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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. I'm going to be doing some throat clearing on this episode. Forgive me. I've got a little something. You're a throat clearer. Yeah, I've got allergy stuff. I had to go see a doctor about it even. Really? I have a septum issue. I've always had it. Yes. So they had to give me medicine for it. So on Friday night, yeah, on Friday, I said, man, I'm having a horrible allergy attack. I'm allergic to pollen and all the seasonal stuff.
But then I laid down at night. I was really feeling it. And I got some nose driftage. I said, this doesn't feel like allergies. It feels like a cold. You know what? This story sucks. Let me just stop. Let me just stop the story. You do get sick a lot, though. Do I? I don't think I do. Okay. It seems like you're sick all the time. Robin thinks I get sick all the time. She is the most... Robin is very... She's a great wife. I'm in Boston tonight. She let me go to the Nick game.
But she has no sympathy for me when I get sick. She doesn't want to hear it, which is fair because I'm a big giant, giant baby when I get sick. I feel like when you're an adult, you don't deserve sympathy for being sick. If you just have a cold, you don't deserve sympathy from anyone. No, I don't want sympathy. I just wanted her to acknowledge. Yeah, you're sick. She doesn't care. My wife always gets mad at me for showing a lack of sympathy too, but I don't want any when I'm sick. Like when you're an adult, you just have to, like when you're the kids, you have to wait on them hand and foot and you have to be very nice. And oh, I'm so sorry you're sick. But when you're an adult, like you don't get sympathy from anyone. You have to power through.
So over the weekend, I took advantage of Berkshire's annual meeting to take a walk during Logan's T-ball game. Using an excuse, got us to the buffet. It was five hours long, at least on the quarter wrap, it was five hours long. Half of that was a break. I mean, a kid's T-ball game is about that long. Baseball is the most brutal sport as a parent, don't you think? That's not great. But I got through three and a half hours of it. So I think I got through most of it. Did you listen to it?
I did. You're a CliffsNotes guy. You're not a Buffett guy. I did the CliffsNotes. I did the ClipsOnline. Everyone was sharing. And it seemed like a victory lap kind of thing. It was funny how some people were like, whoa, Buffett's stepping down. I don't know. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean victory lap kind of thing? What do you mean? Just like it was a victory lap just for his whole career. People were celebrating. I thought it was very nice. People were sharing his compounded gain of like 5.5 million percent or whatever it is, which is just…
absolutely insane. It is kind of like when someone's grandparent dies and they're like 92, it's not like shocking. It's like, oh, they were 92 and they died. Yeah. I feel like I should take the mic. No offense. I put in three and a half hours. You did not. I did pull some quotes, but have at it. Thank you. To me, well, there's so many big takeaways. I don't want to say the biggest one. I just have some notes. He's so sharp at age 95. It is absolutely insane. The recall is
The math, the fact that he took nothing but live questions, like off the dome unprepared. A matter of fact, one of the live questions had me dying. Somebody asked, it had to be a Chicago guy. Like, hey, you bought Portillo's, the hot dog stand, right? They do roast beef too, I guess. Amazing roast beef. The Italian beef there is amazing. And so Buffett was like, I do like hot dogs, but I don't think we own that one.
And I immediately Googled it. And it says Portillo's. I said, who owns Portillo's hot dog? And it said it's owned by Berkshire Partners, which is a private equity firm based out of West. Oh, that's right. And I'm thinking like that guy definitely went to the meeting telling all his bros like, I'm going to get it. I'm going to find out why he bought our hot dogs. Oh, that's tough. He gets to the mic and then that's the question he asks? Yeah. That's tough. Wrong Berkshire.
But it was so funny. Like even the way Buffett answered, he's like, I don't, he's like, I know most of our companies. I know we own a lot, but I don't, I don't think we own that one. I don't know that one. Turns out they don't own that one. It is kind of amazing. Him and Munger both lived. So Munger was what? 98 when he died or something? And Buffett is, yeah, 94, 95. And he talked about how he drinks like five cherry Cokes a day and he's still fine.
Which is obviously a little bit of a survivorship bias, but I think the longevity piece is he talked about, well, it may be happier people live longer or something. I buy that. It's such a DNA roll of the dice though, don't you think? Yes. So I've been talking with Phil about like health and taking care of myself and stuff. And I'm like so conflicted because yeah, I probably enjoy food and booze a little bit too much, but I do feel like it's so much DNA.
You know, like obviously there are things that you could do at the margin to make yourself healthier, but I feel like your fate is preordained. You just want to roll the dice, huh? I don't know. The dice has been cast as far as I'm concerned. Okay. That sounds to me like you're just giving yourself a free pass to eat and drink whatever you want, but – Is that what it sounds like? Yes. All right. So Buffett is a one of one.
Yeah. He, uh, there will never be another like him. At one point he made the comment about never having institutional investors. Now not to say that there weren't institutions that bought his stock, but the way that he built Berkshire over, over the years. Here's the other thing. Here's the other reason there's never going to be another one of him. I think of it kind of like Michael Jordan didn't come up in the social media era. So he was scrutinized obviously by sports writers and such, but he, he didn't grow up with that kind of spotlight where he had to be on all the time. And it's just a different era. Uh,
If you watch all these billionaires tripping over themselves and making themselves look like idiots on social media these days, the fact that Buffett made it this long and never really made himself look like an idiot, that is the thing that I think it's almost impossible these days for rich and powerful people to stay out of their own way. The fact that he did that for so long makes me respect him even more.
Remember Baby Buffett? Was that the cover for Ackman? Yeah, well, there was Ackman and there was David Einhorn and there's been tons and tons of this is the next Buffett. But that's the big thing is the reputation. You know what? Ackman is to Buffett as Jerry Stackhouse was to Jordan. Yeah, or Harold Minor. No offense, Detroit, but...
So I pulled a few quotes here. He still has some good quotes. He just says, they asked about the stock market. He says, nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, next month, but they spend all their time talking about it because it's easy to talk about. It has no value. I think it does have value because it's interesting and entertaining, but that's where it has to end. And this is why I think the idea of like, you can have your own opinions and feelings about the market, but you just can't act on them, right? The people, you know,
I've been feeling very bearish lately because of the trade war, but I didn't act on it. And I think that's the, that's the thing he's saying is like, you can have all the, all the opinions you want. Don't use them to think, you know, what's going to happen next in the market. Right? Yeah. You know what I always love when he talks about investments that he's made, where the cashflow is now larger than the investment. That is so bad-ass. For example, he said that they're now earning, I can't remember the numbers.
significantly more. I don't know if it's 10 or 20X more in earnings on their investment in Geico than their purchase price. Imagine paying $100 for something
And in the future, it's kicking off $2,000 a year in cash flow. Wasn't that the idea that they make more in dividends on Coca-Cola than they did for their purchase? Something like that, right? Yeah. Because they've been holding it for so long. He talked a little bit about trade. Maybe you can give me more color, but he just basically said, like, we should not use this as a weapon. We should do what we're good at. Everyone else should do what they're good at. Was that basically, he didn't go into it too much, did he? That was it. Okay. And I love how he always says, he sings the praises of capitalism and just saying that, like,
I liked this part. He said, capitalism in the United States has succeeded like nothing you've ever seen. It's a combination of this magnificent cathedral, which has produced an economy like nothing the world's ever seen. I can't talk. And then it's got this massive casino attached. And he said, it's very important in the United States that the next 100 years make sure that the cathedral is not overtaken by the casino. I thought this was a really good point. The people, I think he's kind of, and maybe you can correct me since you listened to the whole thing.
