How NOT To Invest: Lessons from Barry Ritholtz (SB1661)

Ever wondered how the top financial minds avoid disaster while the rest of us are busy panic-Googling “best investments 2024”? Today, Joe welcomes Barry Ritholtz of Ritholtz Wealth Management down to Mom’s basement for a conversation that flips typical investment advice on its head. It’s not about what to do—it’s about what not to do if you want to grow your money without losing your sanity.

Barry shares battle-tested insights from his years in the trenches, covering everything from behavioral finance to market psychology and how to avoid falling for trends that make great headlines but terrible portfolios.

Also in this episode:

Subscription hacks you didn’t know you needed (and yes, even that one you’ve been ignoring since 2021).

How market history can be your secret weapon—if you actually pay attention to it.

Tech innovations in finance and why Barry says they’re both exciting and a little terrifying.

Productivity gains, AI, and whether the future is a robot that trades ETFs for you while you nap.

A peek into Barry’s latest book and the big idea that might shift how you think about investing.

Doug creates yet another national holiday—because what the world needs now is Bow Chicka Wow Wow Day.

Stacker mailbag time! We’re diving into job loss strategies, building bulletproof emergency funds, and yes, getting into the weeds with buffer ETFs.

The never-ending showdown: remote work vs. office life—where do Stackers land?

And of course, Doug’s trivia will challenge your financial knowledge and possibly your respect for faux holidays.

Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just now figuring out what a 401(k) actually does, this episode brings the insight, laughs, and community you’ve come to expect from the basement.

🎧 Tune in and stack smarter—with fewer missteps and a whole lot more fun.

FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/getting-your-investments-right-with-barry-ritholtz-1661

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

Our Mentor: Barry Ritholtz

Big thanks to Barry Ritholtz for joining us today. To learn more about Barry, visit The Big Picture – Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Geopolitics, Technology, and Digital Media. Grab yourself a copy of the book How Not To Invest: The ideas, numbers, and behaviors that destroy wealth – and how to avoid them

Mailbag

Stacker Gavin wrote in with a comment on our episode about how to prepare for layoffs.

Stacker Lance has a question about the validity of “buffer ETFs.”

Doug’s Trivia

If you were born today (or heck, even this week), there’s a good chance your parents were getting busy making YOU on what holiday?

Have a question for the show?

LEAVE US A VOICEMAIL

Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).

Other Mentions

Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when we’re diving into how misconceptions can hurt your investing game.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: 10 Ways to Stop Blowing Up Your Investment Portfolio (SB1660)

Episode transcript

STACK 03-26 Barry Ritzholtz -steve

[00:00:00] bit: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a big show, a real big shoe

[00:00:09] Doug: live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and you say you want advice from the best financial people in all the land. We got you stacker because today we welcome to the basement, the man behind one of the nation’s top financial firms, rid Holt’s Wealth Management. Yeah, he’s here. Barry Riol. Barry shares lessons on how.

Not to invest that you’ll wanna implement right now. Plus you’ve had lots of feedback on our last few shows, we’ll share your thoughts on losing a job, working remotely, movies and more. And don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Your trivia of course will be served just in time. And now two guys who think diversification means having more than one streaming subscription.

It’s Joe and oh ju ju g.

[00:01:15] Joe: That’s not it. It’s more than that. Hey everybody, welcome to the, I was this many days old when I found out what real diversification was. Podcast, the Stacking Benjamin Show. I’m Joe Saul Sea High, and across the card table from me, the guy who has Peacock Paramount Plus and Pluto.

Just trying to think of

[00:01:38] Doug: all the, like, how rich am I? I’ve got, I’ve got Tubi. And Plex.

[00:01:45] OG: I’m Pluto wealthy. I don’t know what any of those things are, so I’m gonna say no. But if you haven’t taken your iPhone, you guys can do this and everybody at home can do this too right now. Wow. Do it with me. Do with me.

This is a science experiment kid. This is a self-help. Take your iPhone, open it up, and from this top, swipe down and type in the word subscriptions and then it pops up at the top, it says subscriptions. And then you click on it and it will tell you or show you all of the subscriptions that you have on your phone that you subscribe to.

And so you can go through that and go, wait a second, why am I still subscribing to MyFitnessPal calorie counter? I haven’t encountered a calorie in five years. Unsubscribe, you know,

[00:02:27] Joe: hypothetically,

[00:02:28] OG: or another little hack is unsubscribe from all of them. You will still get to use them for the period of time for which you subscribed, and then just see if you notice that you don’t have it anymore.

Then you can resubscribe later. Wow. Sometimes they’ll even send you a deal and go, if you resubscribe now, we’ll send you a deal. But you know, you look and you go, I don’t really need to have this app anymore. I don’t think I do. Just unsubscribe. Doug, did he start giving advice like one minute into the show?

I. I think we’re done here. You’re talking about subscriptions and, uh, oh, becoming, I heard you talk about, uh, TV subscriptions and I noticed this weekend that I still had a Paramount subscription and I haven’t watched Paramount in a couple of weeks because I was done with all the shows in Paramount that I wanted to

[00:03:09] Joe: watch.

[00:03:09] OG: I finally

[00:03:10] Joe: got rid of Peacock in January and I, the Tour de France ended at the end of July, and that’s the whole reason why I got it. And now of course, I unsubscribed and I’ll resubscribe July 1st. You’re the

[00:03:21] OG: guy that subscribes to Peacock for the Tour de France.

[00:03:23] Joe: I’m the guy I saw the article about that.

It was, it was incredible. A whole feature on the guy, guy keeping Peacock Network alive. Oh, speaking of Keeping Alive, the guy keeping this show alive today, Barry Ritholtz is here. Og. Oh

[00:03:37] bit: yeah. Nice.

[00:03:37] Joe: Never heard of them. The idea, we have no idea. And so everybody’s on their best behavior. Mom is already upstairs making cookies.

We got a great show today. Barry’s gonna talk about how not to invest. We’ve got your letters. It’s gonna be a, uh, humdinger as, uh, moms Frank Gert says, whizbang a whizbang. It’s could be lights out goodness on today’s podcast. But before we get started, we’ve got a couple sponsors that make sure we can keep on keeping on.

You don’t have to pay anything for this goodness. So let’s hear from them. And then Barry Riol, the man behind Riol Wealth Management, joins us. You have read his blog. You have seen him on every financial channel, but not the best one. Mom’s basement, Barry Ri Holtz, is coming up next.

[00:04:28] bit: They return you now to your regularly scheduled program.

[00:04:31] Barry: You know, the really crazy thing is when you see some of the studies on financial literacy, it has a really finite half-life. You have to stay on top of people. They could be as educated as possible, and it fades. Eventually. It fades. I think maybe the dopamine hit gets too strong, right? There’s some of that.

There’s some of that I, it’s funny because it’s a process not only learning. So first you have to learn all these things that most people unfortunately never learn. Thank goodness for Kah Anderski taught us so much about it, but then you have to recognize that so many of these things. Apply to you and I, I had put a post up on the blog today about our blind spot bias bubble, that even as you go down the, you know, the behavioral finance rabbit hole and learn all these mistakes we make, the assumption is it’s that guy.

It’s not me. It’s always that guy. It’s funny, somebody’s name came up. We’re talking about March Madness and Bat Nick’s 40th birthday’s coming up. So I took him to a Knicks game last week. We got floor seats. It was, the whole thing was crazy. And I started telling the story about Joe Besser of Emerald, and the story is kind of funny, just that I was a big Knicks fan during the Ewing Oakley, Starks Mason era.

And Michael Jordan was the immovable force they never could get past. And I was convinced that the officiating was against the next constantly. Yeah, and then I went to this NIT game and I don’t give a crap about college basketball. I mean, I’ll watch some March Madness, certainly the final four. Yeah, and if like a team has a, like a Michigan or a Tar Heels, have a breakout year, I’ll see a bunch of that.

But he’s a big alum and all he saw was nothing but travel and foul and charging. And I’m watching the game with zero stake in it. I have no skin in the game. Could care less. Joe. That’s two and a half steps. That’s what’s allowed three Joe. His foot was clearly on the line. It’s not even a little bit, it’s like planted on the line.

That’s a charge. Joe, he was moving. He wasn’t planted like, and as the game went on, I had the sinking feeling in my stomach that, oh my God, I am my world. That’s me. View’s me. My worldview is wholly delusional, at least when it comes to basketball. And then I. When, um, I’m trying to remember. I don’t think it was Kahneman’s noise, but he talks about this, it was like an early interview.

It might have even been a pre-thinking fest and slow interview. Where Kahneman where? I wanna say Danny, but I don’t feel like I, I should, um, like Jason’s wide calls him Danny. Yeah, yeah. He talks about our own bias bubble and how even though I’ve spent my whole career studying this, Kahneman says I have all the same.

Biases and blind spots. Everybody else does. And it’s horrifying. When you, you hear that, I’m like, oh, I guess I even worse than being an idiot, is knowing what an idiot you are. It’s really like, that’s what I get for 20 years of studying this crap. Well, thanks, thanks for nothing.

[00:07:42] Joe: I don’t know. Or is that better?

You know, I like that line. The more you know, the less you know, the more you know, and then you become very, you become more humble because you realize it’s the shit you don’t know that’s gonna get you, where you’ve got all these idiots that are out there that I see all over TikTok all the time, you know, that, that are telling me all the truths of the universe that I need to know at 57 years old that apparently I didn’t see before them.

