The Top 10 Risks to the Stock Market (EP. 419)
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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. Michael, last week you and I were in Chicago for a quick trip to do the Morningstar Conference, which was fun. Cool seeing people. The night before, we went out to dinner in the Fulton Street Market area of Chicago in the West Loop. Lovely, lovely area. Really cool. And it's a Tuesday night.

And we are walking around and the place is bustling, right? There's the restaurants are full. They have these outdoor tables. They're all full. People are walking around. The vibes were immaculate.

And you looked to me and you said, just tongue firmly implanted in cheek, you go, what if we just never have another recession again? And you were halfway kidding, obviously, but maybe there was a tinge of seriousness. And you do get the thinking like, gosh, what is going to change people's behavior? And my only answer is like the Minsky moment here, that so much stability eventually is going to create instability, right?

That's my non-answer of what finally ends this is the excesses get taken too far or people just become too accustomed and just unaware of risks that may be staring them in the face. If we were to come up with a top 10 list of potential bull market enders, I think the consensus number one would be an AI bubble that bursts and takes us down.

Do you think so? Yeah, that does seem... It seems like we are in a waiting period. I was going to get to this next. Someone DMed me the other day and said, hey, you guys don't talk enough about markets anymore or something. You talk about all this other stuff. And I don't think that's really true, but...

I don't think there's that much interesting to say about the markets right now. I think that's why people are forcing, like whenever interest rates rise, people always say, oh, look, it's the bond vigilantes. It's government spending. I feel like people are kind of making up narratives because there's not that much interesting to say about markets right now because I feel like people are waiting for an AI bubble to hit.

By the way, remember interest rates probably, was it four or five weeks ago at the upper end of their range? Yeah. Who bought the zeros on TLT? Not to brag, this guy didn't buy it. Are you still holding them? Still holding. Okay. Those fears are always overblown and I'm fine saying that. Every time rates rise a little, people freak out and then it's really nothing. It is a good thing that Liberation Day happened. Let me explain. So we had that at the...

Beginning of March? No, is it April 2nd? What was the date? Yeah, beginning of April. Okay. We had that at the beginning of April and consensus coming to 2025 was we are off to the races, M&A. Animal spirits. Stock market boom, IPO window opening. And then we slammed on the brakes and we got a 20% very quick bear market. And it is a good thing that we had that because had we not had that, would the S&P be up 20% in the first half of the year?

It might be. So it was a healthy almost end to Pax Americana, right? I don't know what that word means, but it is... I'm going to be honest. I don't either. It sounds really smart, though. It slowed down what was a potential runaway train in the markets. And you might say, well, what's wrong with a runaway train? A lot is. The steeper the climb, the easier it is for markets to

Get unstable and bust it is pretty amazing that we were down 15% on the year at one point because we did hit new all-time highs in February and now I think the markets up 6% So there's like your 20% difference, right? I know that doesn't necessarily look like that. But here's here's another thing that I think about the markets these days I don't run by you. I think we've finally finally killed the perma bears I think they're dead and gone like

In the 2010s, especially coming out of the 2008 crisis, they had the megaphone. Everyone was willing to listen to the perma bears because, you know, listen, this is going to happen again. We're going to double dip recession and Europe is going to European Union is going to fall apart. And they were still given headlines and they were still given people really listen to what they said. And again, it sounded like an interesting thing.

And then the pandemic hit. It's like, okay, fine. These perma bears are gonna be right again. And I feel like finally, finally, so many predictions of the end of the system, the system's gonna collapse and the dollar's gonna be destroyed and all these things. I think there's such a record now. And every time these people come back out of their cave, people throw all their past predictions in their face and dunk on them so much that perma bears are now just dead. You mentioned the dollar. We just experienced the worst

first half of the year for the dollar since 1973. And I would say that if there were predictions, again, of what would end the bear market, the bull market, excuse me, number two would probably be, or maybe even number one, would be a debt crisis or a dollar abandonment. Okay. I got some dollar stuff coming. When I was on my way home from Chicago, the airport, I know Chicago is a big airport, but it was jammed. There was a lot of talk earlier in the year

Not fake talk about travel coming down. And it was legitimate, especially from foreigners. You saw it in the TSA numbers. The airline stocks got killed. I don't know what they're doing right now. I know they rebounded a bit. But we have a chart later in the show of TSA travel, and it's right back on track. We can't get that out of our system, I guess. You also saw it. Did you see? I saw a tweet yesterday. I don't know if Jassy was on CNBC. I can't remember exactly where it was or what was said. But it was something like,

Amazon has not yet seen any increase in prices from tariffs, and you got to figure that they would probably be the first to see them. Is that over? No more inflation? By the way, speaking of inflation, you saw Trump's handwritten note to Powell. Yeah, good penmanship. When I write now, it looks like I'm doing cave drawings. I can't write anything now. So I'm surprised he still has such good penmanship. Well, the next meeting is in July, right? I don't know where the probabilities are, but-

Come on, just do it already. I don't know. I definitely can see. I would not. I've been saying they should lower rates and I think I lean that way. But for me, it's like 60-40.

I almost, for some people that say like, well, stocks are at all time high and speculation is this. But I don't think that's the Fed's job to care about. No, it's nothing to do with the stock market. Right. It's inflation in the labor market and inflation is lower and the labor market is softening. So on those two metrics, I agree the Fed probably should cut. It's not like they need to like cut down to 1% like Trump is saying. If they go from foreign change to three and a half or something like that seems...

reasonable, but it is true that right around 4% is, I don't know, probably the historical average. So it's not like things are wildly crazy right now in terms of rates. While we're on the topic of the Fed and a little bit of rambling here, the New York City mayoral race, obviously a big deal that a socialist won. It's like mind-bending stuff. It was a huge deal for me in Michigan. Huge deal. Um,

Is it not a big deal? I mean, do you live in this country? Does New York City, is New York City, like the mayor of New York, is it going to impact me personally at all? Well, so we're doing a podcast here. I mean, is it going to impact me personally at all? Probably a little. Probably not. Well, probably not, yeah. That's the funny thing is that, like, what can he actually do? He can't change tax rates. I know nothing about taxes.

local politics. Taxes are changed at a state level. The mayor of New York cannot change tax rates. None of this is my point. Here's my point. We spent since 2022, when Kyla talked about the vibe session, we spoke about the soft data and the hard data and forget about the soft data. Just look at the hard data. And I think that that was very misguided because the soft data, which is really a reflection of how people feel about inflation, like above everything else, would you agree?

Right. That is now driving local, not just local, national politics. It is. It's a huge deal. Well, I think this gets back to my Minsky moment thing. I think as long as we have this stability, the instability, people will be more apt. As long as we don't have recessions and things get really bad, people will be more apt to take a chance and a risk on something like this. And I think we're going to get more weird outcomes in politics where you go, wait, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, people still are not accustomed to spending what they're spending on

Everything. Food in particular, which is an everyday occurrence. Prices aren't coming down and they're voting for change. And it is a fascinating- It's also, it's always been sales. So I listened to him on the AdLots podcast. He's a really good speaker. I'm not even talking at all about his policies or anything. The way that he presents his ideas, he was really compelling. So you also think billionaires should not exist? Yeah, definitely. I want the government to create grocery stores for us. I think what could possibly go wrong?

