Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Locks Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Allaway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, you know what topic we'd never really talk about
Speaker 1: or really do. It's like we never really do anything
Speaker 1: related like personal finance, person.
Speaker 2: Like what to actually do with all the information that
Speaker 2: we talk about on a bi weekly basis. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: it means for making money.
Speaker 1: It's like a huge part of like financial media. But
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I like to usually like what's
Speaker 1: going to happen with the quantitative titaning.
Speaker 2: It's a tough one because I feel like you can
Speaker 2: talk about it generally, but also there's the temptation a
Speaker 2: lot of people end up doing this to give specific recommendations.
Speaker 1: Right like get this credit card, Tesla, or yeah, either
Speaker 1: buy this dock, get this credit card, don't buy avocado
Speaker 1: toast like all this stuff, or like you know, move
Speaker 1: your money. But like it's kind of like cliche topic.
Speaker 1: But like, on the other hand, I do think it's
Speaker 1: interesting right now because we've just had this like a
Speaker 1: sort of extraordinary like three years of like inflation, which
Speaker 1: many people have never really experienced in their lives, And
Speaker 1: so to my mind, that raises some interesting questions like
Speaker 1: how is this going to like change people's behavior and
Speaker 1: what should what have people done in the past during
Speaker 1: periods of inflation? Like there are really interesting sort of
Speaker 1: like personal finance, spending investing questions that like will come
Speaker 1: out of this era well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and also the prospect of just finally actually earning
Speaker 2: some interest on a basic savings account. I know it's
Speaker 2: still below the level of inflation, but for people who've
Speaker 2: been earning zero percent for most of their professional lives,
Speaker 2: I think it's very.
Speaker 1: I think now it's kind of positive, right because you
Speaker 1: could play five percent in the CD and maybe inflation
Speaker 1: we three gonna have, right, you know. I asked my
Speaker 1: dad recently about his memory of the nineteen seventies. I
Speaker 1: was like, what was that like? You know, the first
Speaker 1: thing he said was like I could really get a
Speaker 1: lot of money out of bank account day.
Speaker 2: Oh, there we go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, you know, there's all kinds of interesting things about
Speaker 1: like how people actually deal.
Speaker 2: With right and also what happens when we have a
Speaker 2: sort of regime change and how do people react to
Speaker 2: it and how much have things actually changed?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, and we've been talking about some you know,
Speaker 1: some of the real estate episodes. Yeah, like how much
Speaker 1: people like anchored to the ZIP era. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: as if like that was normal. Yeah, so it's like
Speaker 1: when have people adjusted? Is there still a big adjustment
Speaker 1: left to go? Like, there's just some really interesting questions. Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I think we should talk about them. And we
Speaker 1: really do have the perfect guest. We're going to be
Speaker 1: speaking with Morgan Household, longtime writer, the author of the
Speaker 1: best selling book The Psychology of Money is More books
Speaker 1: coming out hugely popular in this area. Morgan, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on Outlass.
Speaker 3: Well, Joe and Tracy happy to be here, Thanks for
Speaker 3: having me.
Speaker 1: Can I just say, all right, I'm gonna just say
Speaker 1: something just to let's set this scene a little bit,
Speaker 1: like I said in the beginning of the conversation, like
Speaker 1: personal finances a genre. It's this little hackney, this kind.
Speaker 2: Of cliche, but Morgan does it well.
Speaker 1: Years ago, like twenty eleven, twenty twelve, I was a
Speaker 1: business insider Morgan was it the Motley Fool? And I
Speaker 1: said to my former colleague at BI Sam Row, Morgan
Speaker 1: is the first personal finance writer that I like. And
Speaker 1: now here's this huge.
Speaker 2: That's high praise. High praise from that means I was.
Speaker 1: I just want to say I was long Morgan Household
Speaker 1: very early on.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I was long Joe during that period as well as well.
Speaker 3: So this is this is open up to Since then,
Speaker 3: I've always I feel like I've always done the same
Speaker 3: thing since two thousand and eight when I started this,
Speaker 3: which was you know you mentioned most personal finance writing
Speaker 3: kind of falls into two buckets. It's either here's the
Speaker 3: credit card you should you should use, or here's the
Speaker 3: hot stock you should buy. The credit card part, you know,
Speaker 3: I was never just I was never that interested in it,
Speaker 3: and the here's the stock you should buy always felt
Speaker 3: almost immoral to me because you don't know who's reading
Speaker 3: your stuff. Is this an eighteen year old day trader
Speaker 3: or a ninet year old widow? Like who are you
Speaker 3: recommending this to? So because of that, I always I
Speaker 3: just kind of naturally fell into this bucket of like
Speaker 3: what's going through people's heads. I don't want to give
Speaker 3: anybody advice. I don't want to tell anybody what to
Speaker 3: do because I don't know you, but I'm really curious
Speaker 3: what's going on inside your head. Particularly I started as
Speaker 3: a writer in two thousand and eight, so the world
Speaker 3: was falling to pieces, and it was just this idea
Speaker 3: of like, well, what the heck just happened here? Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think once I kind of realized that you
Speaker 3: could not explain two thousand and eight through the lens
Speaker 3: of a finance or an economics textbook. It's just not
Speaker 3: in there to explain the bubble, the bus, the bailouts,
Speaker 3: not an economics textbook. But psychology had a lot to
Speaker 3: say about it. Sociology like keeping up the Joneses that
Speaker 3: perfectly explained the housing bubble. So there are all these
Speaker 3: other fields outside of finance that filled in the gaps.
Speaker 3: So that to me was like, ah, I'm just really
Speaker 3: interested in how you can connect psychology and sociology and
Speaker 3: political science to try to explain what people are thinking
Speaker 3: rather than what they should do. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Both Joe and I we sort of started our financial
Speaker 2: journalism careers around two thousand and eight, and it was
Speaker 2: a great time to do it because you're sort of
Speaker 2: on the same level as everyone else. No one knew
Speaker 2: really what was going on, but talk to us a
Speaker 2: little bit more than about your approach. How does taking
Speaker 2: that sociological or psychological angle actually inform the way you
Speaker 2: think about personal finance investing.