[00:08:01] Barry: There are some great, you know, I, I love great quotes from really smart people and the book is just sprinkled with them. But go all the way back to Socrates. The only thing I know is that I don’t know anything. It sounds like it’s an exaggeration or hyperbole, but it’s a step towards recognizing the importance of modesty and humility.

And you know, wall Street is a fake it till you make it kind of place. Modesty is not the default setting by any stretch of the imagination, but it really helps you to be an investor if you wanna just avoid the avoidable errors. You have to be much less arrogant, much less cocky, and don’t just assume you know everything.

But that seems to be especially newbies. And you could be a newbie for, I don’t know, five years, 10 years. I started in the business on a trading desk. So you kind of get thrown in the deep end of the pool and whoever doesn’t drown, congratulations, you’re a trader. So there’s a little bit of cockiness, but you better learn to identify really quickly.

You know far less than you, you think you do it. It’s helpful. Not only to be aware of what you don’t know, but to paraphrase the twain quote, it’s not what you know, it’s what you think is so, but just isn’t. And and that’s a big, you know, that’s what people really get destroyed.

[00:09:24] Joe: Well I was gonna say, Barry, let’s get started.

But you know what, while we were talking I just hit the start. So I think we’re already in it. I think we’re in

[00:09:30] Barry: it. I don’t think I cursed or said anything on uh, inappropriate so sense. No, not yet.

[00:09:34] Joe: But we’ll try to get you going. We’ll try it. What are

[00:09:36] Barry: we, are we PG rated or We are rated. What can I get away with?

[00:09:39] Joe: are, we are PG 13, so we’ll swear from time to time, but we beep it out mostly. Right. Alright. Because it’s funnier to

[00:09:43] Barry: beep it out. No, it definitely is amusing. ’cause it’s not that hard to figure out what people say. Mother beep. It’s like not that difficult. People aren’t that silly.

[00:09:54] Joe: I know. So I’m gonna just tell everybody we faded up into it.

I read this book back in the nineties called Trading Rules, which really is a boring book. And it’s a dude that was, who’s the author? Uh, I don’t remember. But it was a guy at the Commodities Exchange in Chicago. Mm-hmm. And it’s all of his rules. And here’s a guy. Who’s investing in stuff that 99.9% of your audience and my audience would never invest in a million years.

And all he talks about is risk. All he talks about, the fact is you gotta give up the fact that you know what the price is gonna be tomorrow. You even say this in your book, you know, once we know that, once we realize nobody knows anything, right? Like we’re gonna be better off. But he’s like, once I give that away and I realize what a little fish I am and how little I know and people trade for all these reasons, I can never fathom, no matter what it says on CNBC or Fox Business, I’m gonna be better off.

And it just blew me away how much this super professional, seasoned trader was all about risk management.

[00:10:48] Barry: I had the exact same experience you did, but with a different book. Do you remember Jack Sch Swagger’s First Market Wizards book? I wanna say I love J. We’ve had

[00:10:59] Joe: Jack

[00:11:00] Barry: on

[00:11:00] Joe: three times. ‘

[00:11:01] Barry: cause I love that guy so much.

I was on a trading desk, my head trader handed me that book. My takeaway from that that was so astonishing was it had nothing whatsoever to do with. What you were trading itself, what you had to learn was how to manage yourself and how to manage your risk. And that’s what was so astonishing to me was it didn’t make a difference What you were trading could be commodities, could be currency, could be stock bonds.

It made no difference. Futures, it was all about having a process, having an approach, knowing when, on those rare, rare occasions where you could let your rules be stretched a little bit and managing your own behavior, that was eyeopening in in the late nineties. I don’t think a lot of people, I. At least in publish format we’re discussing that.

And it’s funny because the behavior you would witness on the desk versus what I was reading about is the difference between a so-so trader and back then, you know, in the pre uh, reg FD era, it didn’t even matter if you got good inside information, as long as you got it from a source that was plugged in.

It could be bad inside information, legal inside information, speculative, rumor driven inside information. But if you’re early in the pyramid scheme, ’cause that’s what essentially these sort of Wall Street gossip was, as long as you’re not late to the party, there was money to be made. And Reg FD really changed that.

And the people who recognized, oh, the whole risk scenario is completely different than it used to be. The people who recognize that did really well. And the people who failed to recognize that we continue to see their excuse making. Going forward. Uh, listen, I don’t care if this manager or that manager has a bad quarter or a bad year.

What I’m fascinated by is blaming the Fed’s financial repression for my underperformance. Well, now that you know that the Fed is financially repressing the markets, shouldn’t you be on the other side of the trade? I mean, you’re not a grad student smoking clove cigarettes and drinking espresso. I used to joke about Cafe Reggio on McDougall Street across from NYU.

If you’re just gonna go there and stroke your goatee, well then you’re a grad student. But if you’re a fun manager, then once you figure out reality, why do you stay on the wrong side of the trade? Oh, you are emotionally involved in rationalizing what just happened, so you can’t emit error and flip. Like those sorts of things are really formative to somebody who just was intrigued not only by trading, but how come this guy’s making money this week and this guy’s getting killed.

I’m pointing left and right, and then next week the guy who was getting killed is just, every trade is a winner. And the guy who was destroying, suddenly, he can’t trade his way out of a wet paper bag. And you start to recognize, oh, it’s their thought process. It’s their, you know what they believe. It’s their ability to come up with a process and stick with it.

And that was really formative to me, seeing how people just made fundamental mistakes. Look, you don’t have to be a robot. It helps to not be a 2-year-old. It helps to not be, you know, to infantalize every trade and fight the tape. And I saw a lot of

[00:14:23] Joe: that, but in some ways to have the curiosity of a young kid.

And to be willing to go with the next thing versus be so entrenched. In my opinion, I think it’s important. What I love about what you did in this project is taking stuff from outside finance and applying it to finance. And, and by the way, that’s always where I, I seem to find my best inspiration is when I look at these things and I, and I apply it to my world.

Not stuff that’s right on the, you know, hitting right on the nail head. You talk about the music world and the Beatles and it’s ama, I never knew just how much the US was going. No, no, no. Barry like, no, there’s no way we’re gonna accept the Beatles here.

[00:15:03] Barry: Right. It started out with the Beatles record company in the UK was EMI and I think in the US was capital.

Unless I inverted those. Yeah. It was capital. The EMI people, the UK people are telling their American counterparts, this band is just tearing up the charts. You gotta release this. It’s like, no, no. We know American taste. This guitar music is over. They said in 1964. It’s like you, you just, there, uh, it’s a flash in the pan.

And at one point in time, the Beatles had the number one spot on the UK charts. The number two, the number three, the number four, the number five. How many times you have to get hit over the head before you say, I don’t understand this music. But something is going on here. Like, uh, like I give you a million examples from the modern day about things that, hey, that’s not necessarily my forte, but there’s a groundswell.

Pay attention. You have to notice this if that’s your profession. And so, not only did they not wanna release the Beatles singles here. Ed Sullivan turned the Beatles down once or twice, and then by coincidence, what used to be called London Airport is now Heathrow. He’s coming back to New York through Heathrow and the Beatles are coming home from, I wanna say Scandinavia or Sweden or somewhere or tour, and there’s 10,000 screaming teenage girls in the airport.

Sullivan sees this and when he gets back home says, Hey, we, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but get the Beatles here. It’s, it’s a full blown phenomena. Two capital records credit, I should say two. Good corporate, opportunistic, profit seeking, uh, behavior before the, by the way, it’s Sullivan was one of the biggest shows on tv.

Sure, yeah. He regularly broke acts. He regularly would cause giant sales booms in anticipation of that booking. They kind of were forced to release a couple of singles and they all went to number one, top five, top 10, whatever, and sold a million copies like that. And like, oh, maybe this, uh, you know, maybe this mercy beat thing has got some legs.

Maybe they’ll still be here in 65, which is pretty hilarious. And then the reviews of the Ed Sullivan show from professional music critics are, and admittedly cherry picked the worst, by the way, target rich environment. There’s thousands of terrible reviews. Bob Searight is the first person who kind of wrote this up, and I did a bunch of Googling and picked a bunch of other stuff.

But just like the Washington Post, the Daily News, the New York Times, it was amazing. People who should know better just didn’t, and well, I’ve got the ones, I got the ones

[00:17:48] Joe: Barry right here that you wrote. In your book, the Boston Globe quote, don’t let the Beatles bother you. If you don’t think about them, they’ll go away.

In a few more years, they’ll probably be bald. The New York Times the Beatles vocal quality can be described as sly incoherent with the minimal annunciation necessary to communicate the schematic text.

[00:18:10] Barry: It’s awful. The Washington Post somehow made it an inside the beltway discussion about, you know, once again, we got screwed in our trade with Europe.

I thought that was pretty hilarious. But my favorite things are people who, look, you don’t have to be a Beatles fan, but to write, Hey, you know, there’s no melody or harmony here. It’s like, no, what are you talking about? It’s all melody and harmony. If you’re going to not like them, well then don’t like them.

But you can’t just make crap up about it. It’s obvious. And your, your criticism clearly 60 something years later, almost 60 years later, has not stood the test of time. It just goes to show you, you know, the big lesson there. Not only does no one know anything about what’s gonna happen in the future, to me, there’s two giant takeaways from this.