All right, let's get to the doc. What are we talking about here today? Oh, before we get to the doc, I want to point out new merch. What do we think? That looks good. Show the back. It's nice. Oh, Animal Spritz. I don't shop.com. We got new gear. All right. Exhibit a chart of the week. Don't fear new all time highs. Matt and team at exhibit a looked at the average year forward returns from one, three and five years going forward. I got a question already this week. Hey, I just sold a house.

I want to put it into the stock market, my proceeds, stocks at all-time highs. People still find this nerve-wracking. So Matt looked at investing at all-time highs versus investing all other days. And then you look at the forward 12, 36, 60-month returns. And this one always seems kind of mind-boggling to me, but your returns are better investing at all-time highs than they are on all other days. Yeah, it is hard to wrap the brain around.

You would have, you would have, no, that's when bad things can happen from there and bad things can. Do you remember? I don't, I don't remember which one of us asked. You asked or I asked back in April, like what are the odds of all time highs again this year? Oh man, what do we say? I think what we said, if the tariff stuff comes off, probably, I think that was kind of our answer. And I did. And here we are. What were you? Was that our answer? Yes. You remember talking about this?

We talk a lot. Yeah, we do. All right. This is from the Daily Chartbook via, how do you say his last name? Willie Delwich, right? Local Midwest, another Midwest guy. More than half of the world made new highs last week. The best reading in over a decade. So this is the percent of the ACWI, which is All Country World Index, at new highs and new lows. And this is the first time, looks like in a long time, that we've had more than 50% new highs versus new lows.

The best reading in over a decade. It's a global phenomenon. Hard to believe. I saw Bespoke tweeted, Israel had the best stock market performance in the second quarter. At least the ETF. Oh, wow. Go figure.

Stock market is heartless. So IFA is up 20% on the year. I said the S&P is up 6% on the year right now. So that 14% and change, 15% or so outperformance. I looked at this. We had a conversation on Slack about this yesterday. If this holds, this is the best calendar year outperformance since 2006 when it was 11%.

And it would also be the biggest outperformance since 1993, which is 23%. If that 15% gap state, obviously there's a lot more to go. So Josh asked us the other day, how much of this is the dollar? And obviously a lot of it is. But it's probably, from the perspective of a U.S. investor, it's probably half and half. So Jake tweeted, you mentioned, the dollar is off to its worst start since Bretton Woods ended in 1973.

Obviously, a lot of this is the trade war stuff, but a lot of it too was just this is a positioning thing. The dollar was so strong for so long and people held dollars. Isn't a lot of this just an unwind of that trade as well, that the dollar had a 12-year bull market essentially? But yeah, this is – but the case for international diversification is this is the reason. You also get the currency diversification. That's something people don't really think about very much. Mike Sicardi tweeted. This is from Goldman.

growth sectors are outperforming in the US while value sectors are leading the rest of the world. So we've got- That's interesting. The US value divided by growth, and it's at an all-time low, the ratio, meaning growth stocks to value set differently at an all-time high.

But it looks, there's a, there was a hard break in the beginning of January and beginning of 2023. It looks like this is interesting value in the rest of the world. This is really destroying growth. Very interesting. Cause for years, there's been talks of is value dead. And I don't know how often we see the meme of the guy throwing the intelligent investor into the trash, you know, the garbage can, but

But value investing has worked overseas. If you look over a lot of different time frames, 1, 3, 5, like value investing over there has worked. So it's just the U.S. is the outlier because of the giant tech behemoths. I actually think for the factor investing people in the quants, this is actually a thing where you can kind of hang your hat on a little bit. And say like, listen, our ideas aren't completely dead. It's just you have this –

potentially once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon with tech stocks in the US? It's like a multi-decade anomaly. Right. Yeah, it really is. We were speaking about all-time highs earlier. And one of the things that I've learned in the last 12 years since we made all-time highs in 2013 is that by definition, at all-time highs, there will be pockets of stupid behavior. And it's so easy to get thrown off

the target. It's so easy to look at these micro sectors of stupidity and say, could you imagine investing today? And it's been a complete distraction and continues to be so. So I'm talking with Josh and I know what are your thoughts about this topic, but like the pudgy penguin ETF drop, um,

There's just, there's so much dumb activity. But there always is. That's a permanent feature of bull markets. You don't get stupid behavior like this in bear markets. There's no speculative appetite, obviously. How about this? Stupid behavior might be a permanent thing

trait of all markets going forward because of the information age? What if there's always going to be stupid stuff happening because you now have pockets and swarms of people who can attach to stuff in ways they never could before? I don't, I don't really buy that because in 2022, a lot of that nonsense, we just weren't talking about.

And then it immediately came back though. Yeah. But it's not permanent because it disappeared for two years. There was the idea that, listen, once we take the speculation out of the market and GameStop fell 95% or something, AMC fell 99%. And guess what? That didn't stop people from wanting to speculate. Yeah. No, but I just think it's nothing is permanent. Everything ebbs and flows.

Fair. All right. How America Saves, one of my favorite annual updates from Vanguard. This is the other side of that equation. This tells a lot of the story of the stock market for the past 15, 20 years or so.

Two-thirds of automatic enrollment plans have implemented automatic annual deferral increases. What that means is that if you are in a plan that you are automatically put into, and that's a lot of them, you also will automatically be defaulted into saving more money over time. So if you do nothing, you join a company that has this feature, you're automatically put into the 401k plan. You're probably automatically put into a target date fund, which is a lot of equities, and you're automatically saving more money each year.

They said 45% of participants, and this is $5 trillion worth of assets, increased their savings rate, which is an all-time high. And 61% of plans are now automatically enrolled. And that's up from 10% in 2006. So again, instead of opting in, you have to opt out, right? And then they said for those plans, 94% participation rate. So almost everyone is in the plan if you're automatically enrolled.

And it's actually way higher for bigger firms. For places that have more than 5,000 participants, it's 75%. Remember the retirement crisis that we used to speak about a lot? I think we've kind of...

Fixed in many ways. These are separate generations. We were talking about like, you know, more of the older people with the median retirement account being, you know, not a large dollar amount, but I think future generations, regardless of the stock market are in good shape. Yeah. And they, they show this, they break it out by income and age. And this is really good for people who make a lower income and are younger too. Those are the people that need the most help. They also say this, the average accountant has 80% in stocks. The median account has 89% in stocks. Wow. 79% of participants are offered some form of advice. Wow.

The biggest change in behavior has just been small changes in defaults, essentially. And this has a massive implications for the market. And I'm going to have thoughts on this for our AI talk in a little bit, because I have thoughts on your AI video. Sam Rowe tweeted this. This is another Goldman one. IRAs and 401ks account for 58% of the $44 trillion in U.S. retirement assets. But here's the one that's interesting to me on this.