I think he's kind of getting into the financial nihilism aspect of it. Like you can't view all of this stuff as it has no meaning. There's earnings and profits and dividends and all this stuff. That stuff matters, not the day-to-day stuff people are paying so much attention to. Is that what he was getting at? Yeah. People lose sight of the fact that, well, what are we doing here? We're actually investing in businesses. Any other takes from your three and a half hours? That's a long time. How many games did your son have?
No, well, I didn't, it wasn't, I listened to it over the weekend in several different arenas. I listened to it while I was doing dishes. I listened to it while I was driving and this and that. Two times speed, that's right. He was talking about the volatility of the last 45 days and he wasn't poo-pooing it, but he was just putting it into context, which is I think what I was trying to do. Relatively speaking, it was nothing. It was fast. Somebody had a good take today. I forget who tweeted this. Has there ever been a 19%
rise and fall. Now we're not back to all-time highs, but without any fiscal stimulus or Fed intervention. Didn't even have enough time to do it, did we? I'm sure in the past, just not in recent history. Did you read the Jason Zweig piece on how there's never going to be another Buffett? I didn't. I have it earmarked. I just didn't get to it. Okay. This is very good. And he talked about not only does Buffett have a computer for a brain and he's one of the smartest people ever, and he's got the temperament and he's got the whole package as an investor, but he also says,
So Zweig is saying, listen, Buffett, this is one of the only things he cared about. He put all of his time and effort to the detriment of his other relationships.
And basically saying, like, if you're going to emulate him, this is the kind of stuff he was put on this earth to analyze businesses. Yeah, pick stocks. And he did that to the detriment of his own relationship sometimes with friends and family. And Zweig was saying that's one of the reasons there will never be another Buffett.
is because this is all he cared about, really. So I forgot to mention, this is actually the top of my list that I skipped over. He said that he thanked Tim Cook, who was in the audience. And he said it's the only earnings call that he listened to. And I was thinking, huh, so interesting. Me, who fancies himself the modern Warren Buffett, I listened to a lot of earnings calls last week. And the reason why I listen to the earnings calls is I get a lot out of them. And I was thinking, some of the value that I got out of the earnings calls last week, I listened to Starbucks, I listened to Spotify. And I thought, hey, wait a minute.
As I saw the after hours market reaction, I'm listening to the calls and I'm thinking,
These aren't that bad. I mean, very different companies. Spotify, probably just, you know, the stock tripled. It's a big deal. It was down a little bit in the pre-hours. But the earnings call was good. They delivered. Listening to the Starbucks call, Brian Nichols, I texted Josh. I said, because I was thinking like, do I sell? I believe this guy. And the numbers weren't that bad. And I believe the story. And I listened to him. Now, obviously, I'm kidding. Me versus Buffett. But his thing is, he doesn't need to hear the story. You know why? Because he's read everything.
every financial, every annual and quarterly report of these companies that he follows for the last 20 years. He doesn't need to hear the bullshit spin from the CEO or the CFO. He sees the numbers.
He doesn't care. He doesn't care what the spin is, right? Yeah. He doesn't need to hear the story because the story is in the numbers and that's all he needs. So just a remarkable investor. The biggest losers on the planet are the Buffett haters. I'm sorry. Trying to be a contrarian. I agree. Is he a perfect person? Is he a perfect investor? Get him a different hobby.
Yeah. I also wanted to mention the Alex Morris book, Buffett and Munger Unscripted. I've been going through this thing and the way that he set it up is so great because there's all these different headlines and it's really easy to go through and find what you want. So I've been looking for anything on like time horizons and volatility. And we had him on the pod a couple weeks ago. If you missed that one for talk your book, it's great. The book is really, really helpful. It's all of the meetings and him and Munger talking. It's really, really good.
I had chart can make this for us. They have a lot of cash on hand. I don't know what the number is. It's a lot. And on an absolute basis, it's a lot. But even if you adjust it for a percentage of the market cap, it's a lot. It's only been higher in 2020 and in 2005. And he got a lot of questions on this. And there's a lot that goes into it. Number one, a $10 billion deal doesn't do anything for them.
It's hard to put money to work at that size. But it's also true that he is waiting for a fat pitch. And he spoke about how you can't time these things. He doesn't know if he's going to get a great deal tomorrow, next month, next year, in the next five years.
But eventually, there'll be a pitch for them to swing at. And right now, they're just not finding anything of size that they can put to work. So think about this in real estate terms. If you're someone who is buying like multimillion-dollar houses, if you're shopping, your shopping list is very small. There's not a lot of multimillion-dollar houses out there, I guess, depending on where you live.
That's the same thing with him and one of the things I read today on this Buffett and Munger Unscripted was he was talking about how Ben Graham never had, he didn't never wanted to be Buffett or Munger. He wanted to keep his partnership small and they were saying that his partnership was like 12 million dollars and Buffett was saying Graham didn't want to build a behemoth huge thing like we wanted to. He wanted to keep it small because he just found it interesting and his life goal was never to be like one of the richest people alive. It wasn't really a game to him.
So I don't know. Don't you think the fat pitch thing, they're going to be waiting for a very long time. Like they're just at that size. They're one of the 10 biggest companies in the stock market now. Yeah. I don't know what type of pitch they're waiting for. I mean, these are ridiculous examples, but like Nike is down 70%. Disney's debt was down 50%. I mean, there was a million things to swing at. Now I'm not saying that those are the right businesses for them, but
Doesn't it also seem like the fat pitch thing doesn't work as well anymore because markets move so much quicker? Like he didn't get time to buy. Remember in 2020, he didn't buy anything. He was selling. Now, hold on. There's like, I'm going to write a post about this. I think if I can get to it, but I was looking at the returns of stocks over the last three years and there's a lot that are down a third or worse, like a lot. How about this though? It was easier to find fat pitches back in the day when Buffett was just starting out than it is today. Way easier. Yeah.
Well, there was things when he started that was literally trading less than the tangible assets. Right. Where you could buy, where you buy a company, liquidate everything, buy it for a dollar, liquidate everything and get $1.20. Those days are long gone. I mean, obviously. So of all the Buffett numbers about performance,
I think he has outperformed, Berkshire has outperformed over the past 10 years. And you can see, I put the chart in here. It was basically neck and neck for a while. And just recently, it kept going up while the market was going down. But the fact that he outperformed over the last 10 years when value investors basically became extinct,
I think this is honestly one of the most impressive things he's done. The fact that he outperformed in a concentrated market that was driven mainly by a handful of stocks and tech stocks, the fact that he timed that so well to buy Apple and outperform the S&P is kind of amazing.
