Life and Death (EP.400)
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Today's Animal Spirits is brought to you by our friends at White Charts. This is our 400th episode, not including all the Talk Your Books that we've done. This is the 400th episode. Ben, you and I started the podcast. It was November 2017, and I did a podcast with Josh and Barry. Patrick O'Shaughnessy hosted us in our office. And afterward,

Patrick said, why don't you and Ben have a podcast? And I think we had maybe spoken about it, but I was pretty self-conscious at the time about launching a podcast. I wasn't comfortable talking to a microphone. I had never done it before. And it felt like we were late to the game, which is hilarious. It felt like there was a million podcasts in the world that didn't need another. And then a week before we officially launched, The New Yorker had a cartoon saying, I'm thinking of stopping a podcast.

And I was like, oh no, we're such bozos. Like who, who wants to listen to us? And I'm, we're taking a little bit of a trip back down memory lane because it's 400. It's a big round number. And our sponsor for today, Y charts has been with us. Maybe not since the beginning, beginning, but they were definitely our, the first company partner.

first partner to stand up and say, we want to be a part of what you guys are building. So it's been an incredible partnership for us. So we just want to thank the entire team at YCharts. And as we've said over and over again, we really are power users. I have it on all the time, open on my screen all the time for everything.

Every day. I would love to see the numbers of how many charts I've created over the years and searching for stuff. And it's really helpful for us, not only in the podcast, but with all the research we're doing on the wealth management side of things and sharing stuff on social media. And yes, it's just like, it's totally part of our whole process now every single day. So if you have not taken the plunge yet, and you've been thinking about it, and you're new to YCharts,

Give them a call. Tell them Adelsberg sent you. You'll get 20% off your initial subscription. Today's show is brought to you by Craneshare's, known for their flagship Chinese technology ETF, K-Web. Ben, I don't know if you know this, but Chinese stocks have been on a bit of a tear over the past one year, K-Web.

is up 45% total return. The S&P is up 23% over the same time. Year to date, these things are on fire. K-Web's up 22%. The S&P is up four. Zooming further out, obviously, it's a different picture. Chinese stocks have been in the dojo for a while, but they're on a tear, and I don't see too many people talking about them. I heard a good case to be made that after the deep seek stuff came out saying,

Well, maybe you need to own Chinese stocks as a kind of an AI hedge to spread your net a little wider here, catch it a little wider in case who knows where the winner ends up being from. Maybe that's part of this, right? Matter of fact, yes. So that was definitely the catalyst, the spark, the fuse. Crane shares is hosting a webinar on Thursday, February 20th at 11 a.m. Eastern on the impact of deep seek on Caleb and the whole Chinese internet space.

You can find the registration at Craneshares.com slash webinars. Disclosures and performance related to these funds are available at Craneshares.com.

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, not to start off a little sappy here, but I'm a big believer in things happening for a reason in life. And I think over the years, you've been probably more like open book than me in some ways. Like you've really let it out. I'm from New York. You're from the Midwest. I'm the Midwest. We bottle things up.

But I do think that your sharing of your mother's story over the years has been helpful to so many people. We've gotten many, many emails from people over the years saying, Michael, your story helped me process or think through my sense of loss and grief. And your whole dealing with that, I think, has been so big for me this past year, dealing with my brother who a year or so ago

contracted pancreatic cancer was diagnosed and it was the prognosis not being good. And just your open and honesty about it has like, you know, I think there's a reason that you came into my life. How's that? Is that fair? Anyway. This is about you, not me, but I am curious. Was there anything particular that I said over the years or recently that made you feel a certain way?

Well, I've just... I've never gone through something like this. And it's one of those things where you don't really know. It's the kind of thing, you know it happens to a lot of people. I keep saying it's like a very personal emotion.

But I think just your willingness to talk about it and talk about what it did to you and the lasting impact and talking about how, you said Robin had an experience where her father passed away at a young age and hearing all that stuff and just hearing the different stages you went through and the feelings and how it changed your perspective on life, all of that stuff, I think has been helpful for me kind of trying to process this with my brother.

So yeah, I just think it's one of those things where you don't really know what to do or what to say. As someone from the outside looking in, I've never been one to have the words to say to someone who's going through something like that. But now going through it myself, it's kind of funny. It doesn't matter what you say. It's just like being there for people and telling them I'm here. So my brother passed away last week.

So it's been about a week. So I've been kind of a haze. And I wrote a long blog post about it. Actually, when he got diagnosed, I started writing it. So I've been writing this for probably almost a year. But when he actually passed away, then probably for three straight days, I worked on this. I really wanted it to be perfect as a tribute to him. And I have a lot of stuff I want to talk about. But the biggest takeaway for me is that I think it's very easy to be cynical these days about the world and like,

that there's just bad stuff and bad people and bad headlines. And my biggest takeaway is like just the amount of like, I don't know what I expected. I wanted to put it out there for me selfishly because it was like cathartic to write about him. And I wanted to tell his story because he's a pretty private person about his illness. And I'll kind of get into his story a little bit too, which I wrote about. But so I wanted it to be out there as a tribute to him. And I wanted to just share his story. But the outpouring of

uh, support and notes and people sharing their story with me and just, uh, not only friends and family and coworkers, you know, reaching out and offering support, but just like total strangers that listen to the podcast, read my blog, whatever has been like totally overwhelming and just kind of amazing and like actually like really helpful to, to me and my family. So

That side of things has been like, oh, wow, that's not even something I consider. Just like all these people, just total support and kindness from people. So that part has been really cool. Yeah, we got so many emails from listeners, and I'm sure Ben read all of them, and I did. Two lines that stood out to me, somebody wrote, grief is a heavy blanket of love, which is spot on.