One is we all tend to find a little bit of a complacent comfort zone, and when that happens, it’s very easy to not see the train coming down the tracks. It could be the dotcom implosion, it could be the financial crisis, it could be covid, flash, crash, whatever it is. Our sort of complacency, because we found a comfortable level is potentially problematic for a lot of people.

That meant missing the ETF revolution, missing the shift towards passive. There’s like a lot of examples where people were just stubbornly comfortable. In the past and failed to adapt. And I’m not even talking about selling the top and, and buying the bottom. I’m talking about, hey, is there a value to passive?

Probably. Is there a value to SPACs? Not really. You have to be able to question things that either are new or are just bubbling up again, you know, like SPACs have been around for 30 years. They seem to come up every 10, 15 years. The last group of people have sort of moved on and, and no one is around that remembers the last time they got burned by SPACs.

But um, the other thing is there’s a great Paul Graham quote in the book, which is when experts are wrong, it’s because they’re experts in the way the world used to be. It has to be that. ’cause you know, whatever, whenever you got your doctorate, whenever you got your first couple of, it’s always in the past.

What, whatever we know today is pretty much backwards looking and historical. And if things are changing, if the world is changing, well then an expert piece in the way the thing world used to be, it’ll only get you so far. You have to be willing to adjust to changing conditions. And I don’t mean day trading or turning your portfolio over.

I mean, philosophically understanding how to interact with the markets, the economy, and investing.

[00:20:52] Joe: You talk about two characters in the book, Sam Zell. Who, you know, I mean, you look at Sam Zell back in 2015 and you think there was, if Sam Zell’s on CN bbc, I’m gonna watch and see what he has to say. Michael Burry, heck, they had the whole, they had a whole movie about Michael Burry in the Big Short, what’s wrong?

Following advice from people like Bur and Zell?

[00:21:12] Barry: So there’s a couple of concepts involved. One is epistemic trespass. When you’re an expert in one space, that really shouldn’t give you license to move to either an adjacent space or something wholly unrelated. And, and this is

[00:21:24] Joe: Sam Zell specifically. I think you’re talking about it.

[00:21:26] Barry: It, it’s a little bit of both of them because, and Robert Kawasaki as well. Oh yeah. So how did Sam Zell become rich and famous? He is a phenomenally good, distressed real estate investor. He got the nickname, the Grave Dancer for when. Stuff run into trouble. He would be the only bid out there when everyone was panicking.

Zelle, you know, solid contrarian instincts would buy deeply distressed real estate and then hold it for decades at a time. I think some of his holdings were literally half a century like crazy, crazy numbers. And then he just starts forecasting recessions. Sam never made a penny forecasting a recession, and he’s like pretty consistently wrong.

Although Zelle was like a big famous name and I wanted to start with something that was pretty obvious. The Barry thing is more nuanced because he’s been forecasting a market crash kind of on the regular. He made close to a hundred million dollars on the big short. And according, and he doesn’t have to disclose any of this since he’s a private individual, but some reports are that he pyramid that up to a billion dollars, he’s worth a billion dollars.

Now, I don’t know if that’s true, but I love the idea that not only was this guy a contrarian once, and most outlier call makers tend to be one hit wonders and not repeat the skill. The way he trades, distressed assets and the way he trades. Anticipation of, of things. Falling to the downside is really challenging because over long periods of time, the market tends to trend upwards.

So you have to be not only precise in what you’re betting against, but you also have to get the timing more or less. Right. You know, in the big short you find out that even 24 months is forever, and even when, when the bet starts going your way, then you’re relying on the market actually marking things correctly.

Like for six or eight months of that collapse, none of these traded derivative products got marked down. So it’s gotta understand this is a basket of mortgages. The average mortgages, you know, usually run a 2% default rate. It’s 20%. How are these still the same price? It’s, I got more to sell for you. If, if, if that’s the case.

At this high price. He couldn’t get a print that accurately reflected what was going on and just, it’s so difficult to do. So I love the concept of him continuing to be, I mean, he’s a phenomenal manager, but he’s been forecasting market crashes not quite as much as Robert Kawasaki, who wrote Rich Dad, poor Dad or, or as my colleague Ben Carlson says, rich Dad, poor reader.

Here’s a guy who literally wrote the best selling finance book of all time. You think Morgan Housel’s book at 7 million copies is a blockbuster? That’s not even a, A quarter of what Rich Dad poured that that’s sold like 32 or 33 million copies. It’s like a crazy number. Some guy on Twitter tracks all of Kawasaki’s tweets, and every year since the financial crisis.

He’s been forecasting a crash. One of my favorite forecasts of his was in 2018, sell us real estate. Big crash coming. You don’t wanna own any, um, residential real estate in the us. I don’t think there was a better time in, in our lifetime to be a buyer of US real estate than 2018. And so when you see these people who have authority and uh, some recognition and some level of success, the danger is that we, the home viewer.

Very much tend to be, we tend to believe people who are confident, who are really specific. You know, the old joke is why do economists use uh, two decimal places? It’s to prove they have a sense of humor. But when we see people forecast stocks 47,653, we, we all know it’s a throw of a dart. The viewer loves that.

And anyone who’s gotten an outlier call, correct. Not only are they more likely to make more outlier calls, and not only are they more likely to be incorrect, but the home viewer or or reader loves those people and tends to believe what they say. It’s so

[00:25:47] Joe: absolutely frustrating. I often, whenever I see Kiyosaki today, I just wonder how this guy keeps a huge audience.

’cause he’s been wrong on so many calls in a row. Like, you can be wrong 50,000 times in a row, and yet still you’ve got this massive amount of people that want to have you come speak. Have you come? I don’t. I don’t understand it

[00:26:07] Barry: there. There’s a fund manager that consistently bears since the financial crisis and started out with, I don’t know, eight, 10, $12 billion down to like a billion dollars.

And, and one of my might have been Batnick said, uh, he was down to like 9 50, 900 $50 million. And someone said, how long you think this bull market’s gonna last? And Michael’s answer was still another $950 million to go. And there’s some truth to that. You know, the guys who are like perma bears when they finally throw in the towel, when there’s nobody left to buy when all the shorts are covered, tends to be capitulation means surrender when everybody in a downturn just gives it up and pukes up stock.

That’s how bottoms are made. And you can make the claim that when you run outta bears, when you run outta sellers. That’s how Tops are made.

[00:26:55] Joe: I remember back in the early two thousands, back when I was a financial planner, a long, long time ago, Harry Dent Jr. Remember Harry Dent Jr. Sure.

[00:27:03] Barry: Population drives markets.

Yes. Except it doesn’t.

[00:27:06] Joe: Well, that makes, and by the way, when I first heard Harry Dent Jr. Blew me away Barry, because I was like, this guy knows exactly. He’s exactly. The prototypical what you’re talking about. And I remember reading the Roaring two thousands and going, oh my goodness. And so it kind of, it kind of helped my cynicism later on when I noticed this dude was selling annuities and, and where everything’s going to roar.

If everything’s gonna roar, why do I need all this downside protection with the annuity market? You similarly loved quote a book called Dow 36,000. My God, my God. Which I think Barry, these were out about the same time,

[00:27:40] Barry: these two books, the timing was so perfect. Dow 36,000, I wanna say, came out the fall of, uh, 1999, which you had a quarter or two from publication date to get outta the market.

If, if, if that’s how you invest. And what was so fascinating to me, there were, there were two big takeaways from that. One, these guys were political analysts and, and they’ve sort of evolved into, in fact, one of the two authors works in this administration, but. The first thing is the recency effect that, wait, you’re telling me after a thousand percent 18 year bull market, now you’re pounding the table to get bullish, and your forecast is simply just taking the previous seven years, which have been unusually robust and strong, and you’re just tacking that on the end of an 18 year bull market like intuitively.

That immediately was a red flag. But the other thing was their fundamental thesis. If anybody who bothered to fight their way through the book, which was pretty poorly conceived and written was their fundamental premise was sort of, it’s not that valuations don’t matter, but valuations for stocks are so much cheaper than bonds that you have to own stocks.

And I’m like, I, I didn’t understand their, their methods, their models. None of it made any sense other than. Uh, we wanna have an outrageous discussion, uh, that would attract attention. It was that book title was kind of Click Beatty and it worked for about six months. You know, they were, they did all, they did CNBC, they did Bloomberg, they did Fox, they did all the television shows, you know, the morning shows that they, like a lot of people spoke to them, and I, I’m trying to remember which company you’re kind of my era in March, 2000, was it Dell that pre announced, it was one of the companies that had said Y 2K pulled forward all these hardware buying in the fourth quarter of 1999.

Maybe it was Intel, could have been Dell. It was a company like that. And that was the first crack. And that was just the beginning of the end. And it very rapidly unwound. And as, as you watched it fall apart. The muscle memory of being rewarded every time you bought the dip was still fresh and still strong.

And so a lot of people got, a lot of traders and investors, both amateur and professional, got really slapped around in 2000, 2001. By the time oh two rolled around like October oh two, it looked like the selling was done. You started to find stocks that were trading for cash on hand or less than cash on hand, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s a good sign that I write, you know, these things don’t go on forever. And to be fair, you didn’t get out of that trading range till 2013. You know, a lot of people like to mark March oh nine as the start of this bull market, but it really isn’t. It’s, that’s the equivalent of the 73 74 Bear Market.

