine-Russia war? Yeah, the home builders. They said, we're taking it to margin. Yeah. So I hope, and this will also keep the political pressure on tariffs to be like, listen, I can see this on my receipt. There's going to be so many viral receipts of tariff surcharges in the months ahead. I think that's going to help with the political pressure.

I love it, Ben. That's a, that's a Hall of Fame take. All right. So a lot of people are saying, well, why did Trump have another shift where he kind of sort of backpedaled? He's he backpedals. It's kind of like, I don't know.

Two steps forward, one step back, or maybe vice versa. But I think this did it. So the CEOs of the nation, this is from Axios, of the three of the nation's biggest retailers, Walmart, Target, and Home Depot, privately warned him that his tariff policy could disrupt supply chains, raise prices, and lead to empty shelves. I think they kind of scared him. I think they showed him some of the China data that these ships are starting to be empty. And I think they said, listen, man, this is not going to be good. Consumers are going to be pissed. And it might still already happen.

So this is from the Wall Street Journal. The port of Los Angeles, one of America's biggest gateways for imports from China. Executive director told port officials Thursday to expect a 35% drop in import volumes in two weeks as essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased. Bookings out of China fell 60% in the past week. So here's my question. It sounds like we're going to get some empty shelves. What is the economic impact of that?

Is it, is it a, is it more that people are angry? Cause people could change their habits and say, well, that one's not there. So I'm going to buy this one or I can't get this now. So I'll wait and I'll buy something else. Like, is the anger going to be bigger than the actual economic impact of this? Yeah, I think so. Because when you say empty shelves, it's not like the whole store is going to be empty. Like what's going to, what's not, what are people not going to be able to buy? Right. There's going to be some things. Well, here's one. We talked about this a little bit. We had Derek Thompson on the show and he talked about this, but the wall street journal dug into it.

Today, around 95% of imported strollers come from China, along with three quarters of toys and infant furniture such as cribs. So they will go through here and show like almost everything you need to buy for your baby. If you have a baby coming, toys, cribs, strollers, that comes from China. There are going to be some really pissed off parents in the months ahead if they can't get this stuff or it's really, really expensive. Yeah.

Would you have known what percentage of these things come from China had we not gone through this? No. So yeah, baby stroller is obviously a critical piece of gear for parents of young children. Is there a single baby stroller that is easy to fold? Like why don't they say, why don't they have a big...

make it red or like the button or the thing you pull is never widely known or easy. I don't know how many strollers we have. I had a good one. I had a good one where you just picked it right up from the seat where you went and the whole thing just collapsed. I feel like they were, they were never easy to fold up and then undo. All right. Anyway, not to, so not to minimize the impact of, of strollers and how important they are, but for the stock market point of view, so what? That's, that's my saying to you, to your point earlier about main street, uh,

being worse off than Wall Street, we're going to get another one of those things where, again, I think we could see a scenario where the unemployment rate is rising, the stock market is going up. Why does Google care about strollers? Not an extreme example, but Google just reported last week and revenue up 10%. Everything up double digits, $90 billion in revenue. And if those companies do have tariffs on whatever their chips and such, semiconductors,

they have big margins to eat a little bit of it, right? Now, I know the knock-on effects. Like, tariffs are bad. It's a tax. And so there'll be less money in the system, right? Like, so...

But I'm just trying to understand why some things might be looking past the tariffs, why some companies and why some investors. Oh, I agree. This is going to be worse for Main Street than Wall Street, I think is the way I'm thinking about this. Yeah. So I definitely like, I don't, I don't think anybody's saying like, all right, we're good. We made it. We haven't even, so the, the difference between now and I haven't, I haven't, you could fact check me on this, but all of the other periods, all of the other breadth thrusts, I'm guessing came after the economic damage.

Right, we haven't even seen it yet. So that's why this is just, that's why I take that data with a grain of salt, even though I'm a fan of it,

Is because we don't know how bad this is going to get now. Maybe, maybe the market is right. I mean, I guess that should probably be the default position is that we're wrong and the market is right. And so the market is looking past it and we'll find out if it's right or wrong. Think about how bad sentiment is now. And we haven't even felt the impact. Like how bad does sentiment get? If people do start getting laid off in big numbers and the economy really does start slowing and prices are higher, how bad does sentiment go then? Yeah.