These are all retirement assets. There's $44 trillion in its annuities and defined benefit plans, which is pensions. There's 20% of all retirement assets are in government-defined benefit plans, meaning 20% of all retirement assets are in a pension still. I don't think people realize how many people still get a pension if they work for the government in some way. It's a huge number. How many teachers are there? Right? Yeah, that's the thing. How many policemen? So the government pension plans are just as big as 401k plans. Wow. Yeah, that is surprising.

Right. All right. Interesting one from the Retirement Manifesto. And I think I wonder how many investors realize that we're living through one of the great bull markets of all time. I wonder if people appreciate it. So this is from the Retirement Manifesto. Fritz Gilbert writes this good blog. And he just looked at he said his biggest surprise in retirement is that because he invests a lot in the stock market, that he's having a hard time

I'm spending it all essentially. So he looks at this hypothetical situation. You have a million bucks in the S&P 500 index fund in 2019. And usually we look at these things in percentages, right? Because that's what market people do. He says as of the end of 2024, that million dollars in 2019 would have turned into almost $2.6 million. And again, we look at these things usually in percentage terms and not dollar terms. And I think the dollar terms matter more for individuals.

But this really is just an unbelievable bull market we're living through. And I think we're going to get to the point where people think that this is just, this should be the baseline expectation. Things should just always be this good. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I would say that the average investor, even the average market participant, I mean, maybe if you really sat them down and were like, come on, come on. But if you polled the average investor, does this feel like a historical bull market? No, I mean-

We've read all the textbooks on that Maggie – not Maggie Haberman. Who wrote the book Bull? Maggie Mayhar, yeah. Maggie Mayhar. It's a great book. And I wonder – like people at the time, it probably just doesn't feel like that. You only really know like with the passage of time when you look backwards. My father-in-law mentioned this to me once.

He was mentioned saving college for his kids, my wife and her brother. And he said in the 90s, he's like, saving for college was so easy because you just put all your money into the stock market and it always went up. He's like, you didn't have to really think. No one even really did 529 plans very much because you just put the money in the stock market. It went up and you spent it. And the thing is, this could become even more so if we get this AI bubble. It could get, the expectations could get very out of whack in the coming years. What do you think the odds are, if you had to guess?

of Nvidia being a $10 trillion stock in the next, call it 10 years. Right now it's approaching four. Four trillion? Yeah. In the next how many years? 10. Well, I feel like if it's going to happen, it's probably going to happen sooner than later. I feel like the AI bubble would inflate well before 10 years. So I don't know. It wouldn't rule it out if we do get this crazy AI bubble. So you wouldn't rule it out? Bold.

There's a greater chance of seeing an AI bubble than not seeing one is my line of thinking. If that happens, sure. 10 trillion for NVIDIA is probably not going to sound too weird. And it would seem crazy when it happened because I remember $1 trillion was assigned at the top for Apple and didn't really matter. All right, Ben, our yield. So there was an article in the Washington Journal by a friend, Jason Zweig. These funds are yield magicians. How do they do it? I have a new term for describing these products. It's IREM. Income rules everything around me. Your thoughts?

Yeah, not bad. These are the new levered funds in the sense that we're going to be spending a decent amount of time just talking about the education component. And this isn't like a call option strategy on an index. This is options on individual securities that are very, very volatile. And in many cases, they are transforming the total return into an income stream.

And guess what? If the total return of these instruments, the underlyings drop, so is your return. It doesn't matter what your yield is. So here's the lead. The dividend yield on the S&P 500 is 1.3%, as if by magic, nearly a dozen exchange-traded funds were offering payouts of at least 100% this week.

These funds generate high weekly or monthly income by trading option contracts on a single stock. Such option income funds have been wildly popular this year, attracting more than $6.4 billion in new money, according to FactSet. So people love, love, love, love income. They can't get enough of it. And guess what? The demand is there and they will most definitely be supplied with products. So on our two most recent talk here books, we spoke with Nios and Calamos.

about some of the products that they're offering. Now, these are not this, where they're offering 100% returns. But nevertheless, the category is exploding. And it really is important for investors, obviously advisors, but investors too, to understand that there is no magic or alchemy

Everything is a trade-off and there's nothing wrong with income, but don't be seduced by the sticker income that you're going to see in your portfolio because often, always actually, there is some sort of string attached. In my book, A Wealth of Common Sense, I wrote about the biggest myths in investing. And I wrote saying that yield is not the same thing as total return.

And I think I used like Annalie Capital, those REITs back in the day. They had like 15% yields. And I looked at here's the yield every year, but then here's the total return. And the yield was 15% on these things, and the total return ended up being negative over time because the price of the stock fell. And that, yes, just because this says 80% yield on it does not mean you're going to get 80% in this stock or in these positions. Yeah. All right. Last week, we talked about the new grad crisis. Yeah.

I think you were on board saying, yeah, I'm willing to call this a crisis. So is Derek Thompson and his new sub stack. Derek went full sub stack on us. He says young people are facing a hiring crisis. AI is making it worse. And he shows this new grad gap. This is alarming and getting worse. Total unemployment minus recent grad unemployment. And it's just showing that in the previous 25, 30 years,

you actually had a better chance of getting a job as a new grad, and now it's going the other way. It's a minor change, I would say, on the margins, but it's, yes, you're right, it's going in the wrong direction. Here's the counter-argument from our friend Jake at Economic. He says, the average college grad is now 24 years old, up from 22 in the 1980s. 40% of graduates now go on to grad school, which is really high to me. I didn't realize that. That's a crazy high number. So he says, thus, the applicable bucket is 25 to 29, where unemployment is near a record low.

I think that's a pretty good counter argument. Like what if, what if people are just waiting longer? Okay. So, okay. Okay. Well, you know what? Seems like a fair rebuttal. I don't want to like need, but it's also not, but it is true that it's not easy for new grads. And I, I've heard this from numerous people saying like, we're, we've, we've paused. So this is a real thing. I also kind of think that fine. Jake's counter is, is seems valid. Um,

But this is the type of thing that I trust like my senses and instincts here that there is something happening and it's not like we can't it's like why is this we can't explode no we know exactly what's happening we know exactly what's happening there's a mega trend of productivity of AI that is doing things that these people otherwise would have been hired to do. This is not so you don't have to do mental gymnastics to come up with an explanation it's right in your face. Also there was just there was way too much over hiring in the past three to four years.

right? It was the strongest labor market we've ever seen in our lifetime. And that was part of it too. So yeah, no, it's, I think it's going to get worse, but this is not my beat. Okay. Somebody showed us this chart. It's fast food price inflation since 2014. And I'm going to just take this at face value and just say that this data is accurate. I'm calling fake news on this and I'll tell you why. Okay. Please do. Cause I, I mean, the sort of, that was like

Well, at least for McDonald's. Okay. So they show McDonald's having the highest national inflation rate at a hundred percent of 2014. I have the inflation hedge here. You have to have the app because if you have the app and you spend more than $10, you get 20% off of your entire order. Okay. How about this? Let's just agree that perhaps these numbers are a bit inflated. See what I did there. But let's, but let's say that even if they are inflated by 40%, even by 60%,