At that size. Because he always says size is the enemy of outperformance. Yeah. It wasn't him who pulled the trigger on Apple, but nevertheless, the fact that Berkshire outperformed the last 10 years is wild. The craziest stat of them all is this. I think Meb is the one that I first saw tweet this. And it's hard to believe that it's true. That if Apple fell, I'm sorry, if Berkshire fell 99% today, it would still have been outperforming the S&P 500 since inception. That is kind of mind blowing. Yes. It'd be kind of painful if you were a shareholder, but yes, that's a good one.
All right, let's talk about the stock market. Bespoke tweeted. Wait, people keep saying that now is such a, people have been saying this is a terrible time to be a long-term investor and a great time to be a trader. I don't know if I agree with that. I know that the volatility thing has been good, but this has been such a whipsaw market. Do you think traders are getting killed too? If they're not just explicitly betting? I don't know. All right, go ahead. I can't imagine trying to guess this market, is all I'm saying. You're not a trader. You wouldn't know. The S&P 500 is on a nine-day win streak.
It's been more than 20 years since the index had its last nine day win streak. Me too. I don't get it. All right. So I looked at the drawdowns at the lows. So the S&P, this is closing, was down 19%. The NASDAQ 100 was down 23% and the Russell 2000 was down 28%. Now the Russell's down still 18. The S&P is down eight and the NASDAQ 100 is down 10. And we're recording this Monday afternoon. We had to move our schedules around because Michael had to go see a Knicks game.
hardcore fan, man. You sent me a text the other day of it was game six against the Pistons and Brunson hit the three to seal the deal. And what did you do? You punched a light on accident and it broke in a bar? There was like a bunch of lanterns above me, I guess. And I didn't see it and I jumped and I punched one and glass shattered everywhere. And they didn't try to kick you out or like say, hey, dude? The bartender gave me a pound. He didn't care, huh?
All right. So I'm not a big fan of the whole American exceptionalism as a phrase. I just think that it's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of disrespectful to the rest of the world. Can I take the other side of that? Go for it. We're maniacs. That's part of it. I just don't like the name, I guess. Go ahead. I was at the airport today. By the way, I am in deep trouble. Tangent. There's a Real ID thing. Do you know about a Real ID? Is this a New York thing or is this a countrywide thing? I've heard of this, but isn't this just going to be a Y2K thing where it's not as big of a deal as everyone says it is? I don't know, man.
So I'm going to Colorado next week for Future Proof, and I don't have a real ID, and my f***ing passport is expired. So I don't know what to do. I'm getting a— Bring your birth certificate. I don't know. I don't think I have one. I just ordered one. It takes 15 days to get here. This is going to happen to a lot of people, though. There's no way they're going to hold on this. There's no way. They can't. I hope not. Just give yourself some extra time.
Uh, either way. Um, my, well, whatever. Uh, so I'm in, I'm in the lounge today. Um, I, and people are zagging against lounges, airport lounges. I, I can't be a bigger fan. Cannot possibly be a bigger fan of the lounge. You know, I've, I've actually never been in one in my life. What is wrong with you?
I don't see the need. It's not like I'm not an anti-person. Actually, you know what? All right. You know what? I apologize. The Grand Rapids airport. Oh, yeah. They don't have one. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. I'm in a small airport. I get in and I go and I don't. Yeah. In New York, you have to get there earlier. That was very coastal elitist of me. I apologize. All right. The lounges are phenomenal. Just very comfortable. Free food. Charging stations. Good couches. It's the whole nine. Anyway.
American exceptionalism. I was thinking about this. I'm in the lounge with, I don't know, 100 people, maybe more, and everybody's working. Everybody is on a phone call, on a Zoom. We are maniacs. It is true. People don't take a lot. And the other thing is, so I'm thinking- So our corporate culture, the exceptionalism, it's not a moral thing. It's maybe the opposite. All we care about are profits.
So is part of our exceptionalism the fact that we always buy the dip? And just – I'm talking about like the royal dip here. Like we always think things will get better. And the royal dip. We always think things will get better. And sometimes that's to our detriment because people keep saying, listen, one of these times – and yes, nine out of every ten corrections-ish –
when you buy the dip, it's going to work out great for you. And then one out of 10, it's going to work out really, really bad for you because things are going to really crash. But I think those are pretty good odds that, okay.
Not every time it's going to, of course it can't work out every time because otherwise, you know, it would be too easy. But I think the fact that we just- Buckle up, buttercup. Even in sometimes it may be the over-optimism is to our detriment. I think most of the time it really helps us. I also think you were on this early saying, listen, whatever happens, people are going to say, and this whole thing is not over yet, obviously. There's still a long way to go to see how this plays out.
Um, but you can't say that there was nothing to worry about. Like the market forced his hand, the freak out from the markets was necessary. And here's how I look. Here's my analogy. I totally agree with you. So we, have you ever seen the, wait, hold up, Ben, you, Ben, you said you tweeted like people say, oh, the market overreacted or people have reacted to the, to the tariffs. No, it's, it's opposite.
Right. The overreaction is what caused him to back off. Yes, exactly. So I look at this as do you have you seen the bitter apple spray for dogs when you have a puppy? And if the dog's chewing on something or the dog's barking, you spray the apple spray on them once and it kind of makes them like hit them. And then all you have to do the next time is show them the bottle. You don't even have to spray him. Yes. To show him the bottle. We do this to my puppy. We have right. I gave her one little spray to get her to stop.
chewing on stuff. And now I just pull the bottle out. You know, Duncan's listening to this, right? Oh, is it? Hey, listen, this stuff is, it's, um, it's all natural, Duncan. It's organic. Um, but so that's, I think that's what the market, that's one of the reasons I think the market is, is doing better than anyone could have anticipated is because we know the spray bottle exists. All we have to do is show it to him next time he keeps pushing and then, then backs off, right? You didn't need to keep spraying the market over and over. Just had to spray it once and it already did that.
Fair? Yeah. All right. So Luke Kawa looked at what the dip buying looks like, and he shows that the riskiest stocks are the ones that came back in favor immediately. So it's high volatility stocks, crazy high beta stocks, and then profitability and dividend stocks are lagging. This is since the bottom on April 8th. It's also interesting. I looked at where things are from the bottom.
And international stocks are outperforming on the bounce, which I wouldn't have thought. So the IFA is up 18% from the lows. S&P is up 14% and the NASDAQ is up 17%. I would have expected international stocks to lag here. And obviously part of this is the dollar still, I suppose. But this is surprising, no? Yeah. International stocks were outperforming going into it. Yeah, they were outperforming going into this Liberation Day stuff and they've been outperforming coming out of it too. That's a shocker to me.
Ben, you mentioned this last week, but you tweeted about it. I think it's just, I want to spend another second on this. You said we've never had an actual recession in the social media era. It's going to be very weird if and when it happens. People freaking out, people saying it's fake, people who enjoy the calamity of it. People taking advantage of other through fear tactics that will be nuts. You're spot on. It's going to be really, it's going to be a lot of things.