Now I will say not investment advice. If you were panicking two weeks ago and like you were like really, really close to pulling the trigger and you were like losing sleep over your portfolio. What a gift this is to be able to downshift. Yeah. If you want to take some risk off the table. Yeah. And again, we're not big fans of extremes, but Hey, I'm 80, 20. I'm going to go to 60, 40. Great. I don't see that as a huge problem. No, do it. All right. What's the email here?

Hey guys, I wanted to give you a dispatch from a small business. I run manufacturing for a small business that exports products to China and other countries. China was about 20% of last year sales. After the election, we started talking about tariffs immediately. No one imagined that tariffs would be anything near what Trump announced on his, on liberation day. We were already slowing down due to uncertainty, but on April 3rd, it was like a bomb went off. We've about a quarter of our hourly workforce on layoff and are looking at further cuts.

To me, this is like seeing a recession happen in real time. We've laid people off, stopped ordering ingredients and packaging. We have import products sitting in China that we may have to destroy, cut capital spend, save cash, et cetera. This is happening in small businesses everywhere, and I don't see how an aggregation of these actions won't cause a recession. Yeah. We've gotten a handful of emails like this from different businesses being like, we have no idea what to do. We're paralyzed.

And so, yeah, what do you do when you're in that situation? You try to cut costs and survive and lay people off. That's why I think we're going to – it's possible we could see a really bad employment report in the coming months, and that's what wakes people up. All right. From Colin Roche here, I think the idea that a lot of people have and why some people still back this idea is, listen, we need to fix the system.

I think there's a big difference between fixing the system versus fixing some stuff on the edges that's not perfect in this country. So Colin Roche says, our broken monetary system leads to number one worldwide in wealth, number one in total GDP, number one in GDP growth in the G7, number one in global corporate profits, and number one in GDP per capita in the G20. Obviously, some people don't care about relative rankings. I personally do. And I think

Listen, like there's certainly areas we can improve on as a country, but saying we need to blow up the whole system is just, it's an economically illiterate argument that has no basis in reality. It's like going to the finals and then trading your best player. Sorry, we keep using that analogy, but. We would ever do that. Yeah. All right. So back to the shipping stuff and the shelves and all that. Tracy Allaway had a blog post showing that this is the weakest quarter since 2015 in

and the 10th weakest on record overall for shipping quarters, and six of the worst happening during the financial crisis. Just the amount of goods being shipped? Yeah. Okay. Wow. It's not going to get better, right? Here's the thing people keep waiting for, like the hard versus soft data. The Federal Reserve had a new

research report on this. So they said, we show what consumers have been saying differs from what they have been doing during the post pandemic period. Consumers say they feel worse, but through the end of 2024, they're buying more, not just spending more than they did in 2019. And they say this disconnect is, is hard to figure out kind of like the, the actual economic data. So

That's the question people keep waiting for is, is it going to eventually catch up? So this is Neil Dudd. It's probable that much of the recent upside surprises and hard data reflect pulling forward activity in anticipation of the tariffs. Consumers pulled forward auto sales and consumption on household durables. As an example, firms likely pulled forward some orders too. That likely gives the veneer of strength in recent high frequency data flow. So he's saying you can't use the data we're seeing now as... Eh, not to fade Neil Dudd up.

And I only listened to a few calls, so I don't want to speak for like every company, but I heard only very marginally was there a pull forward consumption. Most of the companies said they weren't seeing it. Maybe a little bit on the margin in auto. Sure. Okay. So this, this is from anecdotes from Torsten Slack that he pulled from calls and this is Southwest airline. The CEO said, I don't care if you call it a recession or not in this industry, that's a recession. So pull a, sorry. Yeah. Airlines are in a recession. Already. Are you sure? Yes, I am sure.