The increase in fast food prices and all food prices is absolutely bonkers. I don't know what Chipotle is these days because I haven't had it in a long time. Is it $14 for a bowl? You know, I got a veggie bowl the other day for $9.99, but that's a veggie bowl. Okay. Well, anyway, this just goes back to the underlying mood of the country, which is social media and politics and why the bowl market is not appreciated. So I do think that it's a real thing that in the 2010s,

Companies were really scared of raising rate, raising prices because economic growth is slow and employment coming out of the great financial crisis, employment and hiring was slow. And I think that the 2022, 2021 inflation finally gave these companies an excuse to raise prices. And I think, yes, there was inflation in some of the inputs, but the fact that margins kept going up

I think means that a lot of these companies finally said, Oh yes, we have our chance. Let's do it. And I think that is really part of what happened. So I think they were suppressed in the 2010s and then they finally got their chance in the two 2020s. Uh, did you see the picture? Well, it doesn't matter. I was about to say a social media thing. Who cares? The Peter Thiel with that girl. I don't know what was going on. No, I don't, I don't know. I, I, but I did, I, I linked to the Peter Thiel, um, interview here on the New York times. And, um,

It is kind of weird because he did say he didn't know for sure if humanity should survive, which is an odd take, I guess. That's what you want one of the most powerful people in the world saying. That's cool. He wants our consciousness uploaded into AI or something. I don't know.

That's going to be a movie theme for a while. I can't remember. It was already in a movie somewhere or TV show, but that'll be a big movie theme in the years ahead. Like our consciousness living forever. It's the new, it's the new, like a rich people are the anime. It's, it's in everything these days. Yeah, it is. All right. So he, he was asked, what is the impact on AI going to be? He said,

My placeholder is that it's roughly on the scale of the internet in the late 1990s. I'm not sure it's enough to really end stagnation. It might be enough to create some great companies, and the internet added maybe a few percentage points to GDP, maybe 1% to GDP growth every 10, 15 years. It added some productivity, so that's roughly my placeholder for AI. So what if? Because the internet changed our lives forever. The way that we interact with each other, the way that we communicate, the way that we work, everything about the internet completely changed our life.

Right? We can agree upon that. It didn't completely change the economy.

It changes how many companies there are. I don't know about that. No, in terms of growth. The internet didn't add this insane growth to GDP, right? So what if AI is the same thing? It's going to completely change our lives. It's going to change the way we work. It's going to change the way we communicate. It's going to change the way we plan for things. It's going to change our efficiency. What if the impact on the economy is just kind of like, eh, it added some productivity. It didn't really completely change because people are probably throwing out weird numbers. AI is going to add 3% to GDP growth. What if it just...

In the numbers, it doesn't change much. And it's more a stock market thing than it is an economy thing. But the stock market drives the economy in a lot of ways, even if it doesn't show up in raw GDP numbers. Okay. But I'm saying, what if the impact of AI is more, it helps profit margins for the stock market more than it does totally, completely reforms the economy? I think that's a pretty decent baseline. Yeah. I think a lot of my, I don't really have a ton of high conviction takes here because literally who knows? Yeah. Yeah.

But I think that's a pretty good baseline as opposed to like it's going to reshape things. It's going to be, all right, you two or three weeks ago called me one morning and you were very concerned. No, no, no. I'm not concerned. I was concerned is the wrong adjective. You were deep in thought. How's that? Deep in thought. Very deep in thought. You said, I had a crazy thought this week and I have to run it by you. I think it's possible AI is going to replace financial advisors. Yeah.

And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, tap your brakes. And you said, I'm going to talk, I got to talk about this. I'm going to bring Dave Nautic on the unlock. I'm going to talk to him about it. I listened to, I listened to that. And I think you kind of had some time to sit and consider and think about it. And I think I'm more on Dave's side of this thing. I think that AI will probably help a lot of DIY investors and maybe create some more DIY investors.

Um, but I don't think AI is going to replace financial advisors. All right. So I spoke with Dave at the unlock, uh, talking wealth as a show. I'm talking to Jason Wang tomorrow about the custodian advisor relationship and what that's going to look like in the future. So if you're an advisor and you want to hop on board, we're going to, we're doing a weekly show there where I land on this, I think is I'm talking like far into the future.

I think that the lines between what's real and fake will be completely blurred. And I think that the next generation will not necessarily think about AI as AI. They will just think about it as something that exists. So at that point, it's a commodity. And what differentiators and what rich person is going to say, I'll just do the commodity just like everyone else. Okay. Well, when you say rich, yeah, sure. People with $5 million will probably...

I don't hate to say these to say always because I'm talking far into the future, okay? I think the biggest— I'm going to be dead far into the future. The biggest hurdle here is regulation because advisors need to be certified and all that sort of stuff, and there's going to be lobbyists and all that sort of stuff. But I just think that a lot of what we do— Have they given the CFA to AI yet to see if they could pass?

I mean, I'm sure they can in two seconds. It's not that hard. The thing that advisors bring to the table that computers don't is empathy and personalization and people skills and all that sort of stuff. All of the technical chops that we have, if they can't be answered entirely accurately today with AI, they will be able to very shortly. And I suspect you've seen- Okay, but you can do the same thing on Google though. Google didn't replace financial advisors. If you think about it- Wait a minute, stop, stop. My point is this.

It's not going to be for the technical aspect of it, of which you can get a lot of that on ChatGPT. Dave made a good counterpoint that a lot of it is wrong, but fine. But let's just say that eventually it's 100% accurate. You've seen, and we are in the first inning of AI products and what they look like. You've seen the videos that you can generate and the people look just like you and me. They have hair. They can be bald. They look just like us. And far into the future, they will be able to empathize and learn with you. And it will be the same

air quote person on the other side of the screen every single time. And you'll be able to get access to this quote person at eight basis points. And they will be able to know you and empathize. And again, I don't know if that's 30 years in the future or never, but that's where my thought was happening. Here's where I think AI will help. The internet definitely helped a lot of DIY investors because now there's asset allocation models and risk reward things and efficient frontiers and historical data and...

all these different, you know, the Bogle heads and Reddit and all these different places you can talk to people. And there's a lot of DIY people who have that information has helped them a lot and they've done it on their own. And a lot of those people still eventually go to an advisor. So I think there's going to be a lot of that where the people just starting out will be helped. And the other thing is, it's kind of funny because in the last five or 10 years, the big worry has been, listen, the majority of financial advisors are gray haired people. The average age is like 60 years old. Like what happens when all the advisors retire? Who's going to help them? Who's going to help all these people?

And there's also just a bigger group of people who need financial advice. Think about it. In 1983-ish, there was 19% of the US households were invested in the stock market in any form. Today, it's 60%. So there's just more people who need advice now because more people are invested. So I think AI is going to help all those people who haven't been getting a lot of help. I'm not talking about these people. I'm talking deep into the future.