Somebody else wrote, it reminded me of a line in the original Blade Runner talking about your brother. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Yeah, that one stood out to me too. It is, it's such, I told you this the other day, it's such a bizarre emotion because you know millions and millions of other people have felt it.

in some way or another, but it still feels like this. It's like the most personal emotion because of the person and the circumstances. And so it's like all the, all this stuff that, you know, you would imagine to feel the sadness and anger and kind of being numb. And, but I've been going through that process for like a year now. So John was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year ago, but he actually had cancer before when he was in seventh grade. That's, that's the really hard part about this for my family, I think is

He went through it. It was a really terrible period in our lives. He got kind of a rare form of leukemia when he was young. Actually, it was like we were on a Disney trip. I wrote about this and the whole trip he was like tired. And I was, I don't know, I was 10 years old, nine years old.

And we have, I still remember this picture of him like laying on a bench at Disney, taking a nap. And my mom obviously knew something was wrong. She's a nurse, took her to the doctor. He was diagnosed. Uh, he needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. And I was the donor. I still have like the bumps on my hip that you can feel from like the huge needles they inject. And, uh,

He'd survived cancer when remission and it was like, whoa, we dodged a bullet. Right. But like that experience shaped him for the rest of his life and like positive and somewhat negative ways. I almost equate him to being like a, I don't know if it's a 60, 40 portfolio or like a cynical might not be the right word, but like cynical optimist. Right. He had like both of these two competing things in his head of like,

I went through this once, but I just think that I'm unlucky with this stuff. He always like halfway joked that he's going to die before age 50. And I was saying the other day, that asshole just always had to be right about these things, you know? Just like annoyingly right. So he had some other like illnesses and surgeries in his life. And he always kind of in the back of his head felt like, oh, this just something about my body is not right. And so he got sick again, and

It was almost like he was defeated, but he also felt in his bones that it was coming or something. It was kind of a bizarre situation in that aspect of he's been preparing for this his whole life. So that part of it is just the hardest part for me, watching him having this in the back of his head and then that realization coming true. That was tough, but then we went on this roller coaster where...

The prognosis looked pretty good. If we just have some chemo, things might be okay. And then the prognosis is really bad. It's stage four. There's probably nothing you can do. The healthcare side of things is interesting to me because his initial diagnosis was basically like, well, this is the kind of thing where there's nothing you can do. We're going to give you chemo. And then you're probably going to, that'll help manage your pain until you pass away.

And he kind of said, "I've done chemo before." And he went through a month of chemo and lost a bunch of weight and lost all his hair and just was tired all the time and said, "This is not how I'm going out." So he ended up calling these specialists all over the country and is like, "I need to try something." And he got, because his pancreatic cancer had some rare form of mutation or whatever, I'm not a medical person so I don't know, a doctor at a hospital who specializes in these new medications said, "I'm willing to let you try my experimental medication.

And he tried it, got off chemo, and it worked. It stopped the cancer from spreading. He gained all the weight back. He grew his hair out again, and he looked normal. You wouldn't know from the outside that he was sick. So he got this extra six months or so to kind of start riding his bike again and traveling and doing all this stuff. But he also got all of his affairs in order, right? He stopped working on his job, obviously.

Uh, and he could help prepare his family because he has a wife and three kids that he's leaving behind. So he got to like take all these months to have this second window that we didn't think he was going to have at first. So that part has been kind of a crazy roller coaster too, just dealing with, we're going to do this. We're not going to do this. And what happened was he, they told him it was inoperable at first. Like there's nothing you can do about this. The cancer is going to spread and just, you can't stop it.

But with this new drug, it kind of stopped the spread. He found a surgeon in New York who said, I'm going to, I can do this. Let's operate. Because my brother said, I'm not just going to sit and wait till I die. I want to like go out swinging. If it's a 0.5% chance that something could extend my life a few years, I'm going to take it. So he went to New York. He had got a surgery. And I had one of those kind of like movie moments where we thought the surgery, we thought maybe like worst case scenario, they do the surgery.

It doesn't work. The cancer continues to spread, and then, unfortunately, he passes away. It happened to be that he had complications during surgery, and that's how he ended up passing. So he was in New York, had the surgery. I think it surprised a little all of us, the surgeons especially. But it was one of these weird out-of-body experiences where my mother calls me and says, your brother is dying, and he's in the ICU, and he's got, I don't know,

He's going to die very soon. I need you to say goodbye to him. So we put it on speakerphone, and he's got the breathing tube in and all the things on. And it's like you hear in the movies. I say goodbye to him, and you hear all the machines start to go. And he could hear me, which was so... Okay, so that's the sad stuff. I wanted to get it out because I wanted to tell the story, but there's also been...

The best advice I've gotten so far from this is just having friends and family send stories and send pictures and talk about him from the positive side of things. And that's like the part of grief that is unfortunate. That's what has to happen to get you there. But that part of it is like, oh, you realize how many people his life touched.

And I hear from all these people all the time. So like, again, all the outpouring of like support and condolences and messages from people, people sharing their stories, that part of it, that part has been helpful. All right. Sorry, I just have to get a tissue. So can we share the letter that he wrote to his kids? Yes. So a few of the things he did. You said this to me as I was sitting down for –

God, that movie sucked. I took my kids to see Dog Man. Oh, my kids went to see it yesterday too. Was it bad? Okay. It was not... Well, they loved it. It was not for us. For adults, it was hard. So you sent this to me and I'm... I sat down and I'm... I started crying and Logan's like, Daddy, why are you crying? I said, Dad, watch a movie. So...

Yeah. So he, he left behind a bunch of things for his kids. He had time. So he, he did a video for his kids, obviously, you know, he, he left all these instructions and planning for his wife, but then he left this, this email that had, I don't know, 10 or 12 pieces of, of life advice for his kids. Very simple, like one liners. Perfect. All right. You want to read it? You want me to, you go ahead, figure out what you like. Uh, well, I'm going to read them all. Cause they're all great. Love each other, handle your business, figure it out or fix it. I love that one.

I hate people that are just like problem oriented, right? Right. Bring me a solution. Victims. Yes. Never leave anyone behind. You are each other's best friends. Life isn't fair. Always pay off your credit card bill. Never all caps ever carry a balance. See, that was my favorite. You're going to make mistakes. Learn from them and do better the next time. Take care of the cabin. It was a special place to me.