All right. Well, just look, because we see the hard data. We see the number of flights coming into the United States. Look at the stock prices. Airlines are in a recession. Okay. All right. Torsten Slack lays out the voluntary trade reset recession. Wait, do you want to read any other anecdotes or that's it? Chipotle CEO said saving money because of concerns around the economy was the overwhelming reason consumers were reducing the frequency of restaurant visits. Yeah, I would say a $15 burrito bowl is probably the first thing to go. I know you were going to say that. Seriously. Seriously.

Yeah, which is funny that usually in a recession, you see prices stabilize or fall. But this is the nightmare scenario for people is, what if we're going to have to raise prices as the consumer is pulling back?

Yeah. Right. Obviously that's the Pepsi. Same store sales at Chipotle were down only nominally, like very, very little amount. I think a lot of this is CEOs getting ahead of their expectations as they should. So Torsten Slack lays out, listen, the container ship stuff is going to be messed up for 40 days. Then the trucking industry is going to be messed up. Then we're going to get empty shelves. And he says, he says by the summer of 2025, we could have a recession. This is very, very quick.

This is the thing that when you look at the stock market, you go, is it really that obvious? I mean, that's a, that'd be a very, very fast recession. Yeah. Well, it could be, it could be, it could be over before it started. Yeah. So, so what if, what if there are empty shelves or, or pockets of empty shelves? I don't want to keep saying there's empty shelves. What if there are things that are on short supply?

Um, and that by the time we start to see the short supply, I don't know if it's a five weeks from now or whatever, but by the time that happens, we already have deals. It's like, don't worry, they're coming. And in that case, in the market should probably look past it past a, uh, temporary hit to earnings. Possibly. Yeah. Like maybe that's the thing. Like does an economic slowdown force his hand to go? All right, you're done. We can't keep doing this. You've caused an economic slowdown. Get out of here. You know, we're done with this. Here's here's capital one earnings call and capital one serves the everyday consumer.

They said, the US consumer remains a source of strength in the economy. That's true for almost any metric that we look at. The unemployment rate is low and stable. Job creation remains healthy. Real wages are growing. Consumer debt service burdens remain stable near pre-pandemic levels. In our card portfolio, we're seeing improving delinquency rates and lower delinquency entries. And payment rates are improving on a year-over-year basis moving forward. On the whole, I'd say the US consumer is in good shape. Now-

Now, and that could obviously change, but coming into this, not bad. All right. There was a, there was an interesting article in the journal talking about retail sales and what's going on there. So spending by the top 5% of customers grew about 3%. This is for last month. Spending by the top 5% of customers grew about three, 3%, suggesting that big declines in their stock portfolios haven't made them skittish about making purchases.

Thoughts? Two cents a tell? I think economic volatility is going to matter more than market volatility. How's that? This is like a circular argument because it's all part and parcel of the same story. But so long as people have their jobs, well, I don't know if that's true because rich people always have their jobs. But in general, so long as people have their jobs, they will keep spending money. And very obviously. So here's what I've been thinking about. So someone, this meme was flying around Twitter.

And it was this, and I hate dunking on young people because again, if I was young and I was so dumb when I was young too, if I had social media at my fingertips, I would have done so much. I would have said and done so much dumb stuff. So I'm just glad it never was part of my life as a young person. But this, she's crying. She's got a tear coming down her eye. And she says, when I tell my mom a nine to five, the rest of my life would make me depressed. And she tells me to get used to it. That's how life is. And these, all these young people are saying, I can't stand a nine to five. And people are dunking on it saying, oh my gosh.

These people don't know how lucky they are. And also like we need a recession. And my whole thing is we are very, very out of practice for what an actual recession is because I keep using the stat that we've had two months of recession in the past 15 years. And that two months is,

We had so much government fiscal spending that people were made whole immediately. The unemployment insurance went up, right? People got checks. Like that was not an actual recession, even though the unemployment rate went up, right? We've never, we haven't experienced an actual recession in a decade and a half. So even if unemployment rate goes from 4% to 6% or 7%, and it's a mild recession, but companies are pulling back. I wonder what the dot-com recession felt like.