Speaker 3: We let's say there's two elements to this. One is
Speaker 3: I'm a writer, and then the other is I'm interested
Speaker 3: in behavioral finance, and you really have to mix both
Speaker 3: of those because in writing, particularly as a finance writer,
Speaker 3: if you're just writing about data and charts, like a
Speaker 3: lot of people, even in the industry, it's like it's boring,
Speaker 3: You're not going to catch you. So you got to
Speaker 3: tell a good story. And so I'm always trying to
Speaker 3: find examples from fields that have nothing to do with
Speaker 3: finance that explain how people think about greed and fear
Speaker 3: and risk, because not only do I think that gets
Speaker 3: you closer to the truth of what's happening in finance,
Speaker 3: if you can really get like, why are people thinking
Speaker 3: the way they are? But from a writing standpoint, I
Speaker 3: think it's more interesting if you can be like, oh,
Speaker 3: here's a story from World War two that explains how
Speaker 3: people think about risk, and let me tell you how
Speaker 3: that bleeds into finance. I think it's more interesting as
Speaker 3: a writer to catch people's attention that way.
Speaker 2: So we're recording this at an event in Huntington Beach
Speaker 2: at Future Proof isn't one of your most famous stories
Speaker 2: about parking cars in Los Angeles at one point being
Speaker 2: a valet.
Speaker 3: So yes, it was a hotel here in Los Angeles
Speaker 3: that I was a valet at during college, and it
Speaker 3: was a high end, five star hotel, a lot of
Speaker 3: rich people coming through, and there was one member who
Speaker 3: was just an absolute animal with money. He was very,
Speaker 3: very wealthy. I think he was worth hundreds of millions
Speaker 3: of dollars and money has never burnt a hole in
Speaker 3: someone's pocket so fast. He wandered around, he was he
Speaker 3: was always drunk, and he wandered around with a stack
Speaker 3: one hundred dollar bills I swear six inches thick, and
Speaker 3: he would just flash money like no other. And we
Speaker 3: did a lot of errands for this guy. As a
Speaker 3: vala tipped very well. And one day he came to
Speaker 3: one of my colleagues and he peeled off a thick
Speaker 3: stack of one hundred dollars bills and he said, go
Speaker 3: down to the jewelry store down the street and buy
Speaker 3: me some gold coins. I think there were a thousand
Speaker 3: dollars gold coins. And he came back any gold courts
Speaker 3: and this guy with a group of friends sat there
Speaker 3: at the Pacific Ocean skipping a gold coins to see
Speaker 3: how far they could go. Oh my god, And I
Speaker 3: remember thinking I was twenty one at the time, and
Speaker 3: I remember watching this and thinking like, how long can
Speaker 3: this last? And it was probably ten years later that
Speaker 3: I said, what's this guy up to? And I googled
Speaker 3: his name and sure enough, he went bankrupt. He went,
Speaker 3: his company went out of business. He went, And it
Speaker 3: was like, when I saw the headline, he was like,
Speaker 3: of course, of course this guy. So to me, it
Speaker 3: was always so interesting that he was so smart. He
Speaker 3: was an entrepreneur who made a lot of his companies
Speaker 3: built parts for satellites, and he had a patent that's
Speaker 3: in every Wi Fi device, Like he was such a
Speaker 3: genius technically, but his relationship with money was so broken
Speaker 3: and so bad. So that was like, it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: how smart you are, it's not about like what your
Speaker 3: IQ is. If your behavior with money is wrong, you're done.
Speaker 3: It's out. And then there's a flip side of that.
Speaker 3: It's true too, which is that some people who are
Speaker 3: not that intelligent by their test scores or whatever, but
Speaker 3: they have a great behavior with money can do spectacular
Speaker 3: over time.
Speaker 2: I'm probably taking the wrong lesson away from this anecdote,
Speaker 2: but did anyone go after the coins?
Speaker 3: For all I know?
Speaker 1: They're still there all right later today, Joe, this is
Speaker 1: this is this is good to know. So this is
Speaker 1: you know, obviously there are going to be individuals who
Speaker 1: maybe don't have high income but or do a good
Speaker 1: job of accumulating savings over years, or people of massive
Speaker 1: incomes that blow it all kinds of things. You know,
Speaker 1: you always hear these other stories about the cohorts and
Speaker 1: people who went through something together, like people who came
Speaker 1: out of the Great Depression and then they like you know,
Speaker 1: were like hoarders or something like that, or people who
Speaker 1: came out of whatever it is. Is that true? People
Speaker 1: say that all the time, or people experience like the
Speaker 1: inflation in Wymar Germany and support like when you in
Speaker 1: your research when you read take It, you read a
Speaker 1: ton of history, like does that seem to be a
Speaker 1: real thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I think every generation experiences the economy in
Speaker 3: their own unique way, and those experiences, particularly what you
Speaker 3: experience in your teens and twenties, like your formative years
Speaker 3: where you're starting to pay it attention to the economy
Speaker 3: really sticks with you. Everyone is seen or probably heard
Speaker 3: of the studies about the generation that went through the
Speaker 3: Great Depression, and then right after that it was World
Speaker 3: War Two. So that was fifteen years of hell, and
Speaker 3: those people coming out of it like that stayed with
Speaker 3: them forever, and there's been academics who have measured how
Speaker 3: that impacted them. They're very scared of debt, didn't want
Speaker 3: to invest in the stock market way more so even
Speaker 3: when you talk about people in warmer Germany, or that
Speaker 3: people went through World War Two in Germany or in
Speaker 3: France or in Russia, those people were completely scarred economically
Speaker 3: for the rest of their lives. And more recently, all
Speaker 3: three of us became young adults in the early two thousands,
Speaker 3: So for me nine to eleven was the first like
Speaker 3: adult big event and then so that was massive, and
Speaker 3: I think for our parents' generation, who were adults in
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties, when things were so at least in
Speaker 3: relative terms, calm, stable, prosperous, not just economically but politically
Speaker 3: and geopolitically, we're like so solid and there was a
Speaker 3: recession or you know, there's a hiccup at ninety four
Speaker 3: and ninety eight, but for most people that was like
Speaker 3: unless you were a bond trader, didn't matter. The nineties
Speaker 3: were great. Nine to eleven was like, oh wow, like
Speaker 3: we really got knocked down here, but that was a
Speaker 3: one time event, like America is still as strong as
Speaker 3: it's ever been. And then in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, we got knocked down again, like
Speaker 3: two times in the last eight years. That's pretty bad.