The, the crash that was about the same, 56% in change as oh 8, 0 9. You don’t start the new bull. Until you breach the previous highs. You don’t just started from, from the very low. ’cause hey, from 66 to 82, we saw a lot of false starts and a lot of crashes, and the same thing from 2000 to 2013. So a lot of like, oh, this looks good.

And then, you know, the rug gets pulled out. So you need to be a little bit of a market historian if you want to be. Look, uh, in the book I talk about the advantages of dollar cost averaging and, and buy and hold and broad passive ownership. Hey, if you want to decorate the Christmas tree with some active ETFs or strategies, a little garland, a few ornaments is fine, but the bulk of what you’re doing should be that low cost passive.

If you wanna do anything beyond that, you really have to be a market historian and understand the broad history of, of what’s come before. And even knowing it doesn’t guarantee you’re gonna get it right. It just gives you some insight into here’s how the humans. I dealt with this last time. Now let’s see what they do going forward.

[00:31:57] Joe: Well, and as a little bit of a market historian, I really felt this, you didn’t write this explicitly, Barry, which is why I want to ask you about it. This is a little bit of a cautionary tale about loading up on the Magnificent seven right now, I would think.

[00:32:09] Barry: Yeah, and it’s funny because the book actually, it looks longer than it is ’cause a lot of one and two page chapters.

It is

[00:32:16] Joe: very, very short, concise chapters. Yeah. But

[00:32:18] Barry: there’s a lot of white space. So the 400 pages is really much less than that. ’cause there’s, forget all the footnotes at the end, but like there are a lot of page and a half, two and a half pages throughout. But some of the examples that we use, you know, uh, when you think about the telephone company a century ago.

A century ago there were a handful, or especially ma, be, but there were a handful of telephone companies and manufacturers. You didn’t have to invest in any of those companies so much as recognized that the rest of corporate America that was at least service oriented, oh, this was gonna be a big productivity booster and and profit boost.

The same thing in, in the 1990s with the dot coms. You know, it’s sort of funny and you’re old enough to remember when we refer to these companies as internet companies, what publicly traded company today doesn’t use email, doesn’t have a website, doesn’t use technology in a way. That’s not how we talked about internet companies.

And I have jokingly referred to, you know, if you’re looking at AI in the Magnificent seven, the value is not gonna be in necessarily in us picking one or two of those companies be in Nvidia, Microsoft, or whoever. The value is gonna be the next 493 companies, all of which will become more efficient, more productive, more profitable.

That, and I don’t wanna be pollyannish about this, but history has told us again and again, you know, whether it’s telegram or phone or the automobile or the computer or the internet. Now ai, there’s a process that takes a decade plus before everybody figures out how are we gonna use these newfangled website thingies?

And then, oh, here’s what we can do. I assume ai, maybe it won’t take a decade, but it’ll take a couple of years and eventually everybody just becomes that much better. That’s not because I have any special insight into ai. Trust me, I don’t. But when you look at every new technological breakthrough in how it’s been deployed, you know, even mainframe computers, like for the longest time it was giant insurance companies that were doing these big number crunching on expected payouts for, uh, you know, life expectancy and annuities and insurance plans and all these different things Required a huge, huge ability to crunch numbers.

Eventually that made its way downstream until eventually, hey, we just have a database. We are using Excel. That’s all we really, or Oracle or SQL or whatever it is. But the technology eventually makes its way into the whole system, and everybody does that much better.

[00:35:00] Joe: They would keep wondering, I mean, my whole career and your whole career, you keep looking at the productivity numbers and go, how can we get more product?

There’s no way. There’s no way humans are stretched. We can’t, and then now you’ve got the AI wave. And I just look at my productivity using AI today versus just two years ago, Barry. It’s, and, and like you, I’m not an expert at it at all, but man, it’s, it’s part of our system today to plug in.

[00:35:21] Barry: I’ve been having this ongoing debate with my economist friends.

’cause I just look at what we do in the office. We always talk about productivity and I say, I, I know you think there’s no productivity gains, but I couldn’t just see the evolution in our firm. How much time, like I have a vivid recollection. Two jobs ago, printing out quarterly statements for clients, performance statements and having to have everybody’s portfolio, which all were at the core similar, but all these different variations and painstakingly making sure that the right cover letter and the right performance update went into the right envelope and got the right sticker.

Stop and think about like how manual that was. And we were, had a few hundred clients, you never could have scaled up to a few thousand clients. And then you think about just the sort of thing we can do today with tax loss, harvesting and direct indexing and uh, just the ability to move money securely easily, quickly.

Uh, I rebuilt a car in South America and I was using an app called Remitly and there’s another app called World Remit to move money down there. That used to be like a painful process of going to the bank with two forms of ID and wiring $10,000. Why are you sending money to, uh, Bogota, Columbia? Well, you know, uh, I like cocaine and I’m having them ship up like a couple of pens.

Me and one of my colleagues that were, saw a truck that was rebuilt in Columbia and started doing some research and discovered that for whatever reason. Columbia South America became the Toyota FJ capital of the world. Wow. They have tons of them, and they rebuild them all. And if you wanna rebuild one in the US it’s, you know, to do a nice job is a full paint job.

The whole thing. 40, 50, $60,000. It’s half the price down there. Yeah. It’s a little longer. You have to ship it up to the states for a thousand dollars back then, or 1200 bucks. The original hesitation to do it was moving money was a big pain in the butt internationally. And, wait, I’m a SEC registered. I don’t want to have to explain why, why am I sending $10,000 from my personal checking account to Columbia?

But these apps now you create a record, it’s like, no, no, it’s going to, you know, so-and-so’s garage. We’re rebuilding a truck. Like it, it felt like, oh, I could do this and not go to jail, which is always a bonus. So the technology just, and you know, it’s funny ’cause I, I talk in the book about Paul Volcker talking about there’s been no financial innovation since the ATM.

And maybe when he said that, I dunno, 15, 20 years ago, maybe that was true, but today it, it, a hundred percent isn’t true. Everything is cheaper, faster, better than it ever was before, financially and again, this, this comes back to, hey, when you start to observe these big shifts, these big changes, I’m not telling you liquidate your portfolio or go all in on ai, but pay attention to what’s happening and find ways to use these new tools to your best advantage.

I, I just think about what we used to do with the blogs and, and the podcasts. My quarterly call to clients was a painful ordeal four times a year. ’cause everything had to be done manually and everything had to been, uh, was one take you. There were no edits that Now the technology to put that together is just, it’s so easy and it just, oh my God.

You could be, uh, this is why I’m stunned now. Now, the best pushback I’ve gotten from an economist was you’re in a service industry. One that happened to be particularly unproductive. So there was a lot of head space and you know, it’s much harder to make those gains in manufacturing. Okay, maybe, but you know, you gotta be aware of what’s going on in the world.

[00:39:25] Joe: The next breakthrough. Like we just don’t know what’s coming. By the way, the one place we need innovation. I know that Sheila Bearer was one of the people that blurbed your book. Yep. You and Sheila and I gotta get, get together and figure out why is the aach h the same damn thing it was in 1988? Like, like

[00:39:40] Barry: why the heck?

It’s all the legacy technology that underlies this. In fact, the, you know, I, I’m not big, uh, as you can tell from the book on making forecasts when I, I’m always looking to see what is gonna be the disruptive technology that either puts myself out of business or any of the technology partners and or financial players that we all interact with.

And, you know, for a long time people thought the robo-advisors were gonna put people outta business. We were pretty sanguine about that early on. ’cause if you work with enough, so we have no minimum, we’ll take accounts no matter what size, but we have some pretty substantial. Households, uh, that we work with.

Wealthy people aren’t looking to get cheap or free advice. They want the best surgeon, the best lawyer, the best accountant, and, and hopefully the best financial advisor slash wealth manager. So we didn’t think, I feel like they also wanna have a conversation from time to time too, Barry, especially when the tending the fan and everybody’s freaking out, they want someone to talk them off the ledge.

You know, when I look around and we, we were just talking about those legacy systems, when I look around at the custodians, I’m shocked that nobody has come up with a way to disrupt them other than it’s not exactly a high margin business. And there’s a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of risk. And I think that’s what’s prevented technology from challenging them.

But they’re like, when I look around, it’s like, gee, that’s a tough business. Especially now that trading is free. I don’t know if that’s a business I would wanna be in.

[00:41:17] Joe: Yeah, I don’t think I’d want anything When it’s a race to zero and you’ve achieved it, that, that stuff, the book is available tomorrow, everybody.

It’s called How Not To Invest. And if you thought this was a fun conversation with Barry, wait till you read it. ’cause uh, I found myself flipping chapter after chapter and going, oh man, that’s good. And also laughing, uh, a fair amount of the time. Barry, thanks for mentoring us today.

[00:41:40] Barry: Well, thank you so much for the kind words.

That is exactly the reaction I was hoping for. And when you’re in the thick of it, you just never know, you know, if you’re hitting the mark, I will say unlike Bailout Nation, which was kind of a slog to write, aside from the fact that every three months another company would blow up and I’d have to rewrite that whole section of the book.

This book was a joy to write. It was fun revisiting some ideas and kind of seeing how they’ve held up and expanding on them and just looking outside of. Typical Wall Street writing to find ways to teach people, Hey, if only you don’t make these mistakes, you’ll be great. You’ll be fine.

[00:42:25] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom, saber Doug, and today is national. Create your own holiday day. Wait, I can create whatever holiday I want. Really? Oh, wow. Well, the Honor is all mine. Where do I start? Oh, oh, I know. We’re gonna call today B Chick the Wow. Wow Day. Because if it’s your birthday, happy birthday, and here’s why.

