Today's show is sponsored by YCharts. Most advisers don't have a data problem. The problem is that the data is spread across too many tools. Portfolio data lives in one system, client notes in another, and risk questionnaires somewhere else. So prepping for a meeting means clicking through a million tabs. That's why YCharts built Risk and Proposal Manager, a single place to manage your entire book of business, not just portfolios. It organizes clients by household, connects to the tools you already use, and brings performance, risk, and client context together in one view. For example, you can send a prospect a risk questionnaire, map their answers to a risk profile, and turn that into a personalized proposal. Once they become a client, you can keep managing the relationship in the same place, all without ever leaving YCharts. Click the link in the show notes to learn more and get 20% off your initial YCharts professional subscription, new customers only.
Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, I have a question for you.
The market has an excuse to sell off if it wants it. Will it take it?
Well, that's a good question. First of all, strap in and stand by. This is a 43-page doc, which is on the longer side. So we're going to go a buck 15. I say I feel like 40s are our new median. Now, let me run through the real quick. Just I'm not comparing this to these places, but I'm just showing this. What pricked the Japan bubble? Central bank raised rates. Okay, .com bubble. The Fed was raising rates. 1929, the Fed tightened. GFC, the Fed raised rates into it. Okay, everyone knows what the biggest risk is right now. And the market is not always right, but I think the market is expecting, pricing in now, the Fed to raise rates to like four and a half or 5%. If the market wanted to, it could use this to sell off. Will it do it?
My experience is that the market usually doesn't give you this long to get out. It kind of reminds me a little bit of April where we're staring at the Strait being closed and the stock market is coming down just a little bit every day. It's not really. There's no 1%, 2% falls. We're like, I thought this was the black swan. Why aren't stocks falling here? So it feels like that a little bit to me. I think that the way that I'm describing the current market environment is there's a lot of doubt, a lot of doubt, but basically zero fear. Let me make the case in the doubt column. This chart is from 22V Research via Daily Chartbook. AI valuations. Last week I said if there's a poster child for the AI trade, it's Nvidia at 16 times earnings, borrowed earnings.
Yep. Well, they zoomed out and they have an AI value basket, a curated universe of 81 AI capex-exposed companies spanning 12 market segments, trades at an average EV to EBITDA, just think of it as like price to earnings, of 15 times, which is 1.14 times their pre-2026 historical average. So there's no premium in the AI trade anymore. Okay. So a lot of doubt. Earnings versus valuations from Duality Research. Only one sector, consumer staples, has seen multiple expansion this year. The rest, this chart is nuts.
It's not just tech, it's everything.
We have to explain this again. Duality looked at all of the sectors. Okay. Well, how many are there? 12 or 13. I think they keep adding some. Okay, 11. And every single one of them but consumer staples has seen a multiple contraction this year. Many it's double digits. Consumer discretionary double digits. Consumer services, communication services, which is tech, double digits. Materials double digits. The S&P as a whole double digits. In technology and energy both double digits. And consumer staples is up a smidge. It's up less than 1%. So it's not just like, oh wow, yeah, tech names. It's everything.
Yeah. So multiple compression everywhere. Doubt. Uh, here's the no fear side of it. The VIX is at 16 despite the sell-off we'll get to in a second from JC. Well, sell-off. It's a sell-off from JC.
Consumer staples and utilities are two of the most defensive areas of the stock market. We would all agree.
When investors get scared, they often hide in these groups. Nobody's hiding there right now. So he has two ratio charts of consumer staples divided by the S&P to show how one is doing versus the other, and utilities versus the S&P, and they're both at new multi-year lows.
There is a lot of doubt, but there is no fear. Let's talk about the sell-off. We are in a very weird market dynamic where a lot of stocks are going down and yet the index is near an all-time high. Jason Gephardt shows that the S&P has been holding within 1% of a new high and yet more than 70% of stocks in the index are at least 10% below their highs. The only other time that's happened of the last 30 years is right before the dot-com bubble burst. However, dun.
However, critically, don't punt the bears, please. Critically, Duality Research shows that the key distinction of the 52-week low list is that a lot of the deterioration is happening in utilities and staples and real estate. Obviously, not just defensive sectors, but sectors that are exposed to higher interest rates in a bad way. 21 of the 28 names on that new low list came from utilities, staples, and real estate. So it is a market that is full of doubt and also has very little fear. Do you think that's a good way to explain it?