Speaker 3: And then COVID twenty twenty, it's like the world broke again,
Speaker 3: like three times in twenty years. The world has broken
Speaker 3: in the United States, and I think that is like,
Speaker 3: what's the quote, fool me wants shame on you for
Speaker 3: me twice. Now that people have been fooled, so to speak,
Speaker 3: three times in twenty years, I think we now our
Speaker 3: generation believes that the world breaks every five to ten years,
Speaker 3: and I think that's a good I think that's the truth.
Speaker 3: I think the previous generation that was America strong and
Speaker 3: stable and nothing bad happens, that was the anomaly, and
Speaker 3: I think I think we're a more pessimistic generation because
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of going to go into that,
Speaker 1: you know, the one thing that I've been really fastened
Speaker 1: by over the last few years is what sort of
Speaker 1: strikes me, and particularly in like market it's an investing
Speaker 1: is this sort of like I almost call it like
Speaker 1: a sort of like nihilistic bullishness, like you saw it
Speaker 1: like buying NFTs or duage coin or whatever, where it's like,
Speaker 1: on some level it looks like optimistic speculative activity like
Speaker 1: maybe we saw in the late nineties, but it also
Speaker 1: has this sort of like edge of like none of
Speaker 1: this really means anything.
Speaker 2: You're knowingly chasing a bubble or buying a lottery because
Speaker 2: there's no other way to make money for the.
Speaker 1: Wall Street bets like bragging about going broken your robin
Speaker 1: hood thing. Like it seems like we're in this era
Speaker 1: of like speculation but not coming out of a place
Speaker 1: of optimism.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I almost think like the yolo mentality of trading
Speaker 3: NFTs or whatever it may be, is actually like comes
Speaker 3: from a very pessimistic place. If you're optimistic, then you're like,
Speaker 3: I want to own the S and P five hundred for
Speaker 3: the next fifty years. That's optimism. Pessimism is it's all
Speaker 3: going to go to hell anyways, Let's just throw it
Speaker 3: all on an NFT yeah, so it looks from the
Speaker 3: outset like a very like bullish, Like I'm so bullish
Speaker 3: on crypto. I know. I think it comes from a
Speaker 3: pessimistic place. You made this point years ago that stuck
Speaker 3: with me during the gold bubble, if we call it
Speaker 3: that around twenty eleven, that there's nothing more pessimistic than
Speaker 3: betting on a rock. It's like, if you're optimistic, you
Speaker 3: bet on people. And how pessimistic do you have to
Speaker 3: be to say a rock is going to outperform humans?
Speaker 3: It's like the most pessimistic thing. And I think there's
Speaker 3: a very like there's an analogy in there with NFTs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, I take the point about people being pessimistic about
Speaker 2: these big sort of sociological breaks breaks in society. But
Speaker 2: if you look at the legacy of the two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight financial crisis, it wasn't necessarily a terrible time
Speaker 2: to start accumulating wealth and money. You know, if you
Speaker 2: bought the S and P five hundred in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, right up until twenty twenty, you'd be doing
Speaker 2: reasonably well. Like, what do you think the legacy is
Speaker 2: of that particular era where we're still sifting through the
Speaker 2: wreckage of two thousand and eight, we have ultra low
Speaker 2: interest rates. Everyone's worried about deflation and subpar growth.
Speaker 3: I remember, I don't know if it was twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: So if I'm getting this date wrong, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 3: I remember I think it was twenty eleven and the
Speaker 3: market went up substantially. Does that sound right to you?
Speaker 3: Twenty eleven? I think twenty twenty five percent? It was.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Twenty even bought him in October.
Speaker 3: Maybe I was twenty year year. Maybe it was twenty ten.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's twenty twelve. I forget the year, but the
Speaker 3: market went up twenty twelve. I think maybe it's twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: The market went up twenty or twenty five percent. And
Speaker 3: I think it was Gallup who pulled Americans and said,
Speaker 3: did the stock market go up or down this year?
Speaker 3: And it was like sixty percent of Americans thought the
Speaker 3: market went down during a year when it went up
Speaker 3: twenty five percent. I actually think this was two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine, which makes sense. Okay, it makes more sense, right,
Speaker 3: And so that wasn't I think this explains the question
Speaker 3: of like, in hindsight, it was a great time to
Speaker 3: accumulate assets. But during the time, even a year when
Speaker 3: the market went up twenty five percent, people were so
Speaker 3: sure that the economy was bad that they assumed the
Speaker 3: market went down. And Joe, both of you will remember this,
Speaker 3: from basically twenty nine to twenty sixteen, if you were
Speaker 3: a bullish on the stock market, you looked kind of
Speaker 3: like a fool and you got dragged on Twitter. This
Speaker 3: was like, oh, the cape ratio is too high, and
Speaker 3: there was all this. So in hindsight it was a
Speaker 3: generational buying opportunity, but it was that's all hindsight. It
Speaker 3: was very hard to be bullish during that era, and
Speaker 3: a lot of it was twenty eleven was double dip
Speaker 3: recession right around the corner, and the idea that the
Speaker 3: financial crisis of two thousand and eight was just to
Speaker 3: prelude to what was to the big crash that was coming.
Speaker 3: That was a very popular view during those years, and
Speaker 3: I think it was it was really hard to be
Speaker 3: a long term goal.
Speaker 1: So we talked about this in the intro. This phenomenon
Speaker 1: of like people started like anchoring to what they know,
Speaker 1: and I feel like for a lot of people like ZERP,
Speaker 1: really low nominal interest rates like, oh, that's normal, and
Speaker 1: what we have right now, where like the ten years
Speaker 1: yielding four percent and a mortgage is over seven percent,
Speaker 1: that feels like aberrationally high. Like again, going sort of
Speaker 1: back to the past, like does it take a while?
Speaker 1: I mean it must you sort of as you describe it,
Speaker 1: like it seems to like take a while for like
Speaker 1: at this sink in that It's like, no, that was
Speaker 1: that was then, and it wasn't necessarily like normal or abnormal,
Speaker 1: but that was a different time.