It’s about Chick a wow, wow day. If you were born today, or heck even this week, there’s a good chance your parents were getting busy making you on one holiday. I’ll be back right after I go Bring out the sparklers for today’s big reveal. You’re gonna love the answer.

Hey there, stackers. I’m the guy bringing to life a new holiday, and also the guy Joe’s mom won’t let carry fireworks into the basement to celebrate Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Shouldn’t we be able to celebrate B Chick A wow Wow day? However we want, according to Joe’s mom, the answer is quote Meek’s air quote sounds, what the hell?

Her air quote sounds, uh, okay, I’ll try it. Woo. Not if you wanna keep using my basement, woohoo. Because she thinks fireworks will quote. Maybe send the house up in flames. Woohoo. Little worrier. Sure. There was that one time last year when we singed OGs eyebrows, but that guy loved every minute of it. You know, once we got the cat unstuck from him, it’s a long story.

But on today’s reason for celebration, bow Chick a wow, wow day. If you are celebrating your birthday right now, which day did your parents probably have a great time celebrating? It turns out that your parents were making fireworks on Independence Day. Of course, it was also the day when you began seeking your own independence.

Nine months later, happy birthday stackers. I’m going back to celebrate more, and you are headed back to Joe and OG

[00:44:27] Joe: making some fireworks. Og. We had some fireworks down here in the basement with Perry Holts here, but some people go putting the math together for the first time. Wait a minute, hold on. Big holiday, tons of fun, barbecue, and, uh, some fireworks.

Next topic. Let’s, let’s head into your letters because, oh gee, we’ve had some, some great, great, great letters. Doug, you’ve got the mailbag. Yeah, let’s talk about some of these letters. I know that Gavin had some thoughts for us. Thanks, by the way, for the note Gavin, about our show on, you know, when the job goes.

Bye-bye. That was episode 1646 when the job crumbles preparing for life surprises. And this is the surprise that happens to some of us when we go to meet with our boss, uh, Doug, and. Hr, uh, HR happens to be in the room as well.

[00:45:21] Doug: Yep. Gavin sent us a great note saying, having been let go in recent months, I can state for a fact that many top performers, mid performers and bottom performers were let go in a downsizing event where we were names and numbers on a spreadsheet and it had zero to do with the rating we had or our value to the company.

This is especially true at very large publicly traded companies where I have seen it multiple times in my 29 year career. Luckily, this is the first time I was impacted. Thanks for the great show as always. Cheers. And Doug is amazing. Gavin

[00:45:57] Joe: might, might, might have put a word or two in there that Gavin may or may not have said.

Pretty much read it verbatim, I think. But the gist of the Sochi, you don’t know. I mean, when I got fired. I had just received the best performance evaluation I’d gotten at that company and two weeks later, and I knew, by the way, my boss did not like me, and I knew my boss was looking for a reason to fire me.

I told my dad a couple weeks before this was at a smaller place, so I knew that I was, somebody didn’t

[00:46:23] OG: like

[00:46:24] Joe: you. That’s so weird. I knew that I was already in the hot seat, and then I get this wonderful evaluation and then bam, it’s gone. So it can come at us outta the blue anytime.

[00:46:35] OG: Obviously, if you’re a top performer, you feel like you’re safer than bottom performers, but like Gavin said, at the end of the day, sometimes the reaper comes for you regardless, and you’re just a number on a spreadsheet with a cost and ongoing expenses to keep, and they just.

With a sledgehammer. Just chop you outta there. That doesn’t make any sense. What? With a big giant butcher knife chop you outta there. I don’t know. There it is. With

[00:47:01] Joe: a big sledgehammer. Just chop you out. I business, it’s not personal. They

[00:47:05] OG: cut down the tree with a big old hammer.

[00:47:09] Joe: How has this guy’s ever used a hammer before?

You know, we get pushback often. Gavin, to your point, we get pushed back often on why do I need an emergency fund? Why do I need this money sitting in a bank account doing nothing. And yet it’s that bank account that you’re so happy that you have. I had, I just happened to do a family member just recently who was super happy.

He’s like, I have, I think the number OG was $58,000 to live on $58,000 and knowing that you have $58,000 sitting in a safe place

[00:47:44] OG: mm-hmm.

[00:47:45] Joe: Is a great place to be. I think about

[00:47:47] OG: the government employees right now, there’s a bunch of. A bunch of stress going on. And if you’re a federal or you know, some states are going through it as well, employee and meta, you, you think, oh, I work at such and such a place, or I work for the US Treasury, I’m not going anywhere.

I’m an IRS agent. It’s like, oh, well maybe you are. And um,

[00:48:09] Doug: not the job for life you thought it was.

[00:48:10] OG: Yeah. It’s not gonna make it feel any better, you know, if you get let go, but it’s gonna give you the opportunity to just go just a half a step slower on the next decision, whatever. It’s, you know, you still have to hustle.

You still gotta do all that stuff necessary to find the next thing, but if you’ve got a little extra cash or you’ve got your emergency fund in the right place, you don’t have to be as worried.

[00:48:31] Joe: We talked about 10 of Barry’s maxims around investing on Monday, and I think OG this kind of applies because the people that I worry about are not the people that are working for shaky organizations.

To your point where they think they see it coming, it is the people. A hundred percent to your point. They’re like, no, no, no. I got a great job. I got a great boss. I love it. And as a guy who’s had a great boss who was then replaced with the worst boss I’ve ever had, apologies. You’re just, you’re just one your one job change a notch above you.

Yeah. From going from your favorite job to a horror story. And that could happen next week. Yeah, absolutely. Horrible stuff. Yeah. Great. Great points there, Gavin. Thanks for that one. What else we got in the mail bag, Doug? Uh,

[00:49:16] Doug: we got another note from Lance who says, or asks, could you discuss the pros and cons of Buffy ETFs?

Is it possible to create your own, I think that’s Buffer ETFs. Oh, sometimes I just read so fast.

[00:49:31] Joe: Buffy ETF is is after that older show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ETS made after that. Yeah, that’s what I thought he would,

[00:49:38] Doug: I mean, that’s what

[00:49:38] Joe: I’d wanna create.

[00:49:40] Doug: Absolutely. Anyway, he wa he wants to know. Lance wants to know, is it possible to create your own and avoid high fees?

Thanks. And Doug is amazing. He said that too at the end.

[00:49:49] Joe: This is also OG after some of the investing shows that we’ve been talking about lately and some of diversification matters. But what exactly is a buffer? ETF? What’s he even talking about?

[00:50:00] OG: I have no idea. I had to look it up. I figured. I would guess.

And I guess, right. But it’s, uh, basically a scam where companies try to get you to give them more money in exchange for your results. And, uh, that’s that

[00:50:15] Joe: Wait, is a buffer. ETF then buffer. ETF, like a, um, like a, basically

[00:50:19] OG: what it, what it does is it combines option trading with A ETF in this case. And the idea being that with some option trades, you can limit your downside.

Oh,

[00:50:32] Joe: this goes back to our crypto, our zero. Market neutral crypto fund garbage that we talked about a few episodes ago.

[00:50:41] OG: Well, or what Barry talked about in his book, there’s no such thing as the free lunch and everything. Everything has a cost associated with it. There is no such thing as 20% risk free. Just like there’s no such thing as inexpensive risk adjusted every time you take money to prevent upside, you have to be or prevent downside, rather.

You have to be preventing upside. That’s just how it works. So I looked this up. I looked up an iShares product. Um, iShares a good company, BlackRock. Basically it’s a year product. It’s a ETF that you buy and they say, okay, we’re gonna give you, uh, 10% on the s and p. And you go, great, that sounds awesome.

Until they start using these option trades to account for potential downside. As I look at it today, they have 108 days left. This goes until the end of June, I guess. And the maximum upside of this fund is 6% right now. The s and p over the last one year is nine and a half. So if the s and p was flat for the next three months, obviously, you know, may, may, may or may not be.

It’s a 3% delta. You’re gonna get six versus nine, and I get that. The whole idea is like, well, yeah, but I didn’t lose a whole bunch of money. How many times I’ve given up two, three, 4% a year? Do you have to get before you make up for the one time of, you know, a minus 20 and the minus 20 only sticks with you if you sell it?

Like that’s the crazy thing. Again, this all just boils down to if you’re trying to match up your timeframes of your goals with the timeframes of your money, none of this ever has to be a concern to you. Where it gets to be a concern is where you go, oh my gosh, I need to invest really super aggressively, or I need a high return.

You don’t even think about investing aggressively. You just go, I want a high return. Then it goes down by 30 or 40%. You go, oh, the market’s rigged. I knew that was a scam. Da da da da da. It’s like, well, no, that’s just part of the deal. The stock market one year and seven is gonna go down a third. Let’s have just look at history.

It’s, it’s all there. It’s like when people go like, oh, tech stocks only go up. It’s like, wait, no, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve had this book before. I’ve read it. It was, it was in 2000. We were all there, the three of us. If you weren’t there in 2000, ask somebody who was the famous Mark Twain quote. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

This is the same thing over and over and over again. Anytime, and this is when you get to market volatility. Go watch your favorite news channel. Fox, M-S-N-B-C. Either one, doesn’t matter. All the ads during the day are for gold. CNBC, not M-S-N-B-C. No M-S-N-B-C or CNBC, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Are you talking about your favorite political channel?