Because the GFC was such an, it was relatively mild. The GFC was such an extreme. Yeah. I was working at an upscale ish Italian restaurant and there was people there on the weekend, but during the week it was dead.

Oh yeah. There's a lot of stuff like that where I just remember the whole constant drumbeat of you are lucky to even have a job. Why would you try to get a raise? Why would you try to get a job somewhere else in this economy? Like that drumbeat, you do not hear that anymore. And that's the thing I think people are out of practice on. And this is everyone, people who've experienced it or not. Like what, what does a recession feel like for your business slowing down the prospects of the growth in your business? And like, there are just knock-on effects that I feel like people are just so out of practice on. And how, yeah. How about the worry about like

Forget about getting a raise, keeping your job, paying your bills. Yes. And the longer that goes on, when it starts to impact like, you know, real life, forget about the stock market. Yeah. We haven't had that in a while. Just yes. Just that's what I'm thinking is everyone is out of practice for this. And by the way, this, this is not you calling for a recession that people need to slap on the wrist. No, I hate people that say that I do not want a recession because I know it's bad. Yeah. Why do we need one? We need a recession. Yeah. Why?

I'm just saying so that, so that people can go through the misery that you went through. Yes. I'm just saying if it happens, I think it's going to be fascinating to watch what the reaction is from people that haven't experienced one in a while. Like, do we get an overreaction where the sentiment readings and people's feelings about the economy are way worse than the actual recession itself? You're gonna look at it and go, Oh, GDP fell 2%. You know, like that was a recession and people are freaking out. Like I, that's the scenario I could see happening. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, this is interesting from The Atlantic. There's a story from The Atlantic saying that the 2010s, it was cheap Ubers and DoorDash that were subsidized by VC companies, and now it's AI. So they say through the end of May, OpenAI offers college students two months of free access to ChatGPT+, which is $20 a month. I pay for that one now, do you? ChatGPT, I don't. Plus, okay. Wait, why do you need to pay for it? It offers you more bandwidth and the ability to do more queries and...

I don't know. They talked me into it. They also said all these other ones, Google and Perplexity, and they're all offering college students freer discounted versions of chatbots. And they say some young people are already hooked. In OpenAI's recent report on college students' chat GPT adoption, the most popular category of non-education or career-related usage was relationship advice. Imagine going to an AI bot and saying, help me with my relationship advice.

In conversations with several young users, I heard about people who are using AI for color matching cosmetics, generating customized grocery lists based on budget and dietary preferences, creating personalized audio meditations and half marathon training routines and seeking advice on their plant care. Amazing. It's pretty cool, isn't it? Like if you think about- I've been using it more and more in the quarter app and it really is like nothing short of magic. It is. And to think that

It's going to be everywhere in everything in not a long period of time. It's remarkable. It's going to be one of these pieces of technology where I feel like it's kind of like Google just kind of slid in there and people just started using it and not really realizing how amazing this is. I think it's going to be like that where people just kind of take for granted like how cool this really is. I've been using it way more too. Anytime I have a question now,

I go to chat GPT instead of, instead of Google. And the answers almost always are perfect. The very first time. It's amazing. I mean, you know, who's in trouble? Uh, the analyst community, maybe not today, but like the young ish crew crop of analysts, there's just going to be far, far, far fewer jobs in the very near term. This would be way, way less hiring. You could do so much. What kind of jobs are you talking about? Financial analysts.

Maybe. No, 100%. All right. 100%. This thing, Josh and I are talking tonight on what are your thoughts about an experiment that Adam Parker went through and it's game over. I mean, obviously it's going to make people more efficient. You're going to be able to do so much more with less people.