Speaker 3: I think that that does make sense. But the counter
Speaker 3: to that would be in the other direction. You know,
Speaker 3: in the late nineties, a mortgage was seven percent run
Speaker 3: by two thousand and three it was three or four percent,
Speaker 3: And I think people got used to that really quickly.
Speaker 3: That was kind of the basis of the housing bubble
Speaker 3: that peaked in two thousand and six, is that by
Speaker 3: two thousand and six people were already completely used to
Speaker 3: low interest rates that didn't exist four years prior.
Speaker 1: That's wild.
Speaker 3: So I do think people get accustomed to it fairly quickly.
Speaker 3: And a lot of that, I mean, at the corporate level,
Speaker 3: a lot of that debt rolls over every five years,
Speaker 3: so there's gonna be like that, the credit cycle is
Speaker 3: going to wash out in a fairly quick period of time.
Speaker 3: But interest rate cycles are also pretty long. Like interest
Speaker 3: rates bottomed after World War Two in the early fifties
Speaker 3: and then peaked in the late or the early eighties,
Speaker 3: Like it was a really long cycle for them to
Speaker 3: go from three percent to fifteen percent.
Speaker 2: What sort of different behavioral patterns do you observe between
Speaker 2: eras of low interest rates versus eras of high interest rates.
Speaker 3: I think because the interest rate cycles are so long,
Speaker 3: and there's only been a couple cycles in the post
Speaker 3: World War two era, it was like they went, what.
Speaker 2: Were people in the nineteen sixties doing? Tell us?
Speaker 3: So much of that debt, though, didn't really exist, like
Speaker 3: at the end of World War two and forty five,
Speaker 3: consumer credit barely existed at all. In fact, a lot
Speaker 3: of the GI Bill was introducing new forms of consumer
Speaker 3: credit to make sure the economy didn't collapse after World
Speaker 3: War Two. It was like, we want you to be spenders,
Speaker 3: so like credit cards and installment loans. A lot of
Speaker 3: that just exploded after World War Two. But then the
Speaker 3: rates were so high during that period that it really
Speaker 3: wasn't until the nineties that consumer credit just like exploded,
Speaker 3: So we don't have that much history about what it is,
Speaker 3: and so I don't think there's a ton of precedent
Speaker 3: for what we're dealing with in terms of like the
Speaker 3: consumer credit. But there's also a thing where you've seen
Speaker 3: I know, Joe, you've seen this chart. I think you've
Speaker 3: tweeted this chart of as a percentage of income, household
Speaker 3: debt payments right now are actually very low, like historically
Speaker 3: near the bottom that they've been in the last forty years.
Speaker 3: So if you just look at the nominal amount of
Speaker 3: household debt, it looks scary, but actually, as like a
Speaker 3: percentage of income, it's actually very low right now.
Speaker 1: You know, Obviously, economists, like macroeconomists, the last real inflationary
Speaker 1: period that anyone remembers was the seventies. And interestingly, like
Speaker 1: I sort of the grandees of economics, many of them
Speaker 1: came during the seventies, So like looms very large. But
Speaker 1: setting aside like how academic economists think from the from
Speaker 1: your perspective, we're looking at sociology and history, etcetera, Like,
Speaker 1: does this remind you of the seventies or is that
Speaker 1: just sort of like a fake analogy because inflation was
Speaker 1: high then too.
Speaker 3: I think the seventies were really unique too, because because
Speaker 3: in addition to inflation that was so crippling, there was
Speaker 3: so much social unrest between Vietnam. All of that blended
Speaker 3: together to just an era of pessimism. So a lot
Speaker 3: of the pessimism wasn't just because of inflation or just
Speaker 3: because of FED policy, Like there's all these other things
Speaker 3: boiling up that made people just really upset about the
Speaker 3: state of America that all falls in it. And I
Speaker 3: think that was true in the nineties as well. It
Speaker 3: wasn't just economic prosperity. It was economic prosperity mixed with
Speaker 3: political stability, mixed with Soviet Union was gone, so America
Speaker 3: is untouchable. It was just like all these things mixed together.
Speaker 3: And I think if you view optimism solely through an
Speaker 3: economic lens, like ninety percent of households don't read the
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal, don't know what the Dow did yesterday.
Speaker 3: They're putting all of these things together. It's not just
Speaker 3: is the economy strong, it's is Washington in good shape?
Speaker 3: Are their political fights? Or is my kids school in
Speaker 3: good shape? It's like all these things mixed in one,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of financial economists and journalists
Speaker 3: only view it through one narrow lens. But that's not
Speaker 3: how most households think.
Speaker 2: All right, So just on this point, I mean, one
Speaker 2: of the oddities of our current economic environment is that
Speaker 2: the hard data says we're doing relatively well, but if
Speaker 2: you look at the survey based data, if you just
Speaker 2: look at what people are talking about on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: it's like we're already in a depression. Basically, how do
Speaker 2: you explain that discrepancy?
Speaker 3: I remember years ago someone saying that consumer confidence, like
Speaker 3: the statistic that's released, is fueled by three things the
Speaker 3: stock market, gas prices, and politics. And to the extent
Speaker 3: that that's true, then I think it's it's politics is
Speaker 3: probably what's why that's being partisan in the way it
Speaker 3: is partisanship. Yeah, and I almost think it's it's so
Speaker 3: extreme that no matter, the Dow could double and the
Speaker 3: unemployment right could collapse to one percent. I mean, someone
Speaker 3: brought up recently, I think it was Josh Brown, who
Speaker 3: was like, you, guys, the stock market's near an all
Speaker 3: time high, unemployments three and a half percent. You can
Speaker 3: earn five percent on your cash. Why are you not
Speaker 3: why are you not happy here? And I think for
Speaker 3: a lot of people, the answer is politics.