I’m just saying news. Yeah, like wherever you, whatever, get your news if you Oh, gotcha. Okay. You know, news channel, money channel doesn’t matter. I don’t really care. Yep. Some sort of cable news network. How’s that cnn? Sure. Yeah. Whatever the pleasure is. Okay. You’re gonna see two ads. The one ad is gonna be William de vain going to My Money’s in gold.

Or you’re gonna see the commercial about protect your downside with blah, blah, blah annuity. All the smart people are doing blah, blah, blah annuity. And that’s all that’s on people’s minds right now is, oh my God, the s p’s down 10%. Well, God, what do we do guys? Look, the, the intra year peak to valley average is 14.

If minus 10 gets you all squirrely, you’re doing it wrong. You, it doesn’t move anything until minus 15. You’re not even average until minus 15 in a year. So wake me up when it’s minus 15 and we can, and, and we can say, oh hey. Guess what? Today we’re average, it’s an average year. JP Morgan puts together this great report every quarter and they update some things monthly called the Guide to the Markets.

And you can just Google this called JP Morgan Guide to the Markets, and you can download the slides. They don’t add any commentary to it. Generally it’s just data. And I find this data to be very helpful to really provide some context for where we happen to be in this seasonality or cycle, or whatever you wanna call it.

I don’t think it’s predictive in any nature, and I don’t think it’s, um, a, a necessarily decision making tool, right? It’s not like, oh, we’re PEs are really high, therefore we should do this. But I think it provides context and color commentary for what’s, you know, what you’re seeing and experiencing. Is it more likely to have a lower return year when you’ve had three out of the last four years be 20%?

Yeah, that kinda makes sense to me. Right. If the average, the s and p is 10 over the last freaking a hundred years and you bang out two, two or three plus twenties in a row, well what does that mean? Does it mean that historically the average from now on is gonna be 20 for the next hundred years? Or does it mean maybe just maybe that we have to get a zero in there to get the 20 and a zero to equal, equal 10, or it was a 30?

Do we have to get a minus five? You know, like this just, I dunno. I gotta stop.

[00:55:46] Doug: Just

[00:55:46] OG: breathe through.

[00:55:47] Doug: Wow. His face got redder and redder and redder throughout that entire thing. I wasn’t gonna stop him. Were you gonna stop him? No way. I was terrified. Breathe.

[00:55:57] OG: Breathe. I need that. What’s that? I, I think I’m gonna get out my, hold on. Go back to your subscriptions. Subscriptions. Calm

[00:56:04] Joe: app.

Calm app.

[00:56:05] OG: Yeah. Subscribe.

[00:56:05] Joe: It’s a perfect day for Lance’s. Question with Barry here. How not to invest, don’t invest and, uh, in things like a, like a buffer. ETF. Well, I mean, he

[00:56:14] OG: said, can I do this on my own? And the answer is, yeah, you can. You can just go buy puts or, you know, sell calls every side of that transaction.

There’s a, a good thing and a not so good thing. I mean, just, you go, well, if I bought a put, which means I’ve got the ripe, but not the obligation to sell at today’s price in the future, that could be beneficial for you. Right? If the market goes down 20% and you’ve got a piece of paper that says, well, hold on a second.

It says, here, I get to sell as of March 15th, I’d like to use this. They go, oh, all right, then you, you’re good. But how many times do you not win that? How many times do you pay that for that piece of paper and it expires worthless. An option contract has a $0 intrinsic value. There’s no, there’s no terminal, or I’m sorry, terminal value.

There is no, the end of the day, it’s worth zero. It’s just a, just a binary gamble. You can look and say, well, but I thank the market. Cool. Make your bets then, but know that when you do that, you are impacting your results. You’re impacting your returns on both sides because if you spend the money and you don’t get to exercise that option.

What did you do? You used your capital, it went to zero. It was like buying a stock that went to zero, like it just, you know, whatever.

[00:57:23] Joe: Here’s the problem though, og, which is kind of goes back to our show on Monday, which is if, if you’re trying to control volatility on something that you don’t need for 15 years, my question is why?

Yeah, why? Because all you’re doing every time you buy an option, the option has an intrinsic cost. And, and in some cases, I like the cost because I like the insurance policy. If I know that I’m in a position too long that I probably shouldn’t be in, but I wanna see if I can ring it out a little more, I might buy an option and fully accepting the fact that I gotta pay X amount of money as an insurance policy to ensure the fact that this.

Stupidity that I’m engaging in is not gonna go against me, right? That, that I can go ahead and do something, which is not technically what I maybe should be doing. But if I, you know, if I get a strong feeling that this is gonna continue to go the way that I want, I can buy an insurance policy against that.

But I also accept the fact that that’s gonna cost me, that it’s gonna bite into my return

[00:58:22] OG: big time. Yeah, it sure does. And the, and the less risk you’re willing to take, the more that cost is, you know, just like any insurance.

[00:58:30] Joe: Yeah. Lance, thanks a ton for that. No, thanks for winding OG up, Lance. That was our whole goal with that one, Lance.

So mission accomplished

[00:58:36] Doug: buddy. Uh, who else we got? Yeah, we got another really good one from Bob, uh, stacker. Bob. He says regarding SB 1653, which if I’m not mistaken, was first week of March, of this year of 2025. Yeah.

[00:58:51] Joe: This was, this was our, uh, one of our rewind episodes actually. And I think what Bob and Bob, by the way.

Might have missed this, that, that this episode was from when we were just coming out of Covid. And so there was a big discussion about work from anywhere. ’cause if you remember, Doug, everybody was working from home. Everybody was still working from wherever the heck that they, that they were. And, and the beginning of his message, which I didn’t include here, was about how man, you guys really talked a lot about working for many.

Well, Bob and I apologize ’cause I did not put this at the top of the episode enough. That greatest hits episode. Everybody was working from home anyway. But he does make some

[00:59:30] Doug: fantastic

[00:59:31] Joe: points. Yeah, let

[00:59:32] Doug: me, let me go on here ’cause he does make some good points. Bob says, while I support remote work, this episode missed the mark for workers who cannot work from home.

Uh, it highlighted a stark disparity within organizations, those who work remotely versus those who must be physically present, which can be both divisive and unfair. Consider professions like medical workers, restaurant staff, law enforcement officers, and many others who face additional challenges and expenses such as long commutes.

And then he actually sent us a link. You referenced a 2024 piece from the US Career institute.edu. A piece that came out after this episode originally aired. But anyway, it was a good article. The article mentioned that remote workers in the same metro area reportedly receive a $12,000 raise over their in-office counterparts.

A figure that doesn’t even factor in the true cost of commuting. Yes, issues like the blurred boundaries of work-life balance for remote workers and increased productivity are real, but the use of work phones suggest that the difference between remote work and office work may be less significant than assumed.

After all, a call during a 72 minute daily commute is still work related. The tone of SB 1653 felt dismissive of those who must report to an office

[01:00:45] Joe: and that, and that, by the way, is because it was during Covid Bob.

[01:00:50] bit: It was because it wasn’t an option. Don’t get me wrong,

[01:00:52] Joe: there were people like my spouse who were going into the hospital every day.

That did have to work from work, work from there, but I don’t think we were dismissing people outta hand as much as we were acknowledging the times. But anyway, continue. ’cause I, I like where he’s going, but he

[01:01:06] Doug: still brings up some good points. So it, it’s, it’s worth going through it, and that’s why I wanted to bring it up today.

He says, could we explore solutions to address this disparity? For instance, should in-office workers receive higher compensation to offset additional costs or should remote work come with adjusted pay, reflecting its conveniences throughout the pandemic? I embraced a hybrid model and experienced firsthand the cultural and organizational benefits of being in the office.

The collective effort, everyone coming together despite individual hardships, creates a sense of unity and shared responsibility. This is not an anti remote work stance, Bob says, rather it is a call for fairness without addressing these discrepancies, either by equalizing conditions or compensating differences.

The concerns highlighted in the episode may increasingly resonate with a growing number of workers.

[01:01:55] Joe: Well, and I think it makes an interesting point, OG, about people that you know, A, the whole cost of your job. What does your job really cost? What does it cost you to do the job? And when you’re looking at salary A versus salary B, do I get the convenience of working from home versus the commuting cost and all the extra cost that Bob mentions here of going into the office?

I need to compare those in terms of fairness. I think fairness though, OG is up to the marketplace. If there’s a boss that will pay you more to come into the office, what does the boss get for that? Hopefully the boss gets loyalty, gets people that stay at the job for more than four point x years, which is the average amount of time somebody stays in a job.

So hopefully that pays that. You have an enlightened boss that does it, and I think looking for that job is a noble thing. But I think the question. And this is capitalism, right? If Barry Barry here today is a great thing about this with markets going up and down, job markets change. So it’s up to employers.

Do you wanna reward that? Do you want, and if you don’t, is it gonna be harder for you to find a worker? I don’t know. That’s all marketplace related.

[01:03:06] OG: I don’t know what there is to add commentary here. I think everything works itself out how it’s supposed to work itself out. If you, if you are underpaying for a service or for a position regardless of whether or not it’s in the office or not in the office, eventually you’ll figure that out because the market forces will, will align against you.

And if you’re overpaying, you’ll figure that out too, because you’ll have lots of applicants, you’ll figure that out too. So I don’t think you can mandate or regulate, you know, if you work from home, you get an extra, you know, this, you, you get a work from home fee. Like what? Could you imagine Doug would be incredulous?