Yeah. But I also feel like at a certain point, there's the baseline where everyone has the same stuff. Like your, your AI chat bot for your company is not going to like set you apart when everything and everyone has that, right. That's good. Just going to bring up the baseline for everyone. Yeah. I'm not saying that. I still think it's going to create other jobs too, that we're not even thinking of right now. Yes. I say, I agree. All right. This is a chart, not a great one from Lance Lambert. Uh, it's the median age of first time us home buyers. And it was range bound as you would imagine.

from the early nineties all the way through the pandemic. And as housing became completely unaffordable, the median age has shot up from 32, 33 pre pre pandemic up to 38 today. Not great. At what point does this become like the political issue? Cause obviously inflation was the political issue in the last election, which is kind of funny. Cause then we got a guy who did tariffs. Um, but what

Because I think the problem is 65, the home ownership rate in the country is 65%. Most people are happy with the situation as it is. Well, I think that the average 38 year old doesn't have a lot of influence in this country. That's what I'm saying. At what point does this become such a big problem that it finally becomes a federal government issue that like we need to make it easier to build more homes. I just feel like it's surprising that this isn't a huge issue yet. Yeah. I guess your point, the young people just don't have a lot of power at the moment.

All right, Ben, last week or maybe two weeks ago, we were talking about what advisors would do with illiquid assets. Right. And on the Blackstone call, Jonathan Gray said, while it's still early in the second quarter, overall access across private wealth, we have not seen a pullback in sales. We raised $11 billion in the channel in the first quarter, up nearly 40% year over year, 40 to the highest level in nearly three years.

Uh, B credit again, all the way that's private credit with almost $4 billion raised on the back of outstanding performance. Here's one of the things about private assets, even if they do run into a little hiccup and performance is bad or something, it takes so long for the actual end clients to see it because the marks take so long to happen. It's not the kind of thing where all of a sudden one day you go, Oh my gosh, look at this. It it's a very slow, slow burn. Right. So I, maybe I, yeah, maybe I'm saying I agree with you. It's, it's not slowing down.

At least according to Blackstone. And if anything else, the idea of illiquid assets that don't mark themselves during volatile markets for some people is going to be seen as a positive. Yeah. Okay. Surveys of the week. I think I got two here. This is from YouGov. Americans are likely to have favorable use of castles and chivalry, but not the Crusades or Inquisition. And they asked people, how do you feel about the Black Plague? And 9% of people say very or somewhat favorable.

Um, and this is just gets to our point of the surveys. How many people are actually like answering these correctly? How many people actually understand what they're doing? I think that's just like, click, give me the $15. Yes. All right. Here's another one from John Burns survey of us adults. What is the ideal number of children for a family to have? And two children peaked out in 2011 has been falling three children or more has been rising now. So now that zero one or two kids is almost the same as three or more kids.

How do you explain that? I mean, given how old the median home buyer is, given how expensive everything is, how do you explain this? This is a myth buster. Not a myth buster. What is this? What do we call this, Ben? This is a plot twister. So this says it's a Gallup survey of adults 18 plus. So I would need to break down by age. So I wonder if older adults are saying, I want more kids. I want more grandkids. I don't know what, but this shocks me because how many people do you know that actually have three or more kids?

You. He said, yeah, me, right? And guess what? We had twins. We didn't plan it. Yeah. Most have to. Kobe today was on the iPad and he said, Hey Siri. And he calls her Siri. He says, Hey Siri, tell mommy, I love her. So it said, uh, Oh, text mommy. I love her. So it opened up the text to mommy and it wrote, I love her. And then I said, no, no, no. Kobe, you have to tell it. You have to say, I love you. Tell Siri, tell mommy, I love you. So he deleted the, her wrote you with the heart. Adorable.

I'm on the road right now and for the first time my daughter from her iPad is texting me.

So it's like, hey, good morning. And she's doing the emojis. And it's just so weird to see your kids grow up to the point where they're now texting. And she's texting her little friends. And it's so weird. All right. This is from the Wall Street Journal. They say the 19 richest households saw $1 trillion wealth increase in 2024, a rise that exceeds the size of Switzerland's economy. They're showing that this is the top 0.00001, right? This huge is now almost 2% of the total.

which is kind of insane. They show the number of billionaires has jumped from a little less than 1,400 in 2021 to nearly 2,000 now. Share of household wealth by the 0.1% has gone from 8.5% in 1990 to 13.8% today. Here's a stat that I figured out this week that is very interesting.