Always get a real Christmas tree. Was that a big thing in your family? Yes, it was. That's why it was such a hard thing for me to realize that I had to get a fake one. But yes, he's a very principled guy. Life is way better than a screen. Go live it. Be happy with what you have. You don't need as much as you think. Be kind. The world needs more kindness. And I can't wait. The last one. All right. The last one is I love you all, basically. Yeah.

Credit card one is obviously, I told his kids, like, just don't forget the credit card one, okay? So I think the kids are young. It's obviously so tragic and heartbreaking and all that stuff. Yeah, so his twins are eight and his oldest daughter is 10. So they're basically the same age as my kids. It's kind of bizarre how close they are in age and the fact that we both had twins.

And they are resilient to sell. And that's the best piece of advice you gave me is you said, hey, listen, Robin lost her dad young. I don't know how old was she when she lost him.

Yeah, so same age, and you said, like, the best thing I can tell you is that they're going to be all right. It's not going to feel like it, but they're going to be all right. Like, it's going to be a hole in their lives or whatever, but kids are so resilient. And we all realize, like, we have to pick ourselves up. Like, we have to, for these kids' sake, we can't just sit here and, like, wallow. So the kids immediately, they wanted to go bowling, and they wanted to go to Dave & Buster's and play video games. They wanted to go sledding and do stuff, and so...

Seeing how resilient they are to this whole thing is, and it's going to come down later for them. But that's obviously my biggest concern. It stinks for me because he was like my confidant about things. He was my advisor. It really sucks for me to lose my big brother, but his wife and kids are obviously, that's like their life is forever separated. And obviously my parents too. It also puts into perspective like so many little things like

Going through this, you get annoyed at other people for complaining about their trivial problems. But you realize you can't do that. You can't compare your level of pain or whatever. How are other people supposed to know? It also makes you realize that the money stuff... Just on that point. So I was 25 when my mom died. And one of the things at the time that was unfair that you just mentioned was the hardest part was everybody's life goes back to normal. Yes. Right? Right.

And again, like my friends are 25. It's like, you know, we were kids ish. Um, but I was still in so much pain and everybody else was like living their own normal life. And obviously like I, you know, with the benefit of like time and maturity, I learned to like, you know, like over those things, but at the time, but really that part of it was really difficult. Just the world moves on, but there's a phrase like life is for the living and it's true. And one of the things that I've said to you is that the unbearable pain subsides because it has to.

Right. Like if, if it didn't, your body would, your brain would just shut down your body, like the pain. So it does, it does get better over time. Yeah. I made, I made the comment to my, my dad the second day or something. And I said, but it's weird to think about it this way, but it can't get any worse than this. Like the feeling can't get any worse. It can only get better from here, which yeah, it's a, it is a, you're right. You're, if you had that same initial feeling the whole time, you wouldn't be able to function as a human being and humans are, are resilient. Yeah.

One of the silver linings about losing my mother, who is a huge, she was the center of my universe. I was definitely a mama's boy and losing her, it's such a great reminder to live aggressively. Now, sometimes I probably take it too far, but life is a blessing and you really don't, you can't possibly have that perspective without having had this sense of loss.

Like a lot of people, so to me, would I, would I reverse it in a second? Of course I would. But it, it ended up being a huge blessing for me because it really shaped the way that I think about life. And without that perspective, a lot of people just go through life, like, you know, sweating the small stuff. And I just, I don't let anything bother me. And I don't know if that's something that is my personality, but a lot of that is just because like, what else matters? You know, like, I just don't let the small shit bother me.

Yes, that's certainly a point that like the last week I've just – I've kind of paid attention to nothing and just to this. And it's like the other little stuff that I always think about and look at all the time or I'm concerned about, you realize like, oh, god, it just – it doesn't – it really doesn't matter. We're all going to die. Yeah. The funny thing is that was – The time here is finite. Just enjoy yourself if you can. And that was part of John's perspective too, again, after having –

his earlier diagnosis, his earlier bout with cancer, that he was like that too. He was a very adventurous guy. And the thing that his kids keep saying is like, life is going to be so boring without him. He was a very adventurous guy. Hiking and biking and kayaking and outdoors. And you know those people, like if you're sitting there and you're nothing to do and you play on your phone, even if you're with people, John was the guy. John was never the guy who was like playing on his phone. It was always over here. He was that guy who like, he was...

in the present. I think the other perspective thing here is that you realize that the money stuff doesn't matter in times like this, but it also really does. And having this extra time to figure stuff out when he knew the prognosis was bad gave him time to go through and get everything really in order. And we're still going to have a heavy lift. And that's the thing I did. I said, Midwesterners, bottle thing up.

Immediately, I jumped into, we need to figure your finances out. Let's start having conversations about this. And he speaks that same language. Great. So we started working on it immediately. All the accounts and credit cards and payments and all this stuff, we have to figure it out and make steps. And as we're going through his stuff, I realized he was way better covered for this than I ever could have imagined. He had all this cash. A huge percentage of his money was sitting in cash.

And I said, why are you holding so much cash? You're in your mid-40s. And he said, like, I needed a backstop for my whole life. Like, his experience with illness in the past changed his perception of risk for, like, the rest of his life. And he had way more money set aside than I probably thought. He had this big life insurance policy. And he talked about the fact that he was one of the, like, the really—

smartest like street smart people that I knew. And he had a very good business mind and he probably could have done like anything he wanted. But he got a job with the CDC

in the federal government. He said one of the reasons he did that, I think he actually thought he could be one of the people that changed the government from the inside, which is kind of funny, which shows you the kind of personality he had. If anyone can do it, I can. But he also liked the fact that it had a pension and really good healthcare benefits, and it was like a backstop for him. So he had this very adventurous streak, but also this very conservative side on the other thing.