He’d be like, what? What do you mean I owe you guys money to work here? Well, it’s a work from home fee. Doug

[01:03:51] Joe: mom keeps trying to do that to us. A base basement related tax.

[01:03:56] OG: But I do think that there’s a little bit of a moral obligation to, you know, there was this hack, I don’t know if it’s still as prevalent, but there’s this, there’s this thing where people would work two jobs.

Have you seen this? Yes. Like you work from home so you can just work for two companies, like they don’t know and you’re not gonna volunteer the info. So

[01:04:16] Joe: we did the story og you remember before Covid guys? We did that story about the guy that got caught. He made, I think $80,000 a year working this job. He paid somebody else in India to do the job for him, $40,000, and he ended up doing nothing by outsourcing his own job to somebody else.

[01:04:37] OG: I think companies now have best efforts clauses in their employment and agreements and stuff, like, your full-time focus needs to be on this organization. You know, I, I don’t know how you police that, but I think morally it’d be a little jacked up to be working for one company and then also working for, you know, a competitor or something.

I don’t, I don’t think that that really flies, but I don’t know. I mean, you can work it. Dick’s Sporting goods and go work at McDonald’s too. You know? Why can’t you have two part-time jobs? And what’s the difference by having two full-time jobs? Maybe I don’t, I don’t know.

[01:05:09] Joe: It’s interesting to see too as, uh, you know, that greatest this episode was coming outta the pandemic and around that time, Doug, we had a, we had a discussion about work from home and you were talking about how work from home is better.

And a lot of our stackers, a hundred percent agreed with you, disagreed with me. That being in the office, I thought was, was, was where we were headed, but it does appear for better or worse, that is where we are headed. You look at the statistics of the number of people that are in the office now versus in the office a year ago and the number of companies saying Return to the office.

Heck, that was part of the, you know, some of this new federal government stuff. Nope, you’re not working for home anymore. You are coming in. Which is funny when you look at Washington DC having gotten rid of a lot of parking spaces created, created some, some issues. ’cause we thought it was forever.

[01:06:00] Doug: But a lot of that is driven, not necessarily by higher quality of output of the work, but more around the economics of, we have this office space that we’re committed to and we need people in here using it.

That’s not what you’re

[01:06:14] Joe: hearing CEOs say though. They’re talking about collaboration.

[01:06:17] Doug: Of course not. You can’t carry the flag of we’re already paying for this shit, so you gotta come in and use it. That’s not marketable. But you can talk about culture and, and collaboration and all of the other things. Of course, we’re

[01:06:29] Joe: not gonna solve this today, but I totally agree with the collaboration piece.

I collaborate much better when people are in person much, much better. It’s a thing. And Doug’s looking at me like, and you’ve worked in office in how long, Joe?

[01:06:41] Doug: Well, I was thinking about the three of us who do not work or collaborate physically together more than a couple times a year.

[01:06:48] Joe: Yeah. There’s, I get this huge spark when I go to industry conferences, when I went to Chicago to Strategic Coach.

When I’m in the room with people collaborating, I find phenomenal stuff happens. So when they say it, whether it’s, whether it’s window dressing or not, by the way, I was at the Cumulus Studios, the mothership of the overlord, corporate overlords who, who distribute our show and Oh my goodness. Talk about empty Doug.

I mean, they did these, uh, and, and they’re stuck in a long-term lease, you know? And their office is, their offices are probably made for, I’m gonna say the one floor I was on, I know they have two floors, probably. I’m gonna say 300 or 400 people. And there were maybe 12 Yeah. People in that entire office.

Yeah. By the way, talk about, uh, morale killer is, you know, if you’ve got an office that’s made for 12 people and there’s 12 people in there, you’ve got an office made for 20 people or 12 people in there, there’s a little bit of morale kill. I went in there and my morale went down.

[01:07:43] Doug: Right? No different than going into a restaurant or a bar.

That’s huge. And is, and there’s empty bunch of empty tables that you just don’t wanna be there as much at seven o’clock on Friday. Can this place be? Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyway. Horrible. I had great points. Thanks for sending that into us, Bob.

[01:07:58] Joe: Yeah. Thanks to everybody. Uh, Doug, if you don’t mind, I got just a couple quick ones that came from Spotify conversations.

Alright. Which have been really fun over there on our, our spending Too Much Money episode, which, uh, we got a lot of feedback on. Someone on TikTok OG looking at your ability to buy two Xboxes to solve the. To solve the problem.

[01:08:21] OG: Was it

[01:08:21] Joe: well received? They said something, uh, funny and I said something funny back.

We’ll just leave it at that, that og. He’s a man of the people. L Hussy says, when we were talking about the huge cost of airport food, taking off from Las Vegas to Charlotte, just paid $17 for a bacon, egg, and cheese, and a cup of coffee From Rachel’s kitchen at Gate D preposterous airport food. Not that good and ugly.

JD Dozer had, uh, had a recommendation or had a request for next year. They loved jd, loved the best tax prep software episode that we did with the team from the college investor. Eric Rosenberg had said, as an early tax preparer, I’d love to hear this episode in February. Wanted to hear it sooner. Loved the show.

And we got it as soon as Robert told us it was out, jd. So I would love it sooner too. And in fact, I passed this on to Robert Farrington, who’s the head of the college investor saying, please give it to us the second it’s out. We’ll see if we can get it to you in February. ’cause I agree. Best tax prep software.

We want that as early as you can, you can possibly get it. And then last on our episode about the surprising benefits of financial inaction. The same episode we talked about earlier. A nice comment from, uh, it looks like somebody’s phone number, Joe Duggan og. If you’re ever feeling burnout, let this comment be a reminder of the reason why you do it.

I’m so thankful to be 50% of your fan base. Ha, keep up the good work. Thank you so much to everybody

[01:09:51] Doug: for sending all this wonderfulness in. I mean, why wouldn’t you read that submitter’s name out loud? Well, it, it looks like it’s their phone number. That’s my point. Eight six

[01:10:03] Joe: seven five three oh nine

[01:10:05] Doug: oh, okay.

[01:10:06] Joe: Alright. I’m gonna call that person in, is their phone number All right. I think it’s gonna do it for today. Thanks for hanging out with us. Everyone, as usual, love your feedback on our episodes. Also, big thanks to Barry. I’ve never had an interview where, as you heard today, Steve, our engineer just had to slowly move into it because we just started talking.

Literally, I. Immediately, Barry and I just start chatting. I’m like, well, I guess we’re in the interview now. Guess we’re going. Never had that happen in almost 15 years. But Doug, something happens at the end of every episode. What should be on our to-do list today?

[01:10:41] Doug: Well, Joe first take some advice from Barry Ri Holtz.

How not to invest is every bit as important as knowing how to invest. And you can learn lessons from many areas of life, not just your financial statements. Second, our stackers. Brilliant people coming up with even more ideas on job losses, working from home and how Doug is awesome. All kinds of great stuff.

But the big lesson, don’t Tell Joe’s Mom, you wanna celebrate Bow took a wow, wow day. Unless you want a speech about quote, wearing protection, unquote. Wait, you want me to wear gloves while I sing? I don’t get it.

Thanks to Barry Ritholtz for joining us today. You’ll find his book, how Not To Invest wherever Finer Books are Sold. We’ll also include links in our show [email protected]. This show is the Property of SP podcast, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul Sea. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends.

You’ll find out about our awesome [email protected], along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.

This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Moms Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[01:13:11] Joe: Welcome to the after show. This is a part of the show that doesn’t exist. It was fantastic getting a, uh, an email also from Derek. Derek, by the way. Knows how to pronounce the name of a town in Tennessee that I said completely wrong, Doug. How do you say? S-E-V-I-E-R-V-I-L-L-E. Isn’t it Seaville? It’s uh, Ville.

Seaville, Seaville. Ville, according to Derek Seville, I think Derek Derek’s probably gonna correct that too. Derek writes, Joe, I’m the smart ass from Tennessee who assisted you with the pronunciation of Seville last year. I’m listening to the Go Bagg episode, and this is what’s in your financial Go bag, right?

What do you take with you if your house burned down? Whatever might happen. And asked Paula if she carried gold. She said, no way in hell, Joe. That’s my interpretation. And OG said Heavy, which reminded me of an f and a awesome movie you guys need to check out on the back porch. Plots related to gold’s weight, although it isn’t mentioned till the last three seconds of the movie.

Oh, spoiler, Derek. Nice job. If you haven’t seen the 2022 World War II era, finish movie sisu. You need to nay. You must splurge the $4 and 32 cents and stream the thing on Prime. It’s John Wick. For old dudes like me slash us, speak for yourself, Derek. Very bloody. But killing Nazis is always allowed. I say I guarantee.

Oh gee. You’ll give it two thumbs up. And I hear sequels coming soon. Well, I guess I should get back to work since they’re paying me and all your pal Derek. Derek wrote us on the job to let us know that we need to, have you guys even heard of this movie, SISU? Never heard of it. No. But World War II movie Killing.

Nazis. Nazis, Nazis. I’m all in. Yeah, that sounds fabulous. Uh, OG you up to date on Reacher?

[01:15:15] OG: Um, I think I might be a week behind.

[01:15:19] Joe: Doug, how about you?

[01:15:20] Doug: No, I haven’t even started this latest season of it. Oh

[01:15:22] Joe: gee.