I tweeted this out. I didn't realize there's still a whole contingent of people, and it's all political, that think 2022 was a recession still, which is insane to me. That because they thought the GDP fell two quarters, which it was actually revised and only fell one quarter. So people – there's some people who are on the corner of, hey, there was a recession in 2022. Again, these are –
Okay, maybe an earnings recession, maybe. But wait, how could there be a recession with 4.1%? What did unemployment peak at? The unemployment rate literally fell in 2022 from 4% to 3.5% or something. So yeah. Yeah, that's not a recession. But this is not just people being out of practice. It's we've never, again, 2020, there was so much other stuff going on and it was over so fast. If I just, even a mild recession is going to be very weird to think about because I feel like if, again, if we have like a one and a half percent
GDP decline recession or whatever and it happens to be in the unemployment rate goes to six It's gonna be very mild, but I feel like the way people react to it is gonna be very interesting I think there's just gonna be extreme range of how people handle it. Yeah
So, all right. I'm guessing you had chart could create this historical 19% drawdowns. We spoke about this last week. I pulled a Brent Hatley and pulled a citizen's arrest. That's Howard reference for you, Ben, who don't know what I'm talking about and listeners. So five 90% drawdowns. Okay. And I was looking at your mentions and it is tricky because you have to draw the line somewhere on what a bear market is. But it's not just the...
depth of the decline. The duration matters too, but then it's like, all right, well, it was 2020, not a bear market because it lasted 23 days. That's absurd. So how do we think about adjusting for time and depth? There's gotta be some sort of, uh, work that could be done here. It's funny. A lot of people in my mentioned said, who cares? And I said, I do. Cause it's kind of fun to argue about. Yeah, this is what we do. Uh, yes, I agree. Shorter term. Uh, what's the X and video stuff here? Uh, all right. This is wild.
Since the bottom in October 2022, Japan and Europe have outperformed the S&P if you strip out Nvidia. So this isn't just Mag7. This is just Nvidia. Huh? Just Nvidia. That's from the Guide to the Markets. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. Let's talk about like what the hell is this bounce all about and do we buy it or not? Hand up. I don't buy it. I'm not calling bullshit all the way, but let me ask you this, Ben.
Uh, well, the audience has this Duncan pulled the audience. We are in a bear market rally or a new bull market. Two thirds of the audience says bear market rally. Um, let me ask you a two part question. Number one, was that the low? I need a decision tree. Yes or no. Yes or no. Was that the law? Do we go into recession? Was that the low? Give me a time horizon. I need for the rest of the year. Yes. That was the law. I think so.
Okay. Does the market close higher or lower from where we are today? By the end of the year? Yeah. Lower. That's my feeling, and I'm probably wrong. Yeah, I think I agree with both of those, which means that we've got to be wrong. All right. So Heisenberg tweeted –
This is what Wall Street banks are saying. Goldman Sachs, markets might not have bottomed. Wells Fargo, could we test the lows? Morgan Stanley, we test in the low end, the 5,000 range is feasible. JP Morgan, sees S&P 500 falling to 4,000, a worst case scenario. Bank of America, sell the rebound in US stocks.
So the contrarian play here is to go against everything because the Barron's had their big money poll. Their money managers are more bearish today than they've been in nearly 30 years. So they go back to 1997 and they find 32% of respondents are bearish on the Alec of stocks for the next 12 months. And they say that's higher than it's ever been, even in 2008.
which shows how sentiment readings are just so off the charts now. So yes, if you're looking for contrarian magazine indicators, bearish sentiment polls, all that stuff, fade wall street, the contrarian play is no, this, this is actually going to have legs. And here's another one from super trade. 48 and a half percent of consumers is from the conference board. Now expect stocks to fall over the next 12 months. That's the most pessimism since October, 2011. So nobody is really buying it. Um,
Who knows? It's just, it just seems hard to believe that retail investors, maybe like the Robin hood. I don't know. It does. Is the Robin hood crowd. Does that count as, is that a contingent now? Oh yeah. Okay. Not only is it a contingent, but I haven't listened to the Robin hood earnings call yet, which I'm going to get to, but I listened to the CME, which is a stock that I bought after being tired of staring at it go up every single day. And they were asked on the earnings call about retail. It's a huge part of their story.
And Robinhood specifically. Huge part of their story. So this is institutions and Wall Street versus retail. That's where we're at with this round, right? There's different parts. There's different parts. There's all sorts of... But within retail, there's all sorts of different cohorts. All right. Here's a good one. Another one from Supertrade. So the S&P 500 was up seven straight days while under the 200-day moving average. Now, I don't know if the numbers change after being up nine straight days. Whatever. Point is, if you go out...
Oh, this is so short term. My bad. He's looking one day, two days, two weeks, one month later. All right. Disregard. I apologize. I just went out further in time. So this is only a month. Who cares? So this is from JP Morgan said retail traders on net bought $40 billion in April, surpassing last month and setting a new record for largest monthly inflow ever. Wow. Good for them.
Bobo's not so stupid. So remember the Peter Lynch quote, spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would a refrigerator? He said most people spend more time researching a refrigerator to buy than they do a stock. This is from the Wall Street Journal, Mark Hulbert. So meet an investor, according to these professors at New York University.
The median investor spends just six minutes of research before buying a stock. And the bulk of that already short research time is devoted to pursuing a price chart of the stock's recent performance and often just the current day's trading session. So they said that they looked at this data by studying clickstream data, which is like browser history of these. I don't know how they got all this stuff, but several hundred investors. And they looked at the websites they visited and what they looked at and how long. And it was six minutes. And they said they looked at over 60,000 hours of internet use. So I guess that's a lot.
Do you think that's in any way accurate? Because I feel like for a lot of people, it probably is. Oh yeah, I buy that. You see the opinion of someone online or on financial television and you kind of buy into it and do a little quick perusal just to make yourself feel better and buy, right? I buy that, yeah. I totally do. All right, remember three weeks ago, yields were spiking, dollars were dumping, stocks were dumping. It was pretty scary cocktail, not a great taste. It was a Malort cocktail, if you will.
Turns out people start wanting bonds. Bank of America, global research is showing that we just had the biggest four-week inflow to treasuries since 2023. So rates got up to whatever, 4.5%. People said, all right, that sounds pretty good to me. I'll buy it. That makes sense. I think Matt Klein kind of nailed it. We talked about this a couple weeks ago when he said, what if a lot of this initial movement right now is just offsides positioning and people are getting right-sized? All right, let's talk tariffs.
So Taurus and Slock, I don't know where the survey comes from, but they were asked, what are firms going to do in response to higher tariffs? And the number one response, both from manufacturing and services companies was they're going to pass a cost increase through to customers. The lowest response was relocating production or services to the US. So- About what you expect, right? It's not going to happen. It's just going to make prices go up.
Yeah, and there's going to be a lot of big firms that get carve-outs and a lot of little firms that probably don't. I think that's kind of where I think it's falling. All right, I do think it'll be interesting to see how this period is viewed through the lens of history. Maybe some people don't care, but I do think people are going to look at this and go, I've been saying for a while now that people are going to think about the economy in like 2023, 2024, and be nostalgic for it very quickly if all this stuff keeps happening. But this is essentially from The Economist. They talk about the golden age.