Speaker 1: Hopefully inflation is soon going to be back at target
Speaker 1: or you know, defence target. But we don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: But we obviously, you know, we had the highest recently
Speaker 1: had the highest inflation in forty years, something we haven't seen.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about like some of the
Speaker 1: sort of like nihilistic speculation, what do you see as
Speaker 1: some other knock on effects from the last few years,
Speaker 1: whether it's the inflation or just the COVID disruption or
Speaker 1: anything else that we've experienced since March twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: COVID was so interesting because it was so binary in
Speaker 3: terms of if you were a tech worker in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: it had never been better, Whereas if you owned a laundromat,
Speaker 3: it's worse than the Great Depression, and the actual Great Depression,
Speaker 3: in facted virtually everyone at the same worst. COVID was
Speaker 3: so different, and so you have probably half of America
Speaker 3: for whom twenty twenty was a great year financially, and
Speaker 3: half it was the worst it's ever been by an
Speaker 3: order of magnitude. And because of that, I think when
Speaker 3: you have half the country that doesn't understand what the
Speaker 3: other half went through, that also leads to an era
Speaker 3: of like, I don't trust this the numbers, trust the statistics,
Speaker 3: I don't trust the politicians because what this guy is
Speaker 3: saying is so counter to what I experienced in either direction.
Speaker 3: And I think that also just leads to an era
Speaker 3: of hyperpartisanship of like, if you're saying that about the economy,
Speaker 3: how disconnected are you in a way that we really
Speaker 3: haven't dealt with. And a lot of the reason that
Speaker 3: a lot of the policies during the Great Depression, the
Speaker 3: New Deal got through in a semi biparson ways because
Speaker 3: it's a great depression impacted everybody. Two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: was I think similar to that as well, like everyone
Speaker 3: was going to be screwed if the banks went down,
Speaker 3: so it makes it easier to push through policy.
Speaker 2: This is also my theory of why people care more
Speaker 2: about inflation than the unemployment rate, because if you personally
Speaker 2: haven't lost your job, it's hard for you to sort
Speaker 2: of envision, oh, unemployment is at you know, a multi
Speaker 2: decade low, but you can definitely see egg prices at
Speaker 2: your local grocery. Everyone can see those, and so it
Speaker 2: seems like it becomes a much bigger talking point. But okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk about a bright spot, which is I guess
Speaker 2: we can now earn four or five percent on a
Speaker 2: bank account or a certificate of pose. It that seems great, Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: It's it's weird. There's almost a point when if you're
Speaker 3: buying a one year CD right now you get five
Speaker 3: and a half percent, it almost feels like you're robbing
Speaker 3: the bank. You're like, You're like, really, you're gonna fig
Speaker 3: me that when you when you've had fifteen or ten
Speaker 3: years whatever, observe. It's it's a wild thing to deal with.
Speaker 3: But you both of you know this historically weird. This
Speaker 3: is normal. Yeah. I think that's what's hard to wrap
Speaker 3: your head around, is that historically this is what we're
Speaker 3: dealing with. Is not the anomaly. This is the completely
Speaker 3: normal part. And I think it would I think everything
Speaker 3: would be better if we live in an era if
Speaker 3: we never go back to deserve. Everything would be better if
Speaker 3: we have an era where there is some sort of
Speaker 3: anchor on speculation and people can earn a decent return
Speaker 3: on their cash with some level of risk. I think
Speaker 3: that's so much healthier in every aspect.
Speaker 2: So one of the weird things though, just on that point, was,
Speaker 2: you know, earlier this year, when interest rates on bank
Speaker 2: accounts were starting to creep up, we actually didn't see
Speaker 2: that many people who seem to actually be moving their
Speaker 2: money into higher yielding accounts or money market funds. It
Speaker 2: didn't really happen, I guess until March when we had
Speaker 2: the SVB drama. But what do you think accounts for that?
Speaker 2: Is it just it takes people a while to realize
Speaker 2: this is something available to them.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think there has been quite a
Speaker 3: bit that have moved into money market accounts. I mean,
Speaker 3: what are money market accounts now five trillion dollars or something,
Speaker 3: So there has been money that's that's moved over. I
Speaker 3: think the average American just doesn't think about it that much.
Speaker 3: And maybe if you don't have a very high level
Speaker 3: of savings, there's kind of a wide bother mentality. Yeah,
Speaker 3: whereas most I imagine most of the high dollar amount
Speaker 3: accounts have moved pretty quickly. And it's a wild thing
Speaker 3: if you think about, you know, anyone's guess of future
Speaker 3: stock market returns is as good as anyone else's. But
Speaker 3: if you think, like at valuations stocks return like maybe
Speaker 3: six to seven percent something like that, that, my guess
Speaker 3: is as good as anyone else is. So let's say
Speaker 3: stocks return six and you can earn five and a
Speaker 3: half percent in a money market account. All of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you're like, for the first time in twenty years, it's
Speaker 3: a really it's not an easy decision to make.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to say so, I think, like, you know,
Speaker 1: this has come up a few times, you know, on show,
Speaker 1: and the first couple of times we discussed that, I'm
Speaker 1: like five percent, Like, that's not that.
Speaker 2: Have you finally been rate pill Jack?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's like it's like it's it doesn't really
Speaker 1: seem worth it to like move it over. But now
Speaker 1: like after like a few months, it's like, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, like it is like meaningful. And as you say,
Speaker 1: like if historical returns on the stock market are like
Speaker 1: maybe six and a half percent or something like that,
Speaker 1: and now you can get five percent like truly.
Speaker 3: On a money market account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that's like pretty good, isn't it.
Speaker 3: But that's I think that's the world you should live.
Speaker 3: There should be some anchor against speculation. There should be
Speaker 3: some temptation for your money that is not just a
Speaker 3: yolo mentality.
Speaker 1: Do you think like it doesn't feel right now in
Speaker 1: September twenty twenty three, that the speculative fervor that we
Speaker 1: saw that really peaked in twenty twenty one, Like it
Speaker 1: still feels like there's still like some embers of that right,
Speaker 1: Like you still see meme stocks, like it's not much,
Speaker 1: but like it's still exists.
Speaker 3: That's still twenty five, and I think it's I think
Speaker 3: it's wrong to just associate speculative frenzies with interest rates.