[01:15:23] OG: I think it’s really good this season, don’t you? I thought the, um, I was like, it got to the spot where I was like, okay, this kinda seems like the ending and then.

I’m like, well, this is episode three, so this must not be the ending. Must get somebody else said that to me. It must get really turned on from here. I don’t like we’ve, we’ve killed all everyone on this. We’ve killed everyone. There’s no one alive left, so must be time to wrap this up.

[01:15:49] Joe: That’s what Cheryl doesn’t like it because Reacher’s bloodier than ever and she really likes that character.

And she’s like, he just has no thought at all when he just breaks somebody’s neck. And I’m like, look at who he’s dealing with. These guys are gonna kill him any second if he like, the stakes are so high on these episodes.

[01:16:07] OG: Seems like it. So yeah, a little, little behind on that. We started the show with my son, zero hour, zero day zero, something on Netflix.

Haven’t really gotten into that yet. And then I’m trying to get my kids to rewatch 24 with me. Oh, you love 24. I loved it. It was so great. And so we got through the first, I dunno, maybe four or five episodes of season one. And, and you know, they’re still trying to find it, you know what I mean? Like, it’s not vintage Jack yet.

You don’t know any of the characters. So I do, of course. And I know how it ends. So, you know, it’s kind of fun watching, watching the scenes and the kids are like, oh yeah, he’s totally a bad guy. And you’re like, is he? I don’t know. We’ll see. You know, and you’re trying to figure out who the, who the Mole is the first season.

And, um, anyways, they’re, they’re much more interested in playing video games and hanging out with old man. So

[01:17:02] Doug: yeah, it’s a great, I mean, 24 is a great concept and I got my kids to watch it. Quite a while ago when they were younger, like 14, 15 and even they loved it. And a newer show, brand new show actually that has, I’ll say similar plot convention.

A structure is called The Pit on Max, and it’s essentially er part two. Remember the er, the hospital from the nineties? Um, George Clooney got his big, uh, tons. Julian Margolis and what’s Juliana Margolis? Uh, Margoles. Yeah. Margoles tons. I mean lot of people. Noah Wiley, who is in the pit, and they actually wanted Noah Wiley and um, might have been John Wells.

I’m John. Uh, no. John Wick wanted to actually create ER two and the Michael Kreon estate said no. Really? So they kind of, they went ahead and did it anyways. They just moved it to Pittsburgh. It’s Noah Wiley is the lead. Doctor for NER and the whole season is one shift. It’s one 15 hour shift. And so each episode is an hour long, much like 24, but I think they’re gonna do 15 episodes if I’m not mistaken.

It’s pretty cool. Now that structure comes with some limitations. You can’t really develop a lot of relationships with people in one shift. And so even over the course of a whole season, people can’t really like get to know each other, have any romances or any of that kind of stuff. ’cause there’s just not enough time.

Which is

[01:18:37] OG: the thing you mainly look for in That’s in our shows.

[01:18:40] Doug: Yeah. Well, but it happened in er, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of hanky panky, which apparently is a very real thing in hospitals. The whole reason I wanted to go to med school, that’s. I mean, practice uch, would you practice Buch day or whatever the, in the bar closet.

But, uh, it’s really good. It’s very graphic because it’s on max and it’s not on a b, you know, a broadcast network. TV saw more of a birth scene. I saw more in a birth scene than I saw when my own two sons were born.

[01:19:11] Joe: Did you pass out watching it on tv? I,

[01:19:14] Doug: I looked away a couple times. Hell

[01:19:15] Joe: yes. Mrs. Neighbor

[01:19:16] Doug: Doug comes in the room and you’re

[01:19:18] Joe: sprawled out on the floor.

Yes. What

[01:19:21] Doug: happened? But, uh, well, you, when, when OG brought up 24, it made me think of the pit. It’s, it’s good. I’m gonna keep watching it. Here’s what I don’t like. They have got a checklist of all of societal current day societal ills, and they’re just checking the box on every one of them. And so I’m only in like hour number nine of this one shift, meaning I’m on episode nine and we’ve had.

Every headline you can think of. We have teenage pregnancy, we have fentanyl crisis, we have, uh, white collar opioid addiction. We have, you’re taking them all on violence, on, you know, medical staff. They’re all incredibly valid, real things that are happening. I just don’t know that every one of the, oh, we’re about to have a mass shooting.

I don’t know that every one of those things happens in the first eight hours of an ER shift. That’s a busy city. Yeah, that’s the part. I know Pittsburgh has its challenges like every other big city, but I don’t think it’s quite that bad to get one of everything.

[01:20:22] Joe: The tri, the tri in Pittsburgh is lit. My niece, uh, just told me this last week, she’s gonna go to college in Pittsburgh, so I’ll be visiting Pittsburgh soon.

Chatham University, the Pirates,

[01:20:35] OG: I wanna do just a Pittsburgh Pirates that is not the Chatham Pirates. I don’t know what the Chatham,

[01:20:40] Joe: I know little, little liberal arts school. Pittsburgh, I wanna do a quick movie review before we say goodbye. Uh, two years ago my, one of my favorite movies, if you guys remember, was called Cabrini, about Mother Cabrini.

[01:20:54] Doug: I’ve been looking for, I remember you raving about it. Tough. I’ve been looking for it. Is it on streaming yet? I can’t find it.

[01:20:59] Joe: Well, the Angel Studios fantastic studio. That makes feel good movies. Wait, it sounds horrible, by the way. It sounds like those people that make board games that are educational and you’re like, hard pass.

I don’t, I don’t go to a movie to feel good. I do not play board games to learn anything, but they do a really, really good job. Cabrini, sadly Doug, they have their own app and you, you have to stream on their own. Friends of ours were able to watch it on an airplane for some reason it was on an American Airlines flight recently, Cabrini, and they saw it.

But same studio just came out with a movie that we went and saw last week called Rule Breakers. And here’s just a little clip ’cause I know Doug always wants to, he’s like, play the clip.

[01:21:45] bit: Welcome the first Robots Worldwide competition Afghanistan.

The computers come today for the boys.

[01:21:59] Barry: Girls outside.

[01:22:02] bit: The first time I touched a computer.

It is like a light in the darkness and my tiny world got bigger and bigger. We have no computer classes. I’ll learn how to use these and then I’ll teach girls and have honest time. 10 classrooms are a drop in the ocean. It’s not changing anything. We’re looking for four girls who would like to learn about robotics and compete with teams from other countries.

It’ll show Aron

[01:22:33] Joe: girls. Can you imagine starting in 2007 that you want to teach Afghani girls how to use computers? And then, uh, as you heard, uh, the woman, this is a true story, by the way, just like Cabrini was. This woman says, you know what? I got 10 classrooms of girls learning how to do computers. That is a drop in the ocean.

We’re never gonna get my mission accomplished. And she decides after she consults with some Silicon Valley people that, you know what, we gotta get the word out nationwide about what we’re doing, not nationwide, excuse me, worldwide, about what we’re doing. So they create a team called the Afghan Dreamers, which is an all girls robotics team to go compete around the world.

So they’re dealing with Afghan societal pressures. They’re dealing, obviously with upheaval over the years in their backyard. They’re dealing with social mores that are different. There’s a scene where one of the other contestants from one of the other countries, they, they had a custom where they would autograph each other’s shirts at the end of the competition.

And one girl. Let a boy touch her shirt and that is a no-no. And there were death threats to the woman that created the robotics competition. There’s so much tension you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Guys, this, this was another great movie, just, just a great, great, great movie called Rule Breakers.

And I know that it’s only gonna be in the theater for a short amount of time, but if you get a chance to see rule Breakers, a hundred, a hundred percent, I left the movie. It was funny, the first thing I said when the lights came up, I turned to Cheryl. I go, oh, what a waste of time. And she, and she started laughing ’cause she knew exactly where I was.

She’s like, that is the best two hours we’ve had in a long time. Wow. And at a time when everybody’s bitching and complaining each other all the time, you know, I gotta spend part of my day on social media, which drives me crazy a lot of the time. Or you turn on the news and it’s people complaining and ugh.

Just to have a heartwarming story about people trying to succeed against all odds. What a, what a great, great, great story rule.

[01:24:44] Doug: How’d you hear about it? What made you pick that movie to go see?

[01:24:46] Joe: You know what’s funny? You know, Cheryl and I, Doug look every Tuesday for the movie to go see. And, and we just went and we looked, I’m like a rule rubric because I dunno what this is.

And it’s funny because it came up and it said from Angel Studios and I remember Angel Studios. I’m like, okay, that’s Cabrini. And then I see the preview and I went, gotta see that next. Gotta see that next. And then, yeah. Cool. Ran to the theater. ’cause I didn’t know how long it was gonna be there. Uh, which you’ll probably need to do too, if you wanna see movie.

I can’t say I’ve ever

[01:25:13] Doug: picked a movie to see based on the studio

[01:25:16] Joe: that made it. Yeah. Never. A lot of times, you know, I wanna see Black Bag because it’s a Stephen Soderberg movie and I’m really excited about that movie with, uh, Kate Blanchet and, um, Michael Fastbender. It’s the Spy new spy movie that’s coming out.

We’re gonna see that tomorrow. Uh, so I’ll pick it based on director, right? Yeah. That’s more common. Yeah, but never, oh, that’s an MGM movie, right? Oh, ne Netflix made that. I know it. Yeah. So rule breaker, big thumbs up.

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