And they say of all the golden ages, the greatest is here now. Of all the progress of the past 10,000 years in raising human living standards, half of it has occurred since 1990, which is just kind of mind-boggling to think about. But it actually kind of makes sense when you think about what's happening on the internet and stuff. And they're saying like the trade war is possibly taking some of that back. I don't know how much, obviously.
that it seems like a little bit of a stretch. But I just think in some ways, people don't realize how good we have it. And when you don't have a lot of problems, sometimes you just make them up on your own. Yeah. I think that's kind of- Duncan polled the audience, Ben. He asked, will the stock market be higher or lower than it is today? Without looking, what do you think the respondents was? Wait, by the end of the year? Over 1,000 votes. Over 1,000 votes. So pretty healthy. I bet pretty close, like 60% say lower. That's what I would have thought. 65% say higher. Oh, okay. Yeah.
That makes sense with history, though, I guess. All right. Optimistic audience. We're down in 2022. We're up in 23 and 24. So you'd have to say 2025 and changing my answer is going to be higher because on average, three out of every four years, we're up. Final answer. We're up. End of the year. All right. So I want to talk about the Doge stuff a little bit. So Michael Sembliss did a piece on the market about it. Final answer. You just change your mind just like that just because you just went with the audience? Yeah.
That was it? I thought all the prob... I'm going probability-based. I'm not going feelings or trade wars or anything. I'm probability-based. We're only down, what, 5% on the year now? 6%? Changed my answer. I didn't stamp it before. No, you're flexible.
Very open minded. Double stamp to triple stamp. All right. So Michael Semblitz did this thing on on the Doge cutting of government spending. And he's been kind of all over this from the beginning. And he was one who said initially, listen, unless you cut defense spending or Social Security or Medicare, it's not going to move the needle.
Here's why I think the Doge thing was actually good in some ways. So this is on Polly Market. They have this thing, how much spending will Doge cut in 2025? And it's an 80 or 90% chance that it'll be less than $50 billion. So a very, very small amount. They were promising $2 trillion in cuts or whatever. Obviously, they looked at the books.
Here's why I think Doge is actually a good thing and maybe a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. I'm shocked that they didn't find more waste to get rid of. So maybe that's actually a good thing that there wasn't like this big, huge thing that they could point to and go, can you believe what we're spending money on here? And obviously they cut some things that made people mad and they cut some things that maybe should have been cut. But... That's a good point. The fact that they couldn't... They almost did an audit, I guess, and realized like, actually, we know what we have to do to cut it. It's just, will people...
allow it or will, you know, government officials jump on that grenade or whatever it is. But the fact that they didn't find anything that was like, what have we been doing here? I think that's actually a good sign that, okay, maybe the resources haven't been, we know those big, huge things. How do we fix them or how do we get people to want to fix them? Yeah. Good observation, Ben. All right. Thank you, Michael. Building me up today.
Cal she had the recession odds this year up to 75% chance last week. And this is, I think on the day the GDP report came out is negative. Um, and I think it's down a little since then. Okay. I think it was down to sixties or something. I feel like for the betting odds, that 75%. That's high. That's too high. Three out of every four. I feel like percentage is just people's mind. Like when you see it's going to, you know, there's a 60% chance of rain here. If you see 60%, you think it's definitely going to rain 75%. Yeah.
I spent too much time as a cabana boy. If it's, if it's not 80%, you're not faking me out. I think 60% chance. So this is this year. I think 60% chance is a pretty good way to go. I think that's a pretty good line in the sand for where we are right now. Wait, how would you say there's a 60% chance of a recession and the markets could be higher by the end of the year?
Because I think there's going to be some very confusing results when it comes to the stock market and the economy. I think they're going to be totally, I think sometimes we're going to get economic data and the stock market's going to fall. Sometimes it's going to rise because they're going to think Fed cuts. And I think we had a 20% correction like that. And I think there's just going to be some very confusing and weird behavior in the stock market. Is that fair or is that too cute? That's recency bias. If the market was lower, you would not be saying this.
Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe. Cause again, it could be the fact that the market's saying, show me an actual economic slowdown. The data hasn't shown it yet. I'm not going to go down more until you show it to me. That could be it. Um, it's worth mentioning the Enber like results is not just two, two quarters in a row of falling GDP growth. It's personally, that was never a thing. I feel like I wrote about this seven years ago.
Yeah, it was never the definition. And Jason Zweig wrote about this, I think in the literal, maybe, I don't know if it was the 90s, I feel like he did. It was never two consecutive quarters. It was like a, I forget what the language is. Was it a general decline in overall business activity? Measure by- They look at employment and income and personal expenditures and retail sales and industrial production, all these different six categories or something. Plus, if you look at-
If that is the definition, two quarters in a row, then we didn't have a recession in 2020 because it didn't go down for two quarters in a row. It went down for one quarter. All right. And I continue to believe, so this is another one from the Guide to the Markets. JP Morgan shows total assets versus total liabilities. And total assets is like $190 trillion. Total liabilities is $20 trillion. This is the margin of safety for people. And even if assets get hit, if we got into recession and assets fall, whatever, 15% or 20%, there's still a huge, huge margin of safety for most consumers.
And that is why you think, like, I don't know what the financial crisis level would have to be if the tariffs were just so high it caused some sort of panic. I just, I don't see it being terrible. CNBC says it's still inequality of consumers. So they're saying that low-income earners, and this is all your credit card calls you've been listening to lately. I feel like you've been on the credit card corner a lot. So they're saying low-income earners are cutting back, according to all the credit card lenders,
Um, so they're looking at like Lowe's and TJ Maxx and then American express and JP Morgan that those spenders, which are higher income are continuing to spend and increasing their spending. So here's the question. I, we keep saying what's going to get people to stop spending money. And it's like, Oh, recessional job loss, job loss. No, but what causes rich people to stop spending? That's different. Nothing. No, no. Well, that's not true. I don't, I don't mean that. Um,
Is it going to have to be like, is it going to have to be seeing their friends get like what? I don't know what it what is going to make rich people stop spending money and going on vacations and buying expensive stuff. I don't know what it is. Job loss and seeing and seeing friends lose. I don't know. All right. Great email here. Do you want to read this for me? You read it. You're a better reader than me.
I landed in the States yesterday after a one-week trip to Europe while taking one's family, two adults, two children to Europe. Doesn't quite reach the not-to-brag standard. Yes, it does. Both of you have preached that money is not only to be saved and invested, but also spent as a natural saver like Ben. This is difficult for me. I have not looked at the total damage, but we flew business class and stayed in a luxury hotel. There it is, not to brag. This is a tremendous amount of money that wasn't required, but made the trip above and beyond what it otherwise would be.
I'm still comprehending the numbers, but I'm quite certain in 30 years, I won't care and will remember the trip fondly. Yeah. Great, great stuff. You know, it's so interesting where, where the money feelings come from. Is it nature? Is it nurture? I'm a spender. And I didn't grow up. Part of it is personality based in, in how you grew up. Right. But I, not that I didn't grow up poor, but I didn't grow up going on, uh, to, uh, there was no plane vacations for us. We didn't go to, I didn't go to the Caribbean until I was an adult.