Yeah, but that's not a prediction. That's a, Oh, what? You know? No, I'm saying I don't, I'll find, I'll say, let's say 27 years, 26.9 years. Yeah. I still think people are going to want to talk to people, but I think the DIY people are going to find really helpful stuff out of AI. Hang on. I guess what I'm saying is this option will exist. I'm not saying that 100% of people are going to use this option, but I think the option. Some people, some people will, you're right. But I don't think it's going to replace financial advisors.

Well, you could also say, and let's move off since it's enough already, but robo-advisors didn't replace financial advisors. Guess what? They took a lot of assets. They definitely made us compete harder. How much money does Vanguard manage in their, quote, robo? How much money is in Schwab? It's not insignificant. And they also forced those types of capabilities onto advisors to use.

right? Automatic rebalancing and tax loss, harvesting all these things. And I think that's what AI will do too, is just be integrated. All right. Let's talk about crypto for a second. There was the genius act. So the genius act, genius act, or is this in the juice? I don't know. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The head of the FHA, I believe said that banks are now able to look at crypto assets as assets where in the past

They weren't able to loan against that. It's like, listen, I have $10 million in Bitcoin. The bank would say, so what? You have no other assets. That's not real assets. So Dip Wheeler tweeted, loan underwriters at Freddie Mac determine if an unemployed teenager, if an unemployed teenager has enough fart coin to secure a mortgage. And it's a picture of Ben Affleck in the account. Pretty good. Pretty good tweet. Did you watch number two yet? I didn't. I'm not excited about number two. I'll get to it. All right. Uh,

All right. Institutional Fi tweeted a table of 60 companies that are adopting the Bitcoin treasury. And of course, it's MicroStrategy, or now just Strategy, that has 600,000 almost Bitcoin. And second place is a long way away. It's Mara at almost 50,000. But what are all these companies doing? I guess what is the...

Aside from juicing their stock price, which isn't a goal in and of itself, what is the actual... And I'm not talking about strategy because their strategy is Bitcoin. So I understand that. But if you are, let's say, who is this company? I don't know any of these companies. Company XYZ, for example. What is the strategy to buy Bitcoin? Is it for like...

To get more cash in your balance sheet? Like, are you going to sell the Bitcoin? Isn't it to get more shareholders? But isn't this the bare case for MicroStrategy, though, that all these other companies do it too? Nah, I don't buy it. I don't buy that strategy. I don't buy that line of thinking. In fact, I think I hate it. Why? Because they're, well, why can't there just be another Bitcoin? But this is different. This is, MicroStrategy is given a premium. Yes. And the idea that it's going to be taken away by who?

The ProCap BTC by GameStop by Kango Inc. If MicroStrategy shareholders decide like, hey, this one is trading at a discount. I'm going to invest in that instead of MicroStrategy. I mean, are you assuming they're going to do that? I'm laying out a case that like, why wouldn't that be the case? Why are we paying a 3X premium? Because they're, I don't know that they're the only one, but let's just say they're the gold standard of premium.

I'm not saying it's permanent. I'm not saying that, but I think that why wouldn't they buy any of these others? It's just like, it's sort of a lazy rebuttal. Okay. No offense. Getting spicy on animal spirits today. All right, let's talk about real estate. Is there a housing correction coming potentially? To me, this is the first time that I can actually see a decent little housing correction coming because rates continue to stay so high. So Case-Shiller Home Price National Index is 68 basis points off the highs.

68. Not nice. And this is, I think they use like a three-month moving average for the prices on this one, so it's a little dated. But the fact that rates keep staying at 6.5%, 7% for so long, and buyers are just kind of like, no way, man. I'm out. I think you could make the case the housing market needs a slowing economy. Because a lot of people are saying, listen, who cares if the Fed cuts rates? Last time they cut rates, mortgage rates went up.

But I think that the reason for the Fed cutting rates matters. If it's because a slowing labor market and the economy is slowing, then that would be a good thing for mortgage rates. And I think you could honestly make the case the housing market needs a slowing economy because guess what? So let's say housing prices nationwide fell 3% to 5%, which doesn't happen very often. It's very rare. I think it could happen. Are you seeing any price cuts in your neighborhood? Not really, but I mean, you see all the stories in Florida and Texas and these places.

I think there's still not much supply here. But I mean, I've seen a few houses where they took the house off the market. It was for sale for six months. It took the house off the market. But if there was a 5% correction in housing prices, a lot of people would be freaking out like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. The solution would just be lower mortgage rates and then demand comes back. I think that's the, if you put together a 5% correction in housing prices and mortgage rates go to 5%,

Boom. Housing mini crisis solved. So I do think if housing prices fall, the same people who have been screaming about housing affordability are going to be screaming there's a crisis happening. Yeah. Well, the people that scream always scream. You're right. True. Okay. This is interesting. So the rate thing, rates have been high for so long now. This is from Odetta Cushy on Twitter. She says 20% of mortgages still have a rate of less than 3%, which is so insane to me.

one-fifth, but it's now 19% have a rate of over 6%, and 10% have a rate over 5%. So we're getting, it's getting a little more balanced. It's still, you know, 80% have one less than 6%, but that's a way higher, it's much, like, we're slowly but surely churning those low mortgages.

Where the 6% and up are having a bigger proportion of it. This is a good email. His in-laws live in a wealthy area of San Diego. He said, however, they are by no means wealthy other than the house that they own. I think that this anecdote is representative of a...

decently large number of people. They bought their house 45 years ago for something insane like 36 grand, owned it outright and is now worth well over $4 million. They're in their 80s and don't want to sell because they don't want to pay tax on the massive gains they have and take away the step-up basis that their kids would get once they pass. The house is way too big and way too much upkeep, but they have the mentality that if they sell, they are screwing over the next generation by taking 600 grand out of it

So they feel trapped. That's pretty common here. There's a large aging population who are essentially waiting to die rather than selling, which has a large trickle-down effects to the overall real estate market. I imagine this is a big issue, especially in wealthy coastal areas. That makes sense. I mean, this is like getting down to like housing nobility, where this doesn't seem fair, right? Because plus you're getting a step up. If I was a kid, I would tell them, sell it. Who cares, right? It's still a massive, massive gain. Or take out a huge home equity on of credit or something.

Spend the money. Enjoy it. Don't worry about us. It's interesting, though. All right. From Bloomberg, a tidal wave of alts coming that we've been talking about. So there's a survey shows 80% of alt managers plan to launch retail-friendly products and structures nearly double from three years ago. Morgan Stanley just filed for a multi-asset vehicle designed to provide exposure to everything from venture capital to private debt, real estate infrastructure, all in one fund. So this stuff is still, it's coming. They see, they're chomping at the bit here. My only big takeaway here is that

So this is Bank of America. A number of retail clients holding alt assets has more than doubled since 2020, and the firm adds 50 new funds to its platform each year. Returns just have to fall if this is the case. I would think so. That's the only, like, I'm not predicting a crisis from this, but this is just, if this stuff becomes commoditized, it just returns have to fall. Yep.