And as prepared as he is, it's still going to be a big heavy lift. But I don't know how – I can't imagine how difficult it would be for people who didn't have their financial life in order dealing with a situation like this. That would make it 10 times harder to deal with if you weren't a little – if you weren't prepared. Because he was overly prepared. And his – luckily, his wife and kids are going to be just fine financially because he –

prepared. And we brought in our WM family, really stepped up, and having an objective third party as a financial advisor to help at times like this has been really huge. Because you could hear from someone who's in it and knows all the things to be like, you're okay. But if you have someone from the outside come in and say, listen, you're going to be okay, it's

It's kind of crazy how helpful that objective third party can be that has dealt with this before. But that stuff is, it's funny, like I've had a lot of heavy conversations in the past year or so, but like that was easy stuff for me. Like, okay, I know where I can help is the finance side of things because that was the same language that he spoke. But it does show you like the planning stuff side of it, like that stuff is really important.

It's way down the list, but it is, though. I don't know what else I wanted to talk about. At least he got to see Michigan win the national championship. Yes. Did he have a favorite movie? He left behind a list of songs and movies. And it's funny. He also left behind his wishes for what he wanted to do for a service and how he wanted to go out. And yes, we've definitely been watching. We put Goonies on for the kids. That was one of his favorite movies. So we...

We put that in. Again, the coolest thing for me is hearing from people I haven't heard from in years, friends and people I haven't talked to in a long time, just to send a note. And you know me, I'm not a big text person. Group chats are poison to me. I'm just not a big group chat guy. But every single...

Text I got from someone just to say and people would say listen. I didn't I didn't I don't know what to say You don't need to respond just wanted to say I'm thinking of you or I love you and just those things from people As you look at someone who's not a big part of like the small talk is of that it almost feels like the mundane stuff is the most helpful like I've been taking my dog and a lot of walks and

I've been—it's been snowing here for like a week. I've been shoveling snow. Doing the like simple mundane stuff actually is helpful. The kids decided like we all want to do our sports this weekend. So we're driving the kids around to their games, the cousins and our kids. And my dad and I are talking about college basketball on the way. He kind of looks over at me and, you know, just some stupid stuff about college basketball. He says, you know, isn't it nice to just talk about stuff that doesn't matter right now? And so I think that's one of the reasons that I wanted to like still get on this podcast and talk is that like I want—

I want to have some mundane talk. So I know this has been very heavy. Uh, I appreciate people for listening again, sending support, but I also want to like, can we just have some small talk? Can we like talk about the markets? Tell me about your trip to Florida. I got some small talk. All right. So Ben, I love you. I got a lot of people reaching out, just asking how you were doing. And, uh,

My response was basically like, I guess I bet as you probably would imagine he's doing, not great. Yeah, as expected. It's been tough. It's one of those things like you think you've prepared yourself for it knowing it's coming, and then you still know you're really not prepared. So yeah, it is kind of a surreal experience,

But I don't know. We're happy. Like we had no regrets. He went out, he wanted to go out swinging and he did. And so we all feel like that. He, the whole burning the candle on both ends saying he, he, he did that. He went out his own way and yeah, we just keep our mantra. And I was like to live like John and just, just enjoy all over here. And so that's,

That's where we are. If you didn't read Ben's post, um, to learn a little bit more about the type of person John was, he sounded like an incredible guy. And, uh, your parents did, your parents did good work with the three of you. Yeah. The one, the, yeah, the one other story I wanted to share that I'd share in the blog post, which it didn't really hit me until years later. So John gets diagnosed with cancer. A year later, he's in remission and the make a wish foundation, you know, comes to and says, what do you want? He, you know, he, he almost died. He was in a bad place. Uh,

And I don't know, I would have asked for a whole room full of Nintendo games or kids, you know, anything. And he asked for a trip to Hawaii for our whole family. So we went for two weeks, we went to Hawaii, all expenses paid trip. They rolled out the red carpet, they brought a limo. And at the time I didn't really think about it. Oh, cool. We get to go to Hawaii.

Swim with dolphins and sea volcanoes. My kids are laughing because we're telling a story that we went on a helicopter ride there and the helicopter pilot was like a maniac and he's going up and down over these hills. And we get off the helicopter and we get on the tarmac or whatever and I puked everywhere. Just blew it out all over the... And we still laugh about that. But...

I thought about, like, years later, like, oh, my gosh. He was a kid that could have been so self. He could have said, I want to meet my favorite athlete. I want to meet this actor. I want to do any of these things. But I think he instinctively knew, like, our family needs to, like, get away after having this experience. We, like, need to go. And I thought just him, he was always, like, very wise beyond his years in that sort of thing. So it didn't hit me that way. Like, oh, my gosh, how did he know that we needed that? And I think we did, so.

Anyway, I'm doing about as could be expected. I'm more worried about his wife and kids and my parents for everything they've gone through. But yeah, again, thanks to everyone for all the support. And it means the world to me. So that part is cool. I am going to be having a Miami Vice after I'm done recording this in John's memory. That sounds good. So Ben, I'm down here in Naples with my family. And...

You're much better at this than I am, but I was thinking about the people at the pool. I know you did this bit already, but you know, there's always a couple of people, one, two, whatever. It doesn't have to be a guy or a girl. It could be either. That are just obliterated by the sun, right? Just like not even red, just pink. And you're like, dude, you're what? And they just still have their shirt off somehow. Yes. With the tan lines. Yeah.

Yes, they're making the most of it. Let me ask you this. So we're at a nice hotel and we're sitting down on the lounge chairs and the guy next to me, you can tell that he's been here a bunch of times, knows his staff. They come over to him or somebody comes over to him, sets him up, says hi, whatever, small talk. And the guy just seems like a really nice guy, just Midwestern nice and handed him a $100 bill. And I was talking with Robin later in the day and I said, did you see the people next to us? I said, I want to be that guy.

And she goes, why? He seemed like such a douche. And I was like, you saw he gave him $100? She's like, yeah, what a douche. And I was like, huh. I had such a different reaction. And I understand her reaction, which I'll tell you about in a second. But from my point of view, I love – this is a topic of the show. I love tipping.