Probably should have gone more viral than it did. Because I think it's a great, the top 1% owns 50% of the stock market. The bottom 50% owns 1% of the stock market. Wow. That's kind of crazy, right? So here's the thing. Now you have to point out the pie is expanding. Yeah. It's not great, but the pie is getting bigger. Yeah, the bottom 50%. There's 2,000 billionaires? That's crazy. In the US? So some people look at these numbers and go, just wait until the torches and pitchforks come out, right? It's going to happen. There's going to be a revolution. I say there's never going to be a wealth inequality revolution. Right?

In this country, because we just love rich people so much. Does White Lotus count as a revolution? Think about all the, I always think about this, the Jon Hamm, your friends and neighbors show.

You could green light any show about rich people right now that paints them in kind of a derogatory light and people would watch it. Where are you on that show? I really like it. Are you up to date? I watched the first three, I believe. Okay. I think four is where it starts to go a little bit sideways for me. It's a fun show, but yeah, it's not elite, but that's fine. I enjoy it. But I just, I love the idea of these very rich people. And someone told me it's supposed to be Westchester, I think. Yeah. Or maybe Connecticut. I don't know. Same thing. But just this idea that...

you pointed this out last week that like, this is what my life is going to be. And so I, um, did you hear that, that speech by the way? Yes. Did that hit a little bit? It was good. It, but the whole thinking of just like, even for really, really rich people with these gigantic houses and all this wealth and all this stuff, it's kind of like, Oh really? This is our life. It is. Yeah. I think everyone, everyone like they get there and yeah. And we have great lives and those rich people have,

in terms of like luxury, they have everything. And it's like, all right. So I go on three vacations a year. I drive a nice car. Like what else? That's it. So remember you told me that you listened to the Neil Brennan blocks podcast and caught up. And so I had, I was supposed to fly down to Ohio for the speech I'm giving or I was giving. So I'm down here right now. And my flight got, got delayed. So I was going to miss my flight and I didn't want to. So I just drove here instead. And so I put out a bunch of pocket and I lit, I caught up on a bunch of the Neil Brennan blocks podcast with all these celebrities, David Letterman and Nick Kroll and

How good was the Letterman one? Very good. But here's my, here's a constant theme among all these. I listen to like five of them. All these rich and successful people talked about how they're in therapy, how they practice meditation, how some of them are going on ayahuasca because it helps them get grounded. And I just think like they get to these levels of success and realize like, it's not what I thought it would be.

It's really this, I'm not, I'm still not happy. What is wrong with me? I need to try these other things and then they'll ground me. And they're, they're just, for some people, there's never going to be that thing that's going to satisfy you. One of the things that I'm most grateful for in life is like discovering that I don't remember where, when or how or why it first occurred to me.

that monetary success and material success is not an answer because there is, if it were, you wouldn't have all of this overwhelming evidence of people with everything that are absolutely not happy. Miserable, right? Now, I think everybody would agree, okay, fine, I'd rather have more than less, and I'm not saying that I would rather have less than more, but just that if I was never the type of person that said to myself, if I get this, then I will be happy.

Right. I mean, I had those thoughts when I was younger that if I can just make this much money, then I'll be happy. And then it, the goalposts are constantly moving. So once you, I think once you get that and the light bulb goes off there, then you go, oh, okay, this happened. This is like this for everyone. And it's not going to do it for me. It's I need, and having kids totally helped shape me in that way of not, not concerning myself with, with that stuff as much anymore, not caring. And how about this at the ultimate top,

Their insecurities could not be more on display. Think about all the billionaires that are tweeting and embarrassing themselves because they want the likes. They want people to like, hey man, yeah, you were a dork in high school, but you're a pretty cool guy now. They can't fill that hole, that empty hole. They might have billions of dollars, but they still need public adoration because they were dorks in high school. Yes, it's both sad and also kind of uplifting that like, oh, okay, no one has it figured out. Yeah.

All right. So Ben, these travel charts that we mentioned earlier, fewer Europeans travel to the US. Look at that chart. So yeah, airlines are in a recession. Las Vegas tourism declining. Type of stuff that you see in not great economies, right? Now, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps this is just the excess of all of the people were drunk for the last three years.