Or there's going to be a fund that's going to receive some serious markdowns as managers get over their skis, and then investors can't get out, and that's when people start freaking out a little bit. Like, holy crap, this thing fell 30%, and I can't get out? Do you think the industry will have a washout? Because I think it's – I'm not saying there's not going to be hiccups, but I see it being mostly up and to the right. Probably. Probably.

Okay, we spoke- I wouldn't bet against the trend of trying to get- Listen, all of our fees have been wrung out of the stock market because everyone's investing in index funds and ETFs and free trades. We need to get our fees somehow. That's the active manager solution.

We spoke about investor positioning this chart from JP Morgan's Guide to Alternatives. And I forgot to mention the chart on the right. So just within the context of the conversation of Yale dumping $6 billion in a secondary, which is something that they've done not infrequently in the past. And also there's regulatory issues.

reasons why they might be doing this. So they did a survey, long-term alternative asset allocation plans. And they asked the share of institutional investors that plan to increase, maintain, or decrease their allocation by different verticals in alternative asset management. And in private equity, 46% plan to maintain their allocation, 48% plan to increase their allocation, and only 6% plan to decrease their allocation.

So this idea that institutional investors are dumping their alts, their private equity onto the unsuspecting bag holders of retail, at least according to this, it's 6% plan to decrease their allocation. It's just, I just don't buy that argument.

And a lot of them are held hostage because if you get into a good fund that you want to stay with, listen, I invested in fund four. If you want to invest in, if you want to stay with us, invest in fund five and six, pony up some money now. So a lot of these institutions feel trapped. I'm not saying that we're not going to hear horror stories of bags being dumped on retail, but just this idea that it is a mega trend of nefarious behavior. That's

not happening. I also think the bag thing is more, they're stuck in these companies that are not having exits. So we just need more money to invest. And that's where the bag holder thing comes from is that we need, we need you to pony up more so we can invest in more companies because we're not having the exits we had did in the past. We're not giving you distributions. SMP global has a post out called

Look forward, future of capital markets. And there's a lot of good stuff in there. But one thing that caught my eye was how wealthy the United States is. So we have over $21 trillion in investable assets among the mass affluent middle markets representing more than 40 million households. So this is like the wealth management cohort. Right. So let's start here. That will be using fake AI video in the future to manage the money. So let's start here. Okay.

284,000 households have more than $20 million. Does that melt your face? A little bit. 284,000. How's that possible? Okay. Another 487,000 are worth between 10 and $20 million in investable assets.

And then between... This isn't houses or business interests or this is like... Oh, yeah. I believe it's investable assets. Okay. And then 5 to 10 is 1.578 million. And affluent, which is 2 to 5, is 3.9 million. We have a very rich country. But this is why the pitchforks are coming out though, right? Part of it. Yeah. It's the...

The distribution is certainly uneven. That's capitalism. All right. This one surprised me. Did you look at this Uber thing yet? How many people actually tip? What percentage of people tip their Uber drivers? Because I would have thought it's like restaurants where just everyone does it. What percentage of people currently tip their Uber drivers? What's your guess? I just saw the number. Okay. I would have thought it would have been way higher. I would have said 80%. It's 20%. I thought that it was assumed that almost everyone tipped.

Isn't that you want to keep your star rating high so you tip? I've assumed everyone tipped an Uber driver. This is shocking to me. If I take a drop… I don't take them very often. I almost always tip. The only time I don't is if I forget, but I almost always tip. Okay. I tip every time. I assume that's what… I guess maybe if you're in a city and you use it all the time, you think, like, wait, that really adds up because I use it when I travel. That's about it. Occasionally, we'll use one in town if we go out or something. Yeah.

Um, and we're drinking and, but I, I almost, I, this number surprises me. Um, we got a few emails from people that ditched the second car. We spoke about this last week and just went full Uber and they all said that it was cheaper. Um, I have a few car stories, so I have many flaws, but this isn't one of them. I'm a very courteous driver. I respect those around me. I follow the rules of the road. I do the right thing.

And it really grinds my gears when people don't. I turn into the Hulk. So two things. I think 80% of drivers are terrible. That's my take. So I'm driving down Merrick Avenue. There's a dairy barn on the right that has the exit. So it's one lane that goes straight, right? Goes over the main road. And then the lane right next to it is the turning only lane, the left turn only.

So I'm coming in the straight lane who I'm getting worked up just talking about this, Ben. I'm coming in the straight lane and I slow down because I see this woman is exiting the dairy barn and she wants to get in. So no problem. I slow down, give her the wave. She doesn't wave back, but then she doesn't go straight. She goes into the left lane, but the left lane, because it's turning lane, it's backed up a little bit. So she's now diagonal. Oh, she's, she has her butt sticking out. Yeah. So now I can't get by her. I'm just like you. Oh, that's a bad one. Are you, you don't,

Behave, people. One more. We're coming to the beach club and we are... There's a bunch of cars parked. This is sort of hard to describe, but we're coming around the turn, okay? So we're coming around the turn and there's all of these people waiting to get in. There's a valet parker and this lady just stops 100 feet in front of where she should have. And I'm watching this and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She gets out of her car and just starts emptying it. And there's two...

I don't know, males in their twenties that just start getting out of the car and just taking their stuff. And I'm looking at Robin like, is this really happening? She goes, don't. So I blast the horn because it's just- That's what the horn's for. It is the rudest, one of the rudest acts I've seen in a long time. Because now there's, now traffic is piling up and people can't see it because there's a turn, like I said. So there's just cars just piling up because the chutzpah of this lady to think, you, you're behind me. Nothing matters. I'm doing my own thing.

People are so inconsiderate. It's unbelievable. So I blast the horn. She looks at me. She goes, like what? Don't even realize it, right? That was a valid honk. Unbelievable. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. All right. All right. So Bill Art sent me this. This is a thing that I'm unaware of, but apparently it's a thing that exists. So AMC does these, I don't even know how to describe them. You buy a ticket and it's like a lottery. It's like a random, you don't know what movie you're going to see.

And it's a movie that's not in the theaters yet. Oh, okay. So it's like a grab bag. So anyway, the movie that he saw was, it was Jurassic World. And he walked out.

Now, that is much more of a remark on Bill Arts' movie preferences. He's a real sicko. He's not a Jurassic guy. He likes the gnarliest horror movies like I do. Boy, I can see doing that when you're younger. Like, I'm going to roll the dice and see what comes up. I would never do that at our age. Yeah, I don't know that I would. That's a serious dice roll. I don't know that I would do it either. No way. All right, sticking with the theme of they're just remaking everything, The Strangers Chapter 2, which is...