And I love the idea of being able to give a service worker $100 because it means a lot. And so – That'll make their day. They'll remember that, right? That's all I was coming from. Not like – I just – I love to be able to make people happy. What, did she think he was being flashy? Yeah.

So what she thought, and she's right, was she's like, okay, I hear you on the making people stay part, like obviously. But if that was really the objective, you do that after, right? Like you do that when you settle up. Okay. All right. So her point was she did it at the beginning so that he can get better service. And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's true. But so what? So it's sort of like when you –

When like you leave a, uh, when you make a donation online, like a GoFundMe thing. So like you could leave your name or you do it anonymously. So I have like principles for this. If I am making a donation, so for like, for like my temple or something, right. If they're doing like a fundraiser or whatever, I will make my donation for that anonymously. Now, if you talk about, if you're giving donations anonymously, does it even matter? Right. So I'm not trying to get credit for that. Remember this is a curb episode, right? Is it?

Where he donated to a museum and it said donated by anonymous, but Ted Danson put his name on the wall. Yeah. So for something like that, I'll do it anonymously because I don't want like, you know, credit for that or anything. Right. But if you're making a donation where you think that it can encourage other people to give money, then for that, I'm willing to like put my name on it. Because if somebody's like, oh, Michael gave this, I can give that too. Yeah. Social proof. Social proof.

I like that. That makes sense. All right. No really other observations about the vacation. Just in light of what you're talking about, I'm just trying to enjoy myself with my family. Is it packed? Yeah, it's pretty busy. So it's not like necessarily a kids hotel. So there's stuff for the kids, but it's not like crazy. It's not like Baja Mar where Jump Shore is nuts this week. All right. Let's just do some quick stuff on the market. We had an all-time high in the- Did we move on from egg talk yet or not? Stay tuned. Okay. I have something later in the show for that.

Stock market is hitting an all-time high this morning. This is really weird. Meta is up like, I don't know if it's 19 days in a row, 20 days in a row, but Mike Harris tweeted that Meta has gained 17 days in a row, which is an extreme event using Northgate data with current ND listings for the S&P constituents. We find that the maximum has been 19 days. So I think this is a record, which is weird. Why? It's kind of weird, no?

Would it be a gambler's fallacy thing if you're a day trader that you just short meta every day from now on, in the hopes that it falls finally? Probably. Isn't that like hitting black 19 times in a row in roulette? Ben Robinhood has a slide in their earnings call that I really loved. It shows the average cumulative net deposits tend to grow over time across our funded customer cohorts. In recent cohorts, initial deposits are larger. So it shows you

2020 through 2024 by quarter. I've never seen a chart laid out this way. It's really wonderful. But the TLDR, for those of you who are listening, is the initial deposits are getting larger every single year as their customer base makes more money and grows up. That makes sense. Okay, that is a cool chart. Credit to them. What do they manage these days? Do you know?

Is it 100? Yeah, it was in the deck. I don't want to misquote them. $180 billion? $150 billion? It's a lot. It's a lot. All right, so Ben, it finally happened. Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF, VOO, officially passed SPY. Boutunis is all over this. So just talk about the Bogle effect or the Vanguard effect. And this dovetails in nicely with something that

Our colleague Nick Majuli tweeted. So Nick said, I stopped buying active investments, individual stocks, et cetera, when I realized that they monopolized most of my attention. Despite being a small percentage of my portfolio, I watch them all the time. This is why I want passive, and you should too. You can't put a price on mental freedom. And Nick's absolutely right. That's a good phrase, mental freedom. I like that. I spend way too much time. I probably look at my phone to see what the market is doing, my stocks, Bitcoin, whatever. I don't know, 74 times a day.

And that counts for something, a lot actually, and not in a good way. I feel like the regrets are larger with individual active investments too. Like I bought a handful of growth stocks in 2021 when things went to shit and crashed. And I think I bought Spotify and Shopify when they're both down like 40% or something. Of course, they both crashed way more than that. But when they turned around, I felt like I'm going to consolidate some things here. I'm going to get rid of one of these stocks. Which did you get rid of?

Of course, I got rid of the wrong one. I got rid of – I kept Shopify, which did okay. It's done all right. But Spotify has been going crazy for the past two years, like right after I sold it. And you look back and you go, ugh. But that's the kind of stuff that you – if you sold one index fund and bought another index fund, you don't go, oh, no. What did I do? That only happens with individual positions like this. Right. So anyway, so then later on in Nick's Twitter feed –

Somebody quote tweeted Nick about that tweet and said, I truly wish stocks would go down for like five to 10 years. I'm so sick of everyone thinking stocks are free money because that is what we've become. This used to be a really hard game that required an Omnicron of skill once upon a time, but now an ape can just buy and hold till rich. And Nick quote tweeted him and said, there's a subset of active investors out there that want to see stocks destroyed to teach passive investors a lesson.

We will have such a decade eventually. He's right that stocks aren't free money, but hoping for this is not the way. No one wins in a deep recession. And I get the person's mentality. It's a loser's mentality. I might call him this person a loser, but, um, and then I get obviously like Nick's point. And maybe you should rethink that. Like, do you really want stocks going down for five to 10 years? Like, are you really that bitter that you want everybody else, including like just regular people? Because stocks go down for five to 10 years because nasty shit is happening in the economy. And do you really want that in the first decade of the century just to teach people a lesson? Like, come on, grow up.

We had that already. And again, if you're a new investor, you didn't experience that, but the lost decade was a terrible period. And we've had other lost decades too. Emerging markets went through a lost decade where nothing happened. I think it was like 12 years or something. Also, Nick is not a, Nick is not a stocks go up all the always guy. Like he's a keep buying guy, which is, which sounds the same, but it's not. Uh, I don't think Nick would ever say that stocks are free money or guarantee. Like that's not his, that's not his thing. It's just that,

You know, his thing is like accumulate income producing assets, buy great, you know, all that sort of stuff, whatever. Yeah. And then the hard part is you keep buying even when stocks are down. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You take advantage of that. All right. Buko Capital tweeted, software developer job postings over the last five years. Hard to find a crazier chart. So remember, like, like learn to code was the thing. So during the pandemic, this went straight up and straight down.