Speaker 3: You gotta remember the nineteen ninety nine, like the peak
Speaker 3: of the dot com bubble, interest rates were higher than
Speaker 3: they are today. So you can have a crazy bubble
Speaker 3: with interest rates. I'm sure it plays a role, but
Speaker 3: I think just explaining it as like every ten to
Speaker 3: twenty years, people collectively lose their minds financially, like irrespective
Speaker 3: interest rates make what easier to do it. But you
Speaker 3: could have a giant speculatve bubble with interest rates where
Speaker 3: they are today. So it wouldn't surprise me, even with
Speaker 3: the hikes that we've had, if there's a new crypto bubble,
Speaker 3: a new meme bubble, like whatever it would be. I
Speaker 3: think all that is detached from interest rates.
Speaker 2: It feels to me like social media is also I
Speaker 2: don't want to say new, because we had message boards
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine and two thousand where people were
Speaker 2: talking up stocks. But it feels like that sort of
Speaker 2: added fuel to that dynamic where people are chasing bubbles
Speaker 2: rather than running away from them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it turns into like a tribal mentality, particularly
Speaker 3: in the crypto space, where you're willingness and your ability
Speaker 3: to buy certain kinds of crypto is your identity. And
Speaker 3: I think that also existed in the nineteen nineties, like
Speaker 3: I'm a tech stock trainer, that's your identity. And I
Speaker 3: think anytime in finance where you say I'm a blank
Speaker 3: whatever it is, even I'm a value investor, anytime you
Speaker 3: get that kind of tribal identity, you're like outsourcing your
Speaker 3: thinking to the madness of crowds. And I think it's
Speaker 3: a really dangerous way to invest.
Speaker 1: Is there a way like to deprogram that for from
Speaker 1: you know, deprogrammed someone or deprogram yourself, because like that
Speaker 1: lock in effect where like right, some way that you
Speaker 1: invest you know, and I think even like professional like
Speaker 1: professionals have this all the time, Like it seems really hard.
Speaker 1: Just changing your mind is really tough. Is there all,
Speaker 1: like have you in your research? Are there tools or
Speaker 1: like ideas that actually work to like get better at
Speaker 1: changing your minds.
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's tools or ideas, but I
Speaker 3: think some people are just much better at being independent
Speaker 3: thinkers than others. Even like I said, if you said
Speaker 3: I'm a value investor, it seems so conservative and so
Speaker 3: so benign. But Josh Brown has made this joke that
Speaker 3: a lot of value investors just end up owning like
Speaker 3: typewriter companies for twenty years. And it's like even if
Speaker 3: you lock yourself into that tribe, it's not safe.
Speaker 1: But even like you know, I was thinking too, like
Speaker 1: you know, in the beginning, like and you still have
Speaker 1: this fight. It's like setting aside eve an investment to
Speaker 1: like team Transitory or like team persons when you're debating inflation.
Speaker 1: It's hard to change your mind really, even with new data.
Speaker 3: And I think social media makes that really hard too,
Speaker 3: because now there's like a timestamp on every call that
Speaker 3: you made in a way that there wasn't before, and
Speaker 3: people would much rather be consistent than be right. And
Speaker 3: the reason that is is because I think when most
Speaker 3: people are looking at a pundit online, they want their
Speaker 3: pundit to be consistent. And most people like, if you
Speaker 3: tell people what they want to hear, you can be
Speaker 3: wrong forever without penalty. So if you want to be
Speaker 3: pessimistic and you listen to Peter Schiff for ten years
Speaker 3: saying the dollar is going to collapse next month, even
Speaker 3: if it doesn't, he told you what you want to hear,
Speaker 3: and you're gonna buy his newsletters and keep on going.
Speaker 3: So in the punditry business, that's the way to do it,
Speaker 3: even if it's like from an economic point of view,
Speaker 3: it's terrible.
Speaker 2: Well, we're very good at avoiding consistency on this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yet we don't have that problem. We change our minds
Speaker 2: all the time. No wait, you mentioned value investing, and
Speaker 2: it does feel like, at least up until twenty twenty
Speaker 2: and maybe even beyond it, the big money was in
Speaker 2: chasing momentum. What does that mean because we're talking about
Speaker 2: the fallacy of group thing. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: if you have a really good handle on a certain
Speaker 2: narrative or what's going to attract people to a particular investment.
Speaker 2: It feels like an advantage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a great George Soros quote quote where he says,
Speaker 3: whenever I see a bubble, I rush into buy it.
Speaker 3: And it seems so counterintuitive, like why would you want
Speaker 3: to buy a bubble? I think his I don't want
Speaker 3: to put words his mouth. I think his thinking is
Speaker 3: he understands that a bubble is very likely to grow
Speaker 3: bigger than you think, just because everyone else is going
Speaker 3: to watch their neighbor to get rich and they're going
Speaker 3: to come in, which is exactly what happens every single bubble.
Speaker 3: So I think that like the chasing of momentum, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it has a huge behavioral component behind it. Now the
Speaker 3: hard thing is like getting out before everyone else is
Speaker 3: someone like George Sorels can do, but virtually no one
Speaker 3: else can. So it's like that has no appeal to
Speaker 3: me whatsoever, because the idea that you're going to get
Speaker 3: out before everyone else when you're chasing their behavior to
Speaker 3: begin with, is betting wrong thing.
Speaker 1: So we talked about it in the beginning like this
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, talk about how personal finance,
Speaker 1: personal money is like there's like two kinds and they're
Speaker 1: both kind of I'm not that great where it's one
Speaker 1: is like giving people stock picks and you know, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, and the other one is this sort of
Speaker 1: like okay, here's like what credit card to get to
Speaker 1: like maximize miles sitting aside like the speculative frenzy or
Speaker 1: investing or mem stock. Do you think what we've experienced
Speaker 1: over the last three years will like meaningfully change how
Speaker 1: people consume going forward in some ways, like just general
Speaker 1: consumption patterns.
Speaker 3: I think it's not necessarily the last three years in
Speaker 3: terms of COVID being the last three years. I think
Speaker 3: it's the last ten years of social media that just
Speaker 3: massively changes it. It's always been historically that there's no
Speaker 3: objective level of wealth. Everything is just relative to the
Speaker 3: people around you, your neighbors, your coworkers, and you're like,
Speaker 3: relative to that person, here's how much money I have.
Speaker 1: I always hear people say things like, oh, like compared
Speaker 1: to like a king in the eighteen hundreds, you're so rich.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, great, but my neighbors, Like.