Um, but I am just not, maybe I'm just not risk averse. Maybe I'm risk seeking. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I, I'm a spender. But it's good to hear this from people that saying like, we're not telling people to go blow all your money and just be crazy. But if you're spending on experiences like this, and he was saying like, our kids are getting older. We're not going to do this very much longer. And yeah, it's painful to, you know, pay off that credit card bill, whatever it is, but you're never going to forget that trip. It's a shame. And I'm,
I know this is a first, this is a champagne shame. Okay. But for people that have money that can't spend it, it's like, what are you doing? Yes. Right. Enjoy. That's what it's for. It's a, it's a tool to enjoy life. You, we're going to die. Enjoy it. Yes. I think we are. Yes. You're a spender. I'm a saver. I've become more of a spender because of, you know, life events. And this is one of the things I just, I'm, I feel very strongly about enjoy some of your money. Yeah. So yeah,
I got somebody asking me to send them an autograph book and I keep putting it off because I apologize. I'm a procrastinator with too many things in my life.
And I couldn't, I was- Is there an Uber for mail? I always do this too, where I'm sending books to people. There should be an Uber for mail. Like, hey, we'll pick it up for you and send it off to you. Because going to the post office is such a pain in the butt. Well, I did go to the post office once, actually, matter of fact. And there was a line I left. So anyhow, I Googled, so there's a Gemini tool now in your inbox. That's for big time. Can't wait in line, huh? I cannot wait in line. I said, find me addresses.
Because I know that they gave me their address. So boom, two seconds, found me the address. All I said was like, find me an address in my inbox. Oh, that's pretty cool. So I, I can't remember what I was typing in on chat GPT the other day, but I, I, I think I put maybe a doc we were looking at and like, Hey, come up with some questions here. But it also said, would you like me to take this outline that I was prepared for you and turn it into a PowerPoint presentation?
And I said, yeah, sure, let's take a look at it. And it was very rudimentary in that it wasn't very formatted very well or anything. But then I took one of my PowerPoints. I'm a very simple PowerPoint person. I don't make it all pretty and stuff. I keep it very clean. But I said, hey, take my PowerPoint and make it look better for me or offer some tips. And it didn't do a very good job of it yet, but someday it's going to be like that. And that's going to be amazing. Like, hey, take this PowerPoint presentation I did that's very simple and basic and make it look way better.
And somebody is coming soon. Yes, that is coming.
All right. Let's talk about crypto a little bit. So we had this discussion two or three weeks ago, and you were asking the question, is Bitcoin decoupling from risk assets, or is it leading us out? And I think you were the first one to say, like, what if Bitcoin is leading us out? Because it was just a few days where it decoupled from the NASDAQ. And if you look at this, this is the last three months of Bitcoin. This is iBit versus the Qs. And you can see, yeah, Bitcoin didn't really decouple from risk assets. Bitcoin was decoupled.
Can you say canary in the coal mine? Because that's the opposite. Because that's like bad stuff coming. What's a good analogy for canary in the coal mine? But Bitcoin was the first one to start railing, so it didn't really decouple from its assets. It just led the charge. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting. All right. So I was in Marco for spring break a few weeks ago. And...
I'm a middle-aged guy. So you put stuff into Zillow, right? Let's check out the neighborhood, check out the houses around here. And once you put a new place into Zillow, they start sending you off emails all the time. Hey, look at this house and look at these, these emails I pulled all from like yesterday, $300,000 price cut in Marco Island, $225,000 price cut, $55,000 price cut. I'm seeing these all the time now. Is there a real housing slowdown in Florida? Well, on the West coast of Florida.
So not in the East Coast? No, I don't know. I'm not a Floridian real estate expert, but the West Coast has been getting bombed with hurricanes. I'm sure that's part of it. And the insurance is part of it. There's probably a lot of demand pull forward too. So if you look at, I just pulled up Case-Shiller Miami. This is since the start of the pandemic. Case-Shiller Miami housing index is up 81% and the national housing price index is up 54%. So maybe some of this was just pulled forward, but I'm sure you're right. Part of it is just the insurance stuff, the hurricane worries, everything.
maybe a lot of baby boomers pulled forward their purchases then. And so I just think if you are, you're in a way better negotiating power as a buyer than you've had in, I don't know, 10 years, maybe? It's a long time since you've had this kind of power. Buffett was asked a question about real estate versus stocks, and I love this answer so much. Just bear with me. It's two and a half minutes, but it's worth listening to. Well, in respect to...
real estate, it's so much harder than stocks in terms of negotiation of deals, time spent, the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership. Usually when real estate gets in trouble, you find out you're dealing with more than equity holder. But there have been times when large amounts of real estate have changed hands at bargain prices, but usually stocks were cheaper, but there were a lot easier to do. So Charlie did more.
He's thoroughly enjoyed real estate transactions and he actually did a fair number of them in the last five years of his life. He was playing a game then and it was an interesting game to him. But I think if he had asked him to make a choice when he was 21, it had to either be the stocks exclusively the rest of his life or real estate the rest of his life, he would have chosen stocks in a second. There's just so much more opportunity.
at least in the United States, there's so much more opportunity that presents itself in the security market than it does in real estate and in real estate
You're dealing with, usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns maybe a large property they've had a long time. Maybe they borrowed too much money against them. Maybe the population trends are against them. But to them, it's an enormous decision. When you walk down to the New York Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business totally anonymous, and you can do it in five minutes. And the trades are complete when they're complete. In real estate, when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender, it
you know, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase. I mean, then people start negotiating more things and more things. And it's a whole different game and a different type of person to some extent enjoys the game. We did a few real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 2009. But the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent and probably better
And securities, there was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every sentence is as important to the person. And in stocks, if somebody needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire or something, and they call us and the price is right, it's done in five seconds. And it closes all the time. 95 years old. Think about the mental state of most people at that age.
So I haven't spoken about this on the podcast because I didn't want the scrutiny, whatever. I bought a rental property in 2020. And for me at the time, the decision was my entire life is in the stock market. My entire livelihood, my earnings, my career, my liquid investments. So I decided I was going to buy a piece of real estate to diversify. And I got very stupid lucky with the timing.
So I bought a house in Long Beach in 2020. And obviously, real estate has gone bonkers. And I got super duper lucky. I had one tenant. And you had a 3% mortgage, right? 2.875, not to brag. She was wonderful. Never missed a payment. And this year, I said, I haven't heard. I assume we're good for next year. And she goes, no, actually, I'm moving out.
And I said, okay. And so I made the decision. I spoke to Rob and I said, let's sell it. I just, the reason why, a couple of reasons. Number one, I pulled forward 20 years of returns. Like the purchase price versus the sale price. So it would have taken me 20 years in a normal market to get this sort of return. Number two, and more importantly, every single time I got a text message from her, my you know what went into my throat.
And thank God there was never anything major. Didn't you have to replace something, an AC unit or something? Didn't you have to do something? Yeah, there was leaks and AC, yeah, all sorts of things. And I did wonderfully well. I listed the house in April and I should be in contract now. But even still, there's three months without any tenant. So that's three months where I have to carry the mortgage, which is not great.