Is it a really bad thing if we're just back at 2020 levels or should this be way higher because there's so many more tech companies now? I don't know. I just think it's like a reflection of the AI. Yeah. I mean, it does look like a mean stock. Just how wild that is. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. Isn't that like the biggest – I know people keep talking about AI being this job destroyer. Isn't it going to be programmers that have the most jobs destroyed potentially? I think so. I think that's what this is showing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So one of the things in crypto is like it has no use case. We need to rehash it. Like, you know, everyone, that's a pretty tired story, but it is kind of wild in the context of how much money came into crypto. So I can't read who this chart is from. A pillion. So it says my eyes are bad, but there's a chart showing life to date. VCP investments in crypto startups is now $96 billion. That's crazy.

Almost $100 billion went into crypto companies. And, you know, we've got Coinbase. We've got Circle and Tether and, you know, a gigaton of money in stablecoins. But... It's surprising more of these haven't worked out. I think that's the takeaway, right? I guess it's complicated. And, like, there's, like, nothing to show for it. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, I think that, on the one hand, like, what sort of returns...

were had by the $96 billion. I don't know. I guess we'll find out. But yeah, there's no consumer app, which is one of the things that people are waiting for. But the nothing to show for part is kind of nuts because there's $100 billion in the ETFs. And yeah, I think that's something that pisses people off. It's just a number go up story. But yeah, that's the story. And it's a big one. I think it's just, yeah, what we have to show for it is not what people would have expected.

Probably not what the investors would have expected. Because it's like a barbell. You have the ETFs over here and you have meme coins over here. Yeah. That's not the outcome people were expecting. Not what the investors were expecting, for sure. Ben, I'm guessing you missed this over the weekend, but there's a story that the president of Argentina is pumping and dumping a meme coin. Libra and Portnoy got involved. Did you see any of this? No. It doesn't sound shocking to me. The president of Argentina and Dave Portnoy? No. Nope.

Sounds about right. Yeah. Okay. Okay, this is surprising. But there's just never going to be any repercussions, though, I guess, for people who pump and dunk meme coins. That's just, eh, it's fair game. I don't know. I mean, it seems like it, doesn't it? I don't know. It's like reputational risk, but if you have no shame, what do you care? Oh, well.

I guess so. Okay, so Variety had a post on YouTube. And here's the TLDR. YouTube is now – I'm sorry. The TV is now the number one device for YouTube viewing. The TV. More people watch YouTube on their TV than on their phone and their computer.

which is, I guess, where it started. Well, my kids view it as another app. So it's like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and YouTube. That's kind of, they view it like a streaming service. Yeah, so according to Nielsen, YouTube has been the number one service in time spent viewing on the US on the TVs for the past two years.

11% captured of TV usage. Netflix is 8.5%. Prime is 4%. Hulu, two and a half, and Disney, too. Did you start watching... Again, I feel weird asking you this, given all the shit you've been dealing with, but did you start watching Paradise yet? No, that one is on my list. I did get into some TV lately. I'll share it in Rex, but worth watching for me. Paradise is very good. It feels... Although I feel like maybe it's too premature to say that. I've seen four episodes.

It feels like Lost only in the sense that you really want to see what happens during the next episode. It's very bingeable. It's not like Lost in the sense that it's completely open-ended. So they give you the spoiler in the first episode, and then there's a billion flashbacks to fill in the missing pieces or fill in the story. So I'm into it. All right, this is a face blower. There's a picture of Richard Belding, and if that name means nothing to you, Richard Belding was the principal in Saved by the Bell.

Uh, so somebody tweeted, if you were born before 1984, you're now older than Mr. Belding in the first season of Saved by the Bell. How does it make you feel, Ben? Middle-aged. I saw it the other day when I walked into, uh, I'm not ashamed to say I've been, I definitely have been drinking a decent amount lately.

I had to plan to like drink myself to sleep the first couple of days. Well, I don't mind saying that. That was, you know, you would have done this with her without me, but that was my advice. Yeah. You said alcohol. Alcohol is the only answer. And God bless my wife. She checked in on me. Like, are you okay? I said, yes, I just need a couple of days here. But I walked into the booze store and I bought a bunch of beer and it said like, if you were born on this date before 2004, and I'm like doing math in my head, I'm like, oh my God. Father time. You've been 21 for a long time. Yeah. Yeah.

Somebody said to us, so we've been talking about how expensive Disney is. And somebody said, I'm traveling to the Disney World with my family this week and wanted to prove that it can be done without breaking the bank. Also, FYI, the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for Disney. So let's stay away from that. Ben, did you say you're doing that? I think we want to go leading up to Thanksgiving. That's what my wife is planning. Okay. So here's their budget. Coming from Oklahoma. Flight, $750. Hotel, $550.

Four nights, breakfast included at Homewood Suites. Disney tickets, $14.50. One day Magic Kingdom, one day Epcot. Two adults, two kids, one infant. Rental car, $2.50. Food, $500. Souvenirs, $200. Miscellaneous, $200. Total, $3900. He said the big savings, because that does seem pretty light. The big savings, flight at Discount Airline, staying in a non-Disney hotel, and no Animal Kingdom. I agree. Animal Kingdom is pretty much a waste. Okay.

So there you have it. So I'm stealing the take from someone else, but someone made the point, I don't know, on Twitter or somewhere that it's kind of funny that the free breakfasts are usually at the lower end hotels, not the upper, higher end hotels. Like you'd expect if you're paying a lot of money for a hotel, you should get the free breakfast. But no, it's the opposite, right? Yes. All right, Ben, you mentioned something about eggs. I want to play you.