The original Strangers, what year was that? Like the turn of the century? You're asking me like I've ever heard of this before. You never saw The Strangers? Come on, man. Look at this poster. No, of course I didn't see it. So The Strangers is with Liv Tyler, who's the main guy. And it was a very, very – 2008. Okay, it was a very scary movie. Liv Tyler and –

Who's the main guy? Oh, don't know him. Do you never, do you just not become desensitized to it after watching a million of these? I get scared. That's why I go. I go for the adrenaline. Social network too is just going to, there's no way that's going to be good. So social network too. Why? That's yeah. Can I, can I tell you this for your guy, Denis? Yeah. He's doing the new James Bond. I'm shorting that. He's not a James Bond director.

I also think they've run out of ideas for James Bond. Okay, you're Bill Ackman. I'm Carl Icahn. I will take all of the James Bond stuff. Okay, I'm shorting this. And also, there's nothing else they can do for James Bond. I think it's kind of over. Besides the point. So I want Theo James in the actor's seat. Okay, that'd be good. I was listening to The Big Picture, and the heavy favorite is Aaron Taylor Johnson, but I want to see Theo James. I think one of the Daniel Craig James Bond movies was good. The other ones were all way too long and not good. Okay.

Okay. Well, I'll be seeing it and you'll be wrong. Are you excited? Did you watch the trailer for Project Hail Mary? I sent it to you guys yesterday. I can't wait. I love that book. So are you short that one as well? I'm very long. That's the kind of one where you see that trailer in the theater and you get goosebumps and you're so excited. I don't know how they're going to do the alien in that movie. Yeah. Because the description of the alien. They smartly teased it. That's my only worry, but I love that book. All right. I have two more quick things.

Do you have an Apple laptop? Nope, I have an Apple desktop. Okay. Well, same thing. You use the messaging, you text on your computer? Sometimes. Okay, here's... Not very often. This bugs me. I don't know if this is an easy fix. So right now, I'm looking at my laptop, and I've got my text message open, and it's on a text message, okay? Okay. Like, if I were to type, it would be on a certain text message. But then when new text messages come...

your text box stays in the old text message. So it's very easy to see a text, start typing, and then you reply to the person behind them. Why can't they fix that? Your text box, your mouse text box should automatically go to your newest message. I guess that's why I don't do a lot of texting on my computer. Tim Apple, if you're listening, please fix that. One more thing, Ben, I sent this with you. As somebody who is not just courteous on the road, but courteous in email,

This was in my inbox, my LinkedIn inbox. It was a link to an article from a company that we know. I know the founder and this person, it's a salesperson. Listen, shoot or shoot. So he sent us a link and then said, now, mind you, this is a stranger. I've never met this person. Why don't you guys do something with us? What's wrong with you? I mean, that's how I took it. Very aggressive. I don't like that. I don't talk to people that way. I don't like being spoken to that way.

So I'm on the train. I show it to Chris. I'm like, could you believe this? The gall of this person? Again, the chutzpah, as we say. So I was going to reply, excuse me, but I didn't do that. I just said, I said, does this message usually get a positive response? And then he said, first person I sent it to. So maybe not, question mark. That's good. This guy made lemonade out of lemons. I'm still not working with him. Well, I said, all right, that got a little chuckle out of me. And that was it. He left me alone.

So that's why it's hard to understand text in a text message. Like maybe he was thinking like, why don't you guys do something with us? And you think it as like, why don't you do something with us? It depends on the tone. Could be. So, all right. What do you do in this scenario? I am on the plane to Chicago and I got two missed calls from a number that I don't recognize, but it's like a local number.

And then I get a third missed call. And then I see a call in the third time. So I pick up, it's three calls. You got to assume it's like something relatively important. Kids or something, maybe. Yeah. So I pick up and I'm on the plane. I said, hello? He goes, hi, Michael. This is a blank from blank. We, uh, I'm like, whoa, hold on. Hold on. How do you, how do you get my number? Uh, well, we're just reaching out to see, I'm like, we're already a customer of yours. Do you not know that we're already working with you?

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm kind of new here. I'm like, what's your... And he hung up on me. And I was about to say, what's your name? And he hung up on me. Now, I thought, what would you do? I know what you would do. You would do nothing. Yeah, I would let it go. The young person, they don't know what they're doing. Yeah. But three missed calls, that's a lot. So I was thinking like... That is a lot. By the way, I called him back. Because I'm like, you hung up on me? I called him back right away. He didn't pick up. So we had a guy come to our door the other day. And I'm in the basement. I think I was lifting weights. Not to brag. I'm like, what?

You are looking very swollen these days. Is it swole or swollen? I guess either work? I don't know. I'm an old, I don't know. So I'm in the basement. I got our little workout room down there and I hear the doorbell ring twice. And my wife's like, can you get it? I don't want to. I'm in PJs or something. I don't want to get it. And I'm like, just ignore it. Ring again. And she's like, can you just get it? And so I walk upstairs and then the guy knocks and I open the door. I'm like, what? And it's a young kid and he stepped all the way back. He's like,

And he just, he's trying to sell something. He goes, he goes, dude, we're selling a house washing. I'm going to wash houses. And I wanted to be like, dude, you got to work on your delivery a little better. But I said, appreciate this. Appreciate the offer. We actually just had it done a couple of weeks ago. All right. Thank you, sir. And he runs off. Do you wash your own house? You power wash your own house? No, no. Okay.

It's hard to get certain spots. And our house is white. Our house is white. So we need to have it. So you're right. It is hard to get certain spots. And guess what? Those certain spots, they just sit green in my house. I can't get to them. So anyway. No, no. The way they do it at ours though, we do it once every three years. They spray this. This is really boring middle-aged stuff. They spray this cleaner on it. They don't even power wash. They spray this cleaner. They leave it on there for a minute. Then they just hose it off. And the stuff just melts off. And it's good for three years. There is something very satisfying about seeing the melt off.

Yeah. Anyway, so I'm thinking, do I call this? I mean, I know the founder. Do I just call him back? Hey, but you know what? I let it go. I mean, that would be very little of me to get this kid fired. Definitely let it go. Come on. You don't call somebody three times in a 35-minute window. Who does that? Hey, always be closing. All right. I got a lot of recommendations. We got to get to these. All right. Take the mic. All right. I saw the Ballad of Wallace Island pop up on Peacock the other day.

Oh, new movie. A guy I've seen in a Ricky Gervais show or two, Carey Mulligan, who I really like. And then the same day, someone emailed us and said, you have to watch this. This is a total Ben movie. Okay, so we watched it last weekend.

This is my favorite movie I've seen in a long time. You absolutely shouldn't watch it. This is a total Ben movie. I give this a 7.5. It's... So two guys wrote it and star in it. They wrote the movie. One of the guys also wrote the music for the movie and sings all the music in the movie with Carey Mulligan. So this is like...

It's a comedy, but also has some heart to it. It's got subtle British humor. I'm a big fan of British humor. They don't hold your hand with British humor. But the guy in it who also wrote the movie. So here's the premise. A guy lives on this remote island in Wales. He's got a big mansion because he won the lottery. He lives by himself. His wife died. He pays his two favorite folk singers, who used to be together in a group, to come give a show to just him on the island. Pays him a lot of money. And then hijinks ensues.

And it's, this guy is like a poor man's British version of Galifianakis. He was hilarious.