Speaker 3: Everyone just looks at the people around you, But now
Speaker 3: it's the people around you is Instagram, and it's a
Speaker 3: curiated highlight reel like everyone around the world. Someone said recently,
Speaker 3: I went from keeping up with the Joneses to keeping
Speaker 3: up with the Kardashians, Like that's what social media did.
Speaker 3: It went from now you're comparing yourself to the highlight
Speaker 3: reel of everyone's life. So I think expectations of what
Speaker 3: people's definition is of a good life just exploded over
Speaker 3: the last ten years. I can see it with my
Speaker 3: seven year old son who spends time on YouTube and
Speaker 3: what his definition is all at age seven, of what
Speaker 3: success looks like. If you watch Mister Beast all day,
Speaker 3: success is like driving a Lamborghini and throwing ten thousand
Speaker 3: dollars at strangers. And I think there's an element of
Speaker 3: that in social media.
Speaker 1: It's just.
Speaker 3: It turns into that. But it used to be when
Speaker 3: you compare yourself to your neighbors, there's much more mundane
Speaker 3: than comparing yourself to Instagram. So I think that's that's
Speaker 3: the biggest change in consumption. It's just an inflated expectation,
Speaker 3: and it's the Luis k joke of everything's amazing and
Speaker 3: nobody's happy. If your expectations grow, that much. Then, even
Speaker 3: when there is great economic growth and the stock market
Speaker 3: is doing well, it never feels like it's enough because
Speaker 3: you're comparing yourself to something crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean, listening to that, it sounds kind of dire
Speaker 2: in the sense that I don't think social media is
Speaker 2: going away anytime soon. What does that mean for the
Speaker 2: long term? Is there a way for people to break
Speaker 2: out of that mindset?
Speaker 3: I don't think there is, And of course social media
Speaker 3: is not going away, so it would not surprise I'm
Speaker 3: not a forecast kind of guy, but it would not
Speaker 3: surprise me. In the next generation, we have very good
Speaker 3: economic growth, very good stock market growth, and no one
Speaker 3: is even a morsel happier for it. I think that
Speaker 3: that it's already happened over the last generation. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's almost the whole history of economic growth, like great growth,
Speaker 3: but everyone just gets accustomed to it. And there's parts
Speaker 3: of that that's great. That's what keeps people wanting to
Speaker 3: push harder and innovate more is because it never feels
Speaker 3: like it's enough. So a lot of that is a
Speaker 3: great thing. But if you're looking at it's easy today
Speaker 3: to think, oh, our grandkids, their real income is going
Speaker 3: to be double or triple of ours, and that means
Speaker 3: their life is going to be so great. It's like
Speaker 3: the second part of that is where people make mistake.
Speaker 3: There's a good chance that our grandkids, their real income
Speaker 3: will be double or triple of ours, and I would
Speaker 3: bet heavily that they will not be any happier for it.
Speaker 2: Right, They'll be like that guy over there has a
Speaker 2: bigger spaceship than.
Speaker 3: As exactly what it's going to be.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, what do you do like in your in
Speaker 1: your personal life or with your family, or how you
Speaker 1: like think about these things to like escape Some of
Speaker 1: these traps are very hard to fall into.
Speaker 3: It's not easy to do. I think my wife and I,
Speaker 3: who's in the room right now, are pretty good at
Speaker 3: just being like, this is what makes us happy, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna we're not gonna let a lot of external
Speaker 3: influences let us in. But it's hard for everybody. No
Speaker 3: one can escape the comparison game. I think it's just
Speaker 3: a natural part of how humans behave is just compare
Speaker 3: yourself to your peers. So it's not an easy thing
Speaker 3: to do. I think there is something to say for
Speaker 3: the idea that nobody is thinking about you as much
Speaker 3: as you are, so everyone is like, I got to
Speaker 3: get the nicer clothes so that people will be impressed
Speaker 3: with me. They're not impressed with you, and they're not thinking.
Speaker 3: They're thinking about themselves. No one's thinking about your car,
Speaker 3: nobody's thinking about the size of your house. They're all
Speaker 3: busy thinking about themselves. Once you understand that, then I
Speaker 3: think your aspiration for showing off like plunges, and that's
Speaker 3: what you need to be. Like, I'm just happy with this,
Speaker 3: hanging out in my family, going for a walk with
Speaker 3: my kids. I don't need to show off to people
Speaker 3: who aren't paying any attention to me. But some people
Speaker 3: can do that better than others.
Speaker 2: We've been talking a lot about how human beings respond
Speaker 2: to change and the idea that maybe we're going from
Speaker 2: an environment of low interest rates to one of high
Speaker 2: interest rates. You have a new book coming out. My
Speaker 2: understanding is it's all about change. Is that right?
Speaker 3: It's about things that never change over time, which I
Speaker 3: think is the more important. I got the idea many
Speaker 3: years ago. There's a Jeff Bezos quote that I'll paraphrase.
Speaker 3: He said, people always ask me what's going to change
Speaker 3: in technology? And a better question is what is never
Speaker 3: going to change? And he said, you can never imagine
Speaker 3: a future at Amazon where customers don't want low prices
Speaker 3: and big selection. So because you can't imagine that future,
Speaker 3: you can invest all of your money into that knowing
Speaker 3: it's going to be just as important fifty years from
Speaker 3: now as it is today, which you can't say about
Speaker 3: most other technologies. Most other technologies have a shelf life
Speaker 3: of a year or two and then they're absollete. So
Speaker 3: it was the idea that part of the started for
Speaker 3: me with just the observation that both of you know,
Speaker 3: most economic predictions and stock market predictions are very bad.
Speaker 3: Our ability to predict what the stock it's not very good,
Speaker 3: so and I think part of that reason is because
Speaker 3: we focus, we try to pay attention on what's going
Speaker 3: to change, and if we instead pay attention on what
Speaker 3: we know is not going to change, how people pay
Speaker 3: attention and respond to risk and greed and fear. Let's
Speaker 3: just focus on that, knowing for certain that's going to
Speaker 3: be part of our future, rather than pretending like we
Speaker 3: can predict what might change in the future.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny like even on the stock market, like
Speaker 1: our friend Sam Row, like who has a great newslettercare
Speaker 1: dot com. His whole thing is like stocks usually go up, yes,
Speaker 1: and you know, we could talk all about, oh, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen with like you know, the if the
Speaker 1: FED doesn't hike it, you know, the FED hikes in
Speaker 1: November and the FED hikes twice, et cetera. But like
Speaker 1: history seems pretty clear, like in the long term, they
Speaker 1: just the line basically goes up.