So somebody suggested that we call our listeners filthy animals, and I think I'm going to stick with that. I like it. Not bad. Okay, so a filthy animal sent us a song that they made on ChatGBT. Now, the opening of the song is pretty cheesy, but let's just get through the first lines, and then I think it's pretty good. All right, let me play this. Then who's singing it? An AI singing it? Yeah. Okay.

Well, well, Michael and Ben, they talk stocks every day. Breaking down markets in their own kind of way. Michael's got charts. Ben's got the vibe. Together they keep the retail crowd alive. Now Michael got a bone to pit with those four little rings on an Audi stick. Says German made junk, it's a money pit. Ben just laughs, says that's your bit. Ben says eggs are 20 bucks. Well, that's just life. Michael stares back like he's seen a poltergeist. Man, price is insane. Ben shrugs it off like it's pocket change. Oh, market's up.

Take it all down Tech is flying, rates are high Still rocking Hawaiian shirts looking real fly Got closed stocks, ETF bonds on deck Ben says go passive man, just don't stress Michael's all in, checking wicks and lines Ben's like, come on man, let's have a good time One thing for sure Hawaiian shirts make a portfolio pure Yeah, Buffett would wear them if he had the nerve Got a dress for success and a tropical curve Ben calls, made a Facebook like it's nine Michael rolls his eyes but lets it slide this time

All right. Not bad. So that's like a Blink-182 version of Animal Spirits? Not bad. What is it? Eggs are 20 bucks and Ben just shrugs it off? Ben says eggs are 20 bucks. Well, that's just life. Michael stares back like he's seen a poltergeist. All right. Not bad. That was good. All right, Ben. We got an email. As parents, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Is it tacky to give a link for 529 contributions in lieu of gifts for a child's birthday party? No. I've done this before.

I'm kidding. I, I, I, to the, I gave a link to my parents and said, Hey, if you ever want to just give five 29 instead of here's the link. And it's in most places make it very easy to do of, but I think it's this person's point of like, yeah, with family, it's totally normal, but it's a family thing. Yes. For, for friends, it's a little might be tacky, but I'd say, but I've had friends do it before without me asking. And I, I obviously appreciate it.

But yes, for family, I think it's totally above board. Okay. What do you think? You think it's tacky? I don't know if it's tacky. It's a little odd. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't have strong thoughts. I'm not sure. All right. I've got – this might upset some people. I'm just throwing a grenade for no particular reason. Bring it. Okay. When people have a literal whiteboard on their background on Zoom –

It's a little weird. What do you mean a whiteboard? Like an actual, like a physical whiteboard that they're like writing Sharpies on. Or not Sharpies, but magic markers where they're like, you know, it's like they're taking their notes or whatever. Right. There's easier places to take notes these days. I mean, yeah, like on your phone. Yes. This is not 1993. Right? A little weird? I don't know. I've got books behind me and that's kind of a flex. So I feel like the whiteboard is kind of like books behind you. It's kind of like a flex. Like, look at me. I'm smart. I write stuff down and I read. Yeah.

All right, Ben, I can't figure this one out. So I still have the line on my TV. How many years are we going on here? That's pretty impressive that you haven't given in yet. Five years. Has it been five years? No, it can't be. Maybe it can be. So I moved that to my- So you just got used to it? Not really. Well, yeah, actually, no, I did get used to it. So the lines aren't growing. They're not like expanding or multiplying, but they're there. So anyway, there was a-

Oh, separate. Okay. So the line of my TV is still there upstairs. Downstairs, I replaced my Samsung because that's what the line is. I replaced my Samsung with a Sony. My TV downstairs was frozen with a Samsung logo on it. And I thought I was hallucinating. Like I even took a picture of it. Am I on drugs? How is a Sony TV? Why is there like the Samsung logo on the picture of my screen frozen? And it was like floating on my TV. And I don't have any Samsung devices connected to that TV.

Is Samsung like punking me? Did you Google this? What would I even Google? Why is there a Samsung logo floating on my Sony TV? Yeah. It was very strange. Lastly, I saw this on the internet this week. There was a fight at Madison Square Garden and it reminded me of something that I've been thinking of for a long time. Wait, were you there when this fight was going on? No, I was not. So you don't see fights, and it's probably the same reason. You don't see fights at a basketball game for this, you know, because at football games, people are like wasted, right? They're there tailgating, they're drinking for six hours, whatever. Yeah.

So it's probably the same reason why you don't see, but you don't see, you never see people run into a basketball court. Oh, like people run into a football field. Yeah. That's true. Or even a baseball field. You think it'd be easier to run into a basketball court. You never see it, ever. I wonder if it wouldn't make, it wouldn't have the shock value as much because in a football field, it's so big. You can see someone. Yeah, the basketball court, where are you going? Also, you know what? These people are smart. You don't want to get tackled on the hardwood. That's true. It hurt a lot more.

Yeah, probably people think it's harder to get out too. I mean, they always get caught. What do those people think is going to happen though? Like they're happy spending a night in jail or whatever? I don't think it's well thought out. Well, true. Okay, Ben, what were you able to get into this week? So my son is still fully into skyscrapers. So I made him watch Man on Wire with me. It's on Peacock, I think. Have you ever seen this documentary before? No. It's about the guy who...

sent a wire between the World Trade Centers in the 1970s and then walked on them and balanced on them without any line on himself. It was a French guy. It's an amazing, amazing story how they did this. The World Trade Centers were just being finished and him and his friends had to come up with this cockamamie scheme to get to the top floor and pretend they were other people and they're hiding and

And then he like shot a bow and arrow with this wire across. And then the guy literally back and forth walked between the two twin towers with one of those, you know, big balancing sticks. And it's this French guy. And he would lay down on the line and the cops are waiting on both sides for him to get off. And he'd walk all the way and the cops were to grab him and he'd walk backwards and he was smiling at him. And they asked him afterwards, like, why did you do it? He's like,

I just wanted to do it. He didn't have any big, he wasn't like trying to like, today that guy would be a YouTube star, right? He'd have a YouTube channel like me walking on my tightrope. But back then he just, him and his friends thought it'd be cool to do. And it's an amazing, amazing documentary. Huh. Did you ever show George San Andreas, the movie with The Rock? Of course. He watched all The Rock's movies. There's actually a movie called Skyscraper, which we obviously watched a couple weeks ago. I watched most of the SNL 50. Did you watch any of it? Uh-uh.