So I really like this movie. Total Ben movie again. You shouldn't see it. But if you're on the Ben corner, this is a Total Ben movie. I love this movie. Can I tell you something? I hovered over the description because I saw the recommendation coming and I just went… And I even listened to the album. Wow. You even listened to the album. Yeah. It's actually… It's pretty good. So this got me thinking. This guy is a poor man's Galifianakis. Whatever happened to him? Because after The Hangover… He's still… Oh, you know what? You said Galifianakis. I was thinking of…

I was thinking of Gaffigan. Oh, yeah, where is Galifianakis? He should have been... I think he maybe didn't want to be so famous, but he should have been Will Ferrell for 10 years. Here's the thing. Here's my take. I mean, they did two Hangover sequels. He did that one movie with Robert Downey Jr. called Due Date, which was okay. But The Hangover came out in 2009. That was a generational top in movie comedies, and we've been underwater in a drawdown ever since then. We're in a 50% drawdown and never came back. We're in a Japan of...

comedy movies. So that's what happened to him. There wasn't any good comedies coming out anymore. Can I, you know, it's bizarre. I kind of thought that you were right that Galifianakis disappeared. He got too famous and that was really not his life that he wanted to live. But I'm at his IMDB and he's been working this entire time.

Okay. I'm really surprised at how – because after he did Alan and the Hangover, it's like, okay, this guy is the next Will Ferrell. He's going to be doing unbelievable comedies for – he's on a few things. Well, Between Two Friends was pretty big for – Yeah, but it's like a YouTube show. It's not a real thing. All right. So finally, The Bear came back for season four. You know I've been a huge fan of The Bear. But you hated last season or two seasons ago? Last season was eh, meh. This season, I hate it.

I can't believe it. They should have pulled a fleabag and it should have been two seasons. They should have walked away after season two. Are you going to keep going? We have to now. So here's the thing. We watched episodes one through six of the season and honestly, literally nothing happened. They neutered all the characters. There wasn't the same energy and chaos that was in the first two seasons. It's the same guy. I think they just ran out of ideas. It's like there was some painful scenes where my wife and I go, oh my gosh, it's still going.

painfully bad. And then they had a really good episode seven, which was a wedding, and they had all these guest stars come on, and it was really good, and now we're two episodes from the end, but they totally botched it, and it's a terrible, limping to the finish line, like, totally limping, like they shot the leg off. And anyway, they should have pulled a fleabag and gone on after two seasons. Two more things.

Snow White the recreation they did the real what they did it. It's got a 2 on IMDb 2 out of 10 I don't think I've ever seen a movie that big have such low of a score My kids watched it and they watched it with two of their friends So this is 8 to 11 years of age 5 kids. They loved it I came in and out and there was a few things they changed me original but they've never really watched the original much I couldn't believe my kids actually really liked it because it's like a terrible reviews. Yeah, maybe my kids aren't the best I

Finally, Brad Pitt was on Dex Shepard's podcast, Armchair Expert. He doesn't do a lot of podcasts. I think he's done one or two in his life. Totally worth a listen. Okay. Great. Okay. I've always been a big Brad Pitt fan. He comes off as just like the coolest guy ever.

But it got me thinking because he's on the cover of GQ, and you can tell Brad is aging. He's still a very good-looking man, obviously. He still has a six-pack. Yeah, he's like the best-looking person ever, maybe. But he's allowing himself to age. He's not doing the Botox. I've seen a lot of him with the fillers and stuff. This is one of the reasons that movies aren't as good anymore. Actors and actresses aren't allowing themselves to age naturally.

Like a lot of the actresses look the same at age 50 as they did at 30 almost. It doesn't feel real almost. So I saw F1. Oh, yeah. What did you think? Brad Pitt. I didn't notice like the arm is getting a little bit – it's getting a little bit of loose skin in the elbow area, which is – that's what happens when you get older. And I was like, yeah, good for him. He's aging. Yeah, he lines up to age. Yeah, yeah. But then he takes off his shirt and he's still shredded somehow. Yeah.

But what did you think of one? I'll get to that in a second. Real quick. So I am out of TV shows right now, which is fine. I kind of need a break. I'm very happy to just be falling asleep and scrolling. I watched probably 20 minutes of Superbad. And I think for you and I, that was my peak comedy. That's my favorite comedy of all time. Yeah, me too. But there's probably a lot of young people who have never seen it or never heard of it.

And I implore you, young people, watch Superbad. It is just laugh out loud, even though you know every line of the movie. And then also, I caught 20 minutes the other night of a movie that I plugged pretty aggressively when it came out, and I'm going to do it again. Incoming on Netflix with Studs. Remember that movie? The high school teacher? Oh, yeah. Great high school movie. Oh, yeah. Good party movie.

Very good. It's one of the- They don't make any good party movies anymore. It's one of those comedies that they don't make anymore. Okay. So, F1. This is from IMAX. The film launched in stellar fashion with IMAX riding home with the $28 million in box office and it's opening weekend and powering over 90% of the global box office. The highest global indexing of the year for IMAX. So, I saw it on IMAX and it was Sunday night and it was packed. It was packed. And the movie rules.

It was just a ton of fun. It's exactly what you want from a blockbuster. I'm not an F1 guy. Didn't watch the show. I know nothing about it, but I was listening to the

the big picture talk about it and they filmed on location. So it took them three years. There's maybe 12 different set pieces that they go to. Brad Pitt talked about this in the interview. They literally filmed the day that they were doing these F1 races. They would have like 10 minutes and they would line the cars up and go on the courses with all the people in the crowd. So he would, he was driving 180 miles an hour in these things. He was taught, he talks about how he's kind of a speed demon. It sounds like, so it was two and a half hours. There's a couple of Brad Pitt monologues that, uh,

uh, felt very long, but that's a nitpick. It was, it was just so much fun. Like I cannot recommend it highly enough. It felt, it felt like Maverick, same director. It just, everything that you want from a summer blockbuster, tons of fun. Good. That's good. Yeah. Great movie. Uh, all right. That is, uh, that's it. I'm just picturing you constantly sneaking away at night to go to movies by yourself. Um, I,

I might see Megan too, but I don't know. Well, Kobe's at camp. Robin's, Logan is the easiest to put to bed and she, I guess she's very happy to get away from me. That's true. You going to the movies by yourself gives her some time to just. Well, you know what? Cause we, we don't spend a ton of time together at night. Like we very much, she's talking to her friends or whatever. She's watching the housewives.

I'm doing whatever I'm doing. So she's like, I don't care. Go. You know, part of the wives entertainment is texting each other. They find entertainment value in texting each other. And Robin's a big, she's a, she's a Yenta, not a gossiper per se, but I mean, she talks, she's on the phone with her friends all the time. Okay. Yeah. All the time. That's entertainment to them. Yeah. So, uh, I'm going to movies. Okay. Leave.

Get out of here. I've had enough of you. All right. Thanks to the production team, as always. AnimalSpirits at TheCompoundNews.com. We're going to have a lovely fourth. See you next time.