Going on vacations all the time. It had to slow eventually, right? So maybe that's what this is instead of like a bigger picture thing. I don't know. But it's slowing very fast in a lot of places. That's the thing. Yeah. Oh, one more, one more. Speaking of travel, one more Chicago announcement. Ben and I on June 25th, back in Chicago.

We're going to be at the Morningstar Conference, which I'm told is at the Chicago Navy Pier. I've never been there. Oh, I can't wait. We're going to have a fun time at Navy Pier. What are we going to do there? There's a Ferris wheel. There's rides. Oh, what did you show me? The...

There's like a simulator. Yes. Chicago. I can't remember the name of it. We did it though. It's really cool. One of those things like the, the Disney ride where they lift you up and you have the big huge screen and they blow air at you. And I'm all in. It's really fun. I'm all in. Um, all right. So June 25th. Yeah, it's going to be fun. That's a great big conference. Um,

I had a conference anecdote. So I gave this speech in Columbus to all these. Are these the type of people you see at conferences? Oh, yeah, definitely. But this is a good one. So I have one person. So I gave a speech and it was a bigger conference than I thought. So it's all the FPA societies of Ohio got together. And I don't know, three or 400 people, pretty big at a pretty big ballroom.

And this is, I want to give, give some applause to this guy at every conference. It's always a guy. There's always one guy in the front row when you're giving a speech who's constantly nodding his head and like looking at people like, you know, he's, and he's always in the front row, very front, very center. And guess what? That guy usually bald, usually bald. Yeah. He, but he's constantly, he's, he's, and he's writing stuff down and he's nodding his head. What was your speech about? Uh, risk and reward.

Which is the name of my new book. I finally decided on a name. Okay. So I gave a speech about risk and reward and how to think about managing behavior and volatile times and all this stuff. So it was fun. Good group down here. Any other conference anecdotes or just that? Just the head nodding guy. I love the head nod guy. He gives me confidence as I'm giving my speech. Yeah, that's huge. And then there's always, when you make a joke, there's always one person who laughs a little louder than everyone else. That also gives you confidence.

Because occasionally there's a joke that falls flat. All right. Oh, I meant to talk about this a few weeks ago. I listened to Eli Roth was on the town, Matt Bellany's podcast. And he is raising money for his movie company on Republic. If you want to check it out, go to republic.com slash horror section. You should be an investor because you already give them some money. You know what? I should give this guy some money. So he raised $2.7 million. There's 1,560 investors. Wait, what do you get for it?

The valuation is $55 million. And there's different. So if you invest a hundred bucks, you get access to the investor newsletter, a digital stock certificate, an investor town hall with Eli Roth and entry into a raffle for announcing. So is this like being green by Packer's owner?

Yeah, if you invest $666, you get a signed stock certificate. Pretty cool. You get an invitation to meet and greet with Eli Roth. And Eli Roth has some big hits. Cabin Fever, I saw it in the theater. Hostel, also saw it in the theater. I actually saw Cabin Fever. Hostel 2, part 2. Too much. Too much gore. Thanksgiving, I quite enjoyed. Eli Roth is a legend. He was the Bear Jew in The Glorious Bastards.

He shows, um, that the box office for Freddy Krueger, $590 million ghostface scream, $911 million Halloween, $855 million and Jason's $755 million. So I think it's cool. You get, you can be an investor in the movie company and, uh, you know, own a piece of it. So I like it. You would have other nerds. All right. Yeah. It's fun.

Lucas Shaw tweeted, not tweeted. Lucas Shaw wrote a blog post on Bloomberg. Blog post on Bloomberg. Article on Bloomberg. Yellowstone is one of the most valuable franchises in Hollywood. It shows have generated $2.9 billion in sales and $700 million in profits. That's wild. Audiences have spent more than $450 million buying DVDs and downloads. And they're cooking up three more series in the world. I guess so. This is nuts.