Okay. I mean, half of the sketches and bits were good. Half of them were just okay. It was kind of amazing to see that many famous people all in one room though. I enjoyed it. I don't really watch SNL anymore. I just watch the clips on YouTube or social media. But for a long time there, for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years, I watched like every SNL. What was peak SNL for you?

Oh, it's obviously the Farley Sandler. It's what you grew up with, but that Farley Sandler, David Spade, Tim Meadows, Chris Rock. Tim Meadows. I love the ladies, man. That was a great one. Yeah. So I was a little bit old. Because you're a little bit older than me, mine was like the Will Ferrell, Sherry Oteri. Yeah, right? Yeah. But I mean, we used to watch the best of Will Ferrell and Chris Farley in college all the time, which shows how long ago they were on.

And I watched the first episode of the new white Lotus and I'm in, I think I said this before they can do 10 seasons of this and I'd watch every one of them. Just the, the same beat of we're going to a nice place. The first episode, you know, they're going to show a dead body and then we're gonna have to figure out how they did it. I'm sure it'll get old eventually, but I don't know. I don't know when. I was thinking the same thing. Like as long as they keep the quality is so good. And I realized, so Robin sent me like a,

something on Instagram with like, saw a lot of like the hidden gems in the first episode and not even hidden necessarily. I'm, I'm a very non-observant watcher. Like for example, I didn't even necessarily pick up on the fact that like the, in the last scene, not to spoil it. Cause it's, it's a, I won't spoil it, but the last scene with the brother in the bathroom, the other brother looking, did, did that even, did you pick up on that? Not really. No, I don't. I don't. Yeah. I'm not looking for clues either. Okay. Okay. So I'm not alone.

But I did think, and this is, we've got a lot of people like North Carolina ties that work with us. Duncan is a, is a North Carolina guy. I thought the North Carolina family, like they walked up and they talked about how this kid went to Duke and this kid went to North Carolina. And I thought that was just perfect. I thought they nailed that family. All right. Two emails, by the way, they're making a Goonie sequel. Did you know about this? My kids will be in. All right. I don't know if I will be. Longtime fan of Alaska. Yeah.

Wondering how you'd rate your ability to gauge the quality of a movie based on the trailer. Oh, okay. That's a good one. Michael talking about Cordially Invited almost sounded like he expected it to be good. That steaming pile could be sniffed out five seconds into the trailer. I am mostly a Ben movie guy and recommended the Ed Helms movie Together Together. Okay. So I had no expectations of Cordially Invited would be – no. Was that – yeah. I didn't think it was going to be good. But –

So let me not answer your question first. I don't watch trailers anymore. If I, I mean, if I can avoid them, I do. I like to roll dog movies. I've said this before. Um, but I do like to think that I'm, some trailers can't be avoided. For example, like if you go to a movie, you're seeing the trailers, right? So that, I guess that's where I, I guess I just told him myself, but there, but so there are trailers that can't be avoided, but I see a lot of movies that I've never seen the trailer for like strange darling, for example, that was a win, but, uh, captain America, brave new world. I knew that was gonna be trash. So to answer your question, um,

I think I'm pretty good. I love watching trailers. I still remember. I think we talked about this before. I said The Hangover is the best trailer of all time where you watch it and you go, that is going to be an amazing movie and it lives up to it. You're right. So for example, there's a new movie coming out called Friendship with Paul Rudd and is his name Tim Robinson? I'm not really familiar with his work. Yes. Okay. It's a Detroit guy. So based on that trailer, I know for a fact minus –

2000, that movie's going to rock ass. Okay. I thought it looked a little weird, actually. I'm a trailer guy, though. I love watching new trailers. Okay. So I think I'm pretty good at determining if they're good or bad at that.

We'll end on this. You know what, Ben? This is a setup. We're going to answer this next episode because I need to think about this. I would love to hear you guys debate the following. What are the top 10 shows of the golden age of television? And let's define the golden age of television as a non-broadcast network show that ran from 2001 to 2025. Ooh, non-broadcast. That's interesting. Okay. I bring this up because some buddies and I were discussing the Americans. I never saw the Americans during its time. That showed about a two-season run where it was its hottest succession. True.

But for some reason, it just fell off the radar in greatest shows. That is true too. Okay. You know what? We're going to circle back. We'll do that next week because it deserves some thought. So they want us to come up with the top 10 shows of the golden age of television. Yeah. That's homework for next week. Okay. I mean, the top five is easy. All right. Well, save it. Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Six Feet Under is in there. Ooh. Okay. Right?

Yeah, so I probably have a few that you wouldn't anticipate, but that's a good question. The first five are easy. The next five are hard. Okay. All right. It was good to chop it up. I feel good. I can't just sit around and not do anything. We did that for a couple days, and I realized that's not going to be helpful. So I need to get back in the mix and do stuff. So this was good. Again, I appreciate all the support from everyone.

It's been helpful. As I said earlier in the show, life is for the living. And obviously you will live in John's honor and do everything you can to honor his memory and all that good stuff. So everybody who emailed us...

We appreciate it. Obviously, it means a lot to Ben. So thank you for sending that. If I didn't get back, because I tried to get back to as many people as I could. If I didn't, I apologize. But I really do appreciate it. And looking through all the comments the past couple of days, it was really uplifting to me and very helpful. And just to have people read and understand John's story to me was very cool because I think he deserved it. Well said, Ben. Okay.

Animal Spirits of the Compound News, thank you everybody for riding with us for 400 episodes. We love you guys. We'll see you next time.