Um, so I ended up doing like, I think 25% compounded for five years on the, on the transaction point about how quickly the transactions take place in the stock market versus real estate. And he's right. You sign a contract and then it's like, Hey, our inspector found this. Let's knock a little bit off the price and let's get the back and forth. That's, that's why most real estate investors end up just being buy and hold and don't want to do transaction because it's a pain in the ass. And the transactions are expensive. So listen, I don't want to spike the football because God knows what they're gonna find in the inspection, but
So the thing that I've learned after doing this is you either, you either like really do it, not, not, not, not to be a professional as a career, but you either really do it seriously. And you're like, all right, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to buy five of these things, whatever. I'm going to get a group of money together and do this. And we're going to have a management team. Yeah. Hire a property manager. Right. Yeah. Cause otherwise you get an imagine, not a mat. You've got to, I've got, I've got a text message on vacation. Right. Hey, this, this, I'm like, I don't, what do I know? I can't fix anything.
So it's not to say that stocks are good, real estate is bad. I don't want to give that impression, but- It's a different ballgame. It's a totally different ballgame. Yeah. All right. Look at this triad, Ben. I pulled this out. I saw somebody tweet about Estee Lauder. The company's in like an 80% drawdown. And wouldn't you know it? What a coincidence, not. The stock has followed the earnings per share almost to the T. Because to Buffett's point, that's what we're doing here.
That's what we're doing. And the reason why I am and remain optimistic and hopefully forever will be, I hope, is because we are maniacs. The citizens of this country are maniacs. We are greedy. We move the goalposts. We are never satisfied. And while that can be psychologically sad, perhaps, and damaging for individuals, for all of us, it's great.
because we all want to make more money. And ultimately that shows up in earnings per share, shows up in profits. So who's the winner if Estee Lauder is a loser? Because I've been looking at this lately because my daughters are now into like the skincare game. I don't know if they found this on YouTube influencers or what, but my daughters are all about buying. They love going to Sephora. So anytime they get a birthday or something now, it's, hey, I want a gift card to Sephora so I can go buy lotions and sprays and whatever skincare stuff.
And it's crazy to see my daughters at this. This is just what the girls are doing now. And I had to look to who owns Sephora. I think it's, um, it's LVMH. Yeah. LVMH owns them. They're getting killed too, by the way. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's in a pretty good downturn too. Huh? Okay. So there's a hundred percent tariffs on foreign movies. If I was a better writer, I would have nailed this joke already. But I said to you, there's a coming to America joke and you're somewhere. Ah, yes. Yeah.
I got, I got, yeah, the guys in the barber shop wouldn't like it. So this is from Bloomberg, and they say Trump's post, he posted about this on Truth Social, followed meetings that he had over the weekend with Jon Voight and his manager.
Barclay says, "If this is deployed on a wide scale, it may end up harming the very industry it is supposed to help, especially given that the US exports three times the amount of content that it imports." And then the White House came out today, and I'm sure, hopefully Tom Cruise put the call in. I think he could save us from these. The White House says, "No decisions have been made. We're exploring all options." Who gets a carve out here? Guy Ritchie movies gets a carve out? I hope the Parasite guy gets a carve out.
Oh, wait, Denis? Any sort of British company? Actually, you know, most of the best directors are, I don't know about most, but the two that come to mind, Denis and Christopher Nolan, foreign directors. What are we doing here? I thought tariffs were about national security. What the f*** is this nonsense? You're going to mess with my IMAX? And I saw Netflix and Disney are down today, and I don't know.
Cardiff Garcia posted this. It says, the industry generated a positive balance of trade in every major market of the world. $22.6 billion in exports. It's a $15 billion trade spoiler plus. Just stop with the nonsense. Can we stop with the clown show already? Good grief. How about this? This is good news. Amazon MGM is test driving a new romantic thriller with speed duo Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. I'm in. Wow. Okay. But it's not a speed reboot. It's just another...
Yeah. Speed 2 was just a travesty. I can't believe they made it without him. You know what? Credit to me. I never saw that movie. It's on a cruise ship. I rewatched the original Speed lately. It still holds up. I watched it a couple months ago on HBO. It's a perfect movie. Yeah, it's no fat. All right. From The Economist. You and I have talked about this before.
Sobriety is taking over the world. The amount of alcohol consumed globally is probably in decline for the first time in history. Across rich countries, many members of Gen Z born after the late 1990s are shunning alcohol entirely. 30% of Americans in their 20s did not drink in the previous year. And I know that there are problems with alcohol, health-related problems, domestic violence, alcoholism. There are a lot of bad things that come with it. I think...
the fact that people are drinking less is a net negative for society because the whole socializing thing of I think it helps get people offline and it makes puts people in a better mood. It relaxes them. They actually, oh, when you need alcohol to have fun. Yeah, I do. So they said a 2012 study found that alcohol increases social bonding and they found that people who frequent a pub feel more engaged in their community. They have higher life satisfaction and
And this says, it is not a stretch to say that alcohol has played a big evolutionary role in fostering human connection. I think one of the reasons young people are unhappier is because they're not connecting with each other as much anymore. Alcohol is a way to do it. You know that alcohol helped me find my wife in college. If I was not drunk when I met my wife, I probably wouldn't have gone up to her. So I had this move. We had some friends. We're watching Cops. Remember the show Cops? I don't know if it's still on even.
And can I just say, I know this is your story, not mine, but cops is my favorite show of all time. Back to you. Really? Well, it's certainly got one of the best intro songs ever. So anyway, a police officer pulled a guy over. The guy was obviously drunk driving and the police officer sticks his hand in the window and he goes, breathe in my hand, sir. And the guy goes, when he blows and he goes like this, cop smells it. And he goes, okay, sir, you're wasted. Please get out of the car. And so me and my, every time we would go out, my friends, me and my friends would do that to each other. We'd say, breathe in my hand, please. You're wasted. And that's the move I did on my wife.
She was standing there at our house party and I said, breathe in my hand, please, ma'am. And I smelled it and I said, you're not wasted enough. Go get some more drinks. Great line. Yeah, that's how I hit on my wife. This is from the Derek Thompson thing. He says, every drink of alcohol takes five minutes off your life, but also every one minute of exercise adds five minutes to your life. And that's why I diversify. Think about it. It's called balance, people.
Remember the part in, you never watched Seinfeld, but he, him and Elaine had this argument trying to figure out what percentage of the population is good looking. And Elaine says, I don't know, 25%. And Jerry said, no way. Have you ever been to the DMV? He says probably four to 6%. And then Elaine says, okay, 95% of the population is unattractive. How are they getting together? And Jerry says, alcohol.
Anyway, that's a good line. Speaking of alcohol, remember in Landman, I think one of my favorite bits from Landman was Billy Bob saying that he used to be an alcoholic, so he stopped drinking, but he drinks like 10 McUltras every night. And the bartender says, you drink McUltras. He said, give me 10 bourbons versus 10 McUltras and see which version of me you like better.