The shows, 1883 and 1923, cost almost $20 million an episode. I guess that makes sense because the sets are so old and big and sprawling. So I finished 1923, and it was interesting because there were seven episodes, and the last episode was like two and a half hours or something. It was a bizarre ending, correct? Bizarre in what sense? I liked it. I thought it really limped to the finish line. That means, spoiler alert, she dies. She died? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was like good, not great. But it was – I enjoyed it. I thought the ending was very perplexing. All right. You always talk about going to the movies by yourself and how you like that experience. And I just – I've never done that. I don't know why. I just – if I'm going to watch a movie alone, I prefer to do it at home. Here's what I like to do though, especially if I'm traveling by myself at a conference or something like this.

I know, and I never would have done this when I was younger. I love going to the bar and having dinner and drinking by myself. That is a great experience, right? With your AirPods in? I don't, I will sometimes bring my Kindle, sometimes just be on my phone, sometimes watching games. Either way, it's great. It's great. I probably didn't have enough self-esteem as a young person. Like if I was 24, I would not have wanted to sit at the bar by myself. Now-

I'm more than happy to do that. Like I have an uncle who goes, he'll go to the bar, bring a book and drink like two or three pints. And like that, he, that's one of the things he does. That's a good experience. All right. I don't have a lot of recommendations this week. Just one. I told you, I listened to a bunch of the Neil Brennan podcasts. And so I finally went and watched, it was based on his Netflix special called blocks. And I finally watched that.

And it was very good. It's funny. He even says like, why do my standup routines have to be so gimmicky? Cause three mics, he had three different mics and each of them was a different type of comedy or story in blocks is this different thing of things in his life that like mess him up. Um, I just thought it was really, really well done. He's, he's probably one of the most intelligent, deep thinking comedians there is. Yeah. Right. Like you can tell that guy is just very, very intelligent. Yeah.

Uh, Duncan says that he invested $666 for the bloody certificate, but hold on Duncan, get on here. You, you, Duncan, you're not a horror fan and you hate gore and blood. I mean, yeah, I, I like Eli Roth there. Okay. Who doesn't wait? Are you serious that you did it? Yeah. I thought he was kidding. I thought he'd been sarcastic. No, I'm in no artists supporting artists. I'd love to see it. Yeah. Duncan, did you see centers? No. Okay.

Would I like it? No. Okay. Well, it's a film. You're a film guy, but there's also a little bit of blood. It's not super gory. I actually think you would enjoy it. I think you would enjoy it. Maybe I'll watch it. So I saw, yeah, I have no recommendations either. I have an un-recommendation, if you will. So I saw The Wolfman in the theater with my friend Brad. And what year was this? The Wolfman is 2010.

And we still joke about it as being the absolute worst movie either of us have ever seen in the theaters. Actually, that's not true. Yeah. I saw, I think major league was a major league three. Major league three was the worst movie ever. So in the theaters, this was second. So the Wolfman was with Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins and they end up, they're both Wolfman and they end up fighting each other at the end. It's, it's absurd.

Just horrendous. Oh, and a young Emily Blunt. I forgot about that. I just don't find it appealing, the idea of that movie even. Teen Wolf, that's a good wolf movie. That's a good wolf movie. Alright, so anyway, I saw Wolfman. Two words. It came out on, I think it was on Peacock, so I fired up. Why not? Absolute dog shit. Not even close to anything remotely resembling a movie. I don't understand.

It happens. Pure trash. And you know my threshold for pure trash. My appetite is healthy. I would have thought you'd have liked that one. Yeah. No, not good. All right. We made it another week. All right. I feel like it's the clock ticking down until economic reality. But maybe everyone's wrong. Everyone's been wrong in the past. Listen, how about this? I pledge to you, the listener, that will not be my beat. I am not going to spend the next four months saying, just wait.

We'll take it week by week. That kind of data comes out monthly in most cases. So we're going to start seeing an impact by, I'd say, May data. I think that's like the – right? May or June, that's going to be the tell. I would think so. All right. Come see us in Chicago June 3rd. Ben will be there. The whole R.D.M. crew is coming out. We'll have a great crowd at the Chop Shop. I'm told the venue is sick. We'll drink some lor-

Old styles. You know what? I will drink some Allure. I will do one. Nasty. I will do one. All right. AnimalSpirits at TheCompoundNews.com. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.