Speaker 3: There's another version of that. Derek Thompson from The Atlantic
Speaker 3: I think he wrote this in like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: He said, you know, since two thousand and eight, there
Speaker 3: have been hundreds of thousands of articles written about the
Speaker 3: economy and what's going to happen. And you can summarize
Speaker 3: all of that period by just saying things got better slowly.
Speaker 3: That's all the economic news you needed to know during
Speaker 3: that ten year period. And so I think I think
Speaker 3: there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Of true I love talking about all this stuff every
Speaker 1: once in a while, I'm like, it's just sort of fun.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, no, I think that's an important topic.
Speaker 3: I've been open about how I invest I dollar cost
Speaker 3: average into index funds, but I pay attention to the
Speaker 3: stock market every day. I read all the economic news.
Speaker 3: I read the Wall Street Journal every day because I
Speaker 3: think it's interesting. I think markets are interesting, and you
Speaker 3: don't need to take that news and become a day
Speaker 3: trader with that news. But I think markets are such
Speaker 3: a fascinating window into human behavior, and there's no other
Speaker 3: window that shows like how people think about greed and
Speaker 3: fear and risk, which are such important topics in all
Speaker 3: areas of life, but you see it in finance in
Speaker 3: a starker way than any other topic.
Speaker 1: Morgan Housel, so great to finally have you on Outlaws.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. This is a really fun company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the perfect person for our first personal finance episode.
Speaker 3: I think this has been fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks, this is great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thanks guys.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we've finally had Morgan on.
Speaker 3: That was great.
Speaker 2: That was fantastic, and I'm looking forward to the new
Speaker 2: book for sure. I also thought the summary of Markets
Speaker 2: and Economics as like, it's not really about the line
Speaker 2: going up or down, but it's about the human beings
Speaker 2: involved in it, the emotions, the sort of like intellectual
Speaker 2: rigor around these ideas. That's the perfect way of summing it.
Speaker 1: Up, Yeah, I totally agree because I basically am of
Speaker 1: this view. It's like the economy will probably overtime grow
Speaker 1: and the stock market over time will go up. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to just leave it at that because
Speaker 1: I do think.
Speaker 2: All this, that's your job, this.
Speaker 3: Is my job.
Speaker 1: I want people to pay attention. But every once in
Speaker 1: a while, I'm like, Okay, why do we pay attention?
Speaker 1: And I think that Morgan captured it as you and
Speaker 1: as you said right there, it's like, it's interesting, we
Speaker 1: learned a lot about how people think and how people behave.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean like it makes sense to like
Speaker 1: try to like trade to like Morgan Stanley or Goldman's
Speaker 1: like s and p Year in Target or something, right.
Speaker 2: I also thought the point about like one of the
Speaker 2: things that happened in COVID was the fracturing of people's experiences.
Speaker 2: I thought that was really interesting because I think the
Speaker 2: knee jerk reaction to a global event like that is
Speaker 2: to think, oh, well, we all went through this big,
Speaker 2: you know, history making thing. But actually, as Morgan said,
Speaker 2: individual experiences varied widely, and I think it makes sense
Speaker 2: that that might be one reason why people now are
Speaker 2: much more distrustful of what they're hearing on a sort
Speaker 2: of collective basis.
Speaker 1: That was such a good point. That was like a
Speaker 1: light bulb because I guess on some level it's like
Speaker 1: maybe that seems obvious, but like that was really well
Speaker 1: put in. Like I remember July twenty twenty and I
Speaker 1: was like, things don't seem very good. But then I did,
Speaker 1: like you know, I would like follow like these tech
Speaker 1: people and they're like like close another deal today, yeah,
Speaker 1: like over zoom, and I was like wow, like this is.
Speaker 2: A yeah, I'm working from home and like my personal
Speaker 2: wealth just went up by ten person, Like.
Speaker 1: That's really that bifurcation is really striking. I was like
Speaker 1: this idea of like we had three in the span
Speaker 1: of less than twenty years, yeah, nine to eleven, two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, the Great Financial Layman two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and then COVID so less than twenty or three, like
Speaker 1: pretty like sort of earth shattering moments of one way
Speaker 1: or another, Like you see like how like cumulative we
Speaker 1: just begin to expect like oh this is the norm.
Speaker 2: No totally, And I think people also react to those
Speaker 2: in different ways because some people might think, well, I
Speaker 2: need to save a ton of money. Yeah, because I
Speaker 2: never know when there's going to be a great recession
Speaker 2: coming up next and I'm going to lose my job,
Speaker 2: and other people might just think, you know, screw it,
Speaker 2: none of this matters. Even if I accumulate all this
Speaker 2: wealth put it in an index fund, Maybe another two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight happens tomorrow and it doesn't matter. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to buy an NFT instead, right?
Speaker 1: Or am I going to be happy with the five
Speaker 1: percent on the CD? Or you know, like I always think,
Speaker 1: you know about the Chinese economy, which is does seem
Speaker 1: to have this same phenomenon of high savings, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but as you've written a lot about, like some of
Speaker 1: the most intense speculative the worldlike people like day trading,
Speaker 1: like iron ore futures and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. All right, well shall we leave it there.
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: Okay. This has been another episode of the ad Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 1: Follow our guest Morgan Housel at Morgan Housel. Follow our
Speaker 1: producers Kerman Rodriguez at Carman Arman and Dash Bennett at Dashbot.
Speaker 1: And check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under
Speaker 1: the handle at podcasts, and for more oddlogs content, go
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg dot com slash Odlogs. We have transcripts, a blog,
Speaker 1: and a newsletter. And check out our discord discord dot
Speaker 1: gg slash Odlogs where listeners like yourself, we're chading twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven about all of these topics.
Speaker 2: And if you enjoy Oddlots, if you want us to
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