I had never been a Mick Ultra drinker, but I usually drink heavier beers during the winter. And watching that show, I started drinking Mick a little ultra lately. I wanted like lighter beers for the summer. And I got to say, people judge me all they want. It's a very refreshing beer. I've never had one. You know, we should obviously say, listen, there's some people that are terrible alcoholics. Oh, yes. Horrific. I know people. Yes. I'm just saying on a net positive, net society level.
for young people, it can really mess your life up. But I think if it inhibits your socialism, socializing with other people, then it's a bad thing. I truly believe that. You're preaching to the choir. You don't need to convince me. All right. Recommendations. Why don't you go first? Okay. Somebody emailed us about...
Wow.
It's got a great hook, but holy hell, does it turn into a mess by mid-season. 20 years ago, this would have been a two-hour, $30 million budget drama comedy starring Harrison Ford and Nick Cage, something like Magic Men. And he goes on, but yes, 100% right. I agree that a lot of shows these days should be movies.
So, Ben, did you watch Black Bag or did I put this in here? I did. Okay, so Black Bag was on Peacock. You watched it too? Yeah, I did. Okay, so I had heard good things. It's funny. I watched this with my wife and I was going to say you shouldn't watch this movie. So I'm going to give my review that I want to hear yours because I was going to say you shouldn't. So it's...
Michael Fassbender, who's played a spy a lot lately. It's a Steven Soderbergh movie. It's a Steven Soderbergh movie. His movies, you can always tell it's a Steven Soderbergh movie. I thought my wife was like kind of unsure and kind of came around at the end. I really liked this movie. I thought it was great. Like the whole guessing who is the double agent, who is the, and the fact that a lot of the spies were paired off together, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith style. It wasn't like the greatest spy movie ever. I enjoyed it. You? Now tell me why you think I didn't like it. It was a little slow.
You couldn't really tell what was going on. Most of the movie, it was kind of hard to follow. I just thought for a spy thriller, it was a little slow and a lot more dialogue than action. I'm really glad to hear you said that because I was thinking it occurred to me, but maybe it's not just me. You know what? You know, the fake interview question, tell me one of your weaknesses. I'm terrible at following movies, I think.
I had no idea what was going on, but I enjoyed it. I mean, but also maybe it wasn't just me because it was pretty confusing. The first 30 minutes I was like, what the hell is going on? Am I supposed to be following this? Yeah, they don't hold your hand. It was very confusing. All right. But then even like I can, I don't even know that I know what's going on in the Mission Impossible movies. Are you supposed to? No, a lot of times you don't know, but they have action there to help, right? All right. So it's not just me because I found myself oftentimes with movies like this. I don't think I know what's going on.
No, this was a hard one to follow. Did you like it or not? No, I did like it. Okay. It was, it was hard to know what was going on. I think that's why my wife didn't like either. She's like, what's going on? And I had to like, kind of pause it. Like actually this and that person. And it was like Pierce Brosnan still kind of got it. I liked it. Um, I liked it too, but yeah. Uh, what would you get to me? That's like a, it's a seven, two.
Oh, yeah, I was going to say like a seven probably. But yeah. So that works. So my my kids maybe take them to the Minecraft movie this weekend. My twins, they're seven. They'll be eight next week.
And this movie was – did you take your kids to see this yet? They saw it twice, both without me. Okay. I love going to the theater with them. It was just off the rails. But, I mean, it's not one of those really – I thought Jason Momoa was actually kind of funny, and Jack Black has obviously got very good kid energy. I just love the recency bias because we got out of the movie, and I totally fell asleep for like 20 minutes. Those big recliners with the heated seats, you know, like – Deadly. See you later. My son is elbowing me about stuff, and I'm – what –
But I just love the recency bias in kids because my daughter, we got out and she goes, that was the best movie I've ever seen. Favorite movie of all time. Yes, all weekend she was saying it's the best movie I've ever seen. It was great and it was just ridiculous. How about this? You talked about miniseries or TV shows that should be movies. How about like a movie that you know is bad? It's like a 5.7, but it has two or three good scenes in it that make you laugh.
I have one that I watched again. So it's called I Give It a Year. So it's with Rose Byrne and it's got a, and it's got a that guy in it. It's got the Simon Baker guy. You love these shitty comedies. I do. These shitty rom-coms. It's a dumb, it's Anna Faris is in it and it's like, this couple gets married on a whim and then they decide like they're wrong for each other. So they actually both find other people that they're more meant to be with. But there's two really funny scenes where they go to a work party and the husband gets drunk and the wife is still embarrassed by him.
Um, and then there's a thing where, you know, I go, I won't spoil it. Anyway, there's two really good scenes in this movie. And I think the one scene you would find it's, it's a little vulgar for people who are not into vulgarity, but I think you would find it very funny. I believe you. Okay. So now I told you, now I told you, I, uh, I've been eschewing trailers as much as possible. You, you can't not watch when you go to the movies, but like I like to rock dog movies these days. Like I saw, I saw one with Dave Franco. Uh, I just saw a tweet. I'm in, I'm not going to see the trailer, but I'm going to go watch that movie.
The new Spike Lee Denzel movie looks amazing. Not going to watch the trailer. I'm just going to go see it. You posted it. I avoided it. I'm going to go see the movie. So on the flight over from New York to Boston, it's only a 30 minute flight, but American Airlines, uh,
which is why I don't fly them very often. Do they ever have screens in their planes? No, no. Didn't think so. I've never been on an American flight where they've had a screen in their plane. And the internet never works. And so the internet wasn't working this time. So they had a wonderful movie selection. So credit to them. Problem is, the movies weren't working. What was working was the trailers. So I watched like 50...
I watched the Dude 2 trailer. God, what a movie that was. I watched like 15 trailers. You could probably kill a half hour just watching trailers. I did. It wasn't bad. That makes sense. All right. Let's give a shout out to our production team here. I want to give a shout out to my wife. Okay. For letting you go to the Knicks game? Yeah. She's a great wife. Robin, did she know that you- In my defense, I've been a Knicks fan my entire life. We've been bad for so long. Did she know that you broke the light the other night? No.
I think I told her. Okay. And as much fun as I'm having for finally being competitive, it makes me really sad that I had 20 years of just pure misery. And I never stopped watching or going to the games. Think about me, man. I've been a Lions fan my whole life. That's true. That's torture. All right. Let's give a shout out to our production team. We've got how many people on the video audio side now? Four people, right? Yep. Duncan, John.
Travis Daniel. So we're getting videos up on Spotify now where you can watch the video as you listen to the podcast and pick and choose. The videos are up on YouTube much faster now. They're up on Wednesday mornings. Not too far. Not too long after the actual podcast. So we're humming along here.
Crank it up. Yes. When I gave my speech last week in Columbus, I had a few people ask me, like, well, how do you do all the editing and audio and video? And I said, we don't do anything. Michael and I just have the software and the mics, and everyone else behind the scenes does it for us. And it's great because they know what they're doing and they're pros. Absolutely. Shout out to our compound media team. I feel like I had something to say to you that I was saving for the show, but I guess I didn't. Maybe I did. Maybe I'll remember next week. All right. Good luck with the game tonight.
Celtics in five. But maybe we sneak one in tonight. Sounds about right. Animal spirits. Animal spirits. Yeah. At the Compound News. All right. See you next time.