Yes. Well, it's funny because the S&P, we're recording this a little later than usual, Tuesday afternoonish, lunchtime. The S&P is down 1.4%. Even like small caps are actually selling off a little bit. Small caps are down 8%.
What's equal weight? Equal weight's down over five, I think.
Okay. Uh, even the NASDAQ is not even down 2% yet. So you're right. Like it's totally a reversal of...
Well, hold on, Ben. If you are a stock picker, and believe it or not, there are people that own individual stocks, there's a lot of them that are getting their heads beat in.
Well, so I wrote this after we talked last week about Adam Parker's piece, which I read, which was really good, that you talked about. So I decided to look at this using YCharts data. So I have these comp tables and I looked at year-to-date, the S&P is up 13% still year-to-date. 35% of stocks are outperforming the index, but 40% of stocks, four out of every 10 stocks, is down this year in the S&P.
So you're right. So more stocks are down this year in a double-digit up year than are outperforming the index.
And there's like 20 stocks that are up 100% or more. So this is a very concentrated market now. So funny.
It's still the memory names even though they're off their highs.
But we've gone through a whole cycle this year already. We went through a cycle where all the other stuff was working and the MAG 7 and the big names weren't, and now it's come back and they're working again. It keeps going back and forth. I guess the one thing I said, rising rates are a very good reason for the stock market to sell off. The only way that that...
No, not rising. Not rising straight up.
Yes. Going vertical. So yeah, the 10-year went from like 4% to 5.2 in a hurry. So the way that this doesn't become some sort of equity rout or at least correction from that is, well, hey dummy, they're rising because we believe in the AI trade. We believe that AI is going to continue to spend. Hyperscalers are going to continue to spend. That's going to continue to help earnings. That's why the stock market's not selling off. It's because we think economic growth is going to be strong. I was going to get into this later. They have the Atlanta Fed GDPNow has third quarter GDP coming in at 5%. That has not always been right. We've shown before that it's been wrong in the past, but if rates are accelerating because it's like, oh my gosh, this thing has legs, it's an economic boom, that's why the stock market won't sell off. That would be the reason. Whatever happens, we always say this, but it's true. Whatever way it goes, if the market falls 10%, we go, 'Oh, of course the rates rose like crazy.' If the market keeps going up, you go, 'Of course AI is spending like crazy.' It'll be very obvious with hindsight. I tend to think you're probably more right than my theory.
There's no rules in the stock market, but I do think it's a pretty good shorthand that the market when it falls, it generally falls fast. It's unusual that everybody is like, 'Stock market's going to fall, we have time to get out. Stock market's going to fall, we have time to get out.'
Speaking of rules, this is me having fun.
So anyway, I could be dead wrong, but putting my timely hat on, I would not be surprised if we get past this bout of selling underneath the market, underneath the indexes, and you get a rip into the year end. I could be very wrong obviously. We'll see.
So the stock market not having rules, because if you learned finance 101, like when I took finance classes in college, a higher interest rate should mean lower present value for financial assets, especially long-duration risk assets. The higher the interest rate, the lower the present value. Right. That should be obvious.
Yeah. The hurdle rate's higher.
Yeah. Since Treasury yields bottomed in March of 2020, they bottomed before the stock market did. I think the Treasury rate bottomed like March 9th or something below 50 basis points. Since that date, the S&P 500 was up 19% annualized since rates went from 0.5% to 5.2%.
This is why there's no rules. This is why there's no rules. You're right.
So I did this tweet and it kind of went a little crazy, but it's weird to think about the state that we're in. Mortgage rates have shot way up past 7% again, right? 7.3% I think we got, but the unemployment rate is still at 4%. Bond yields are above 5%. Cash yields are going back to 4%. Oil is around $100 a barrel depending on the date you look at it. Gas prices are crazy high, $5 a gallon. Inflation is like 3.5%. All-time highs in the stock market. All-time lows in consumer sentiment.
We're lower now than we were in the 1980s, COVID, the Great Financial Crisis. I know. Yeah.
But here's the thing. The things that don't matter right now, people would start freaking out about that more if the stock market were to fall.
It's like people won't freak out about that stuff, at least market people like us, because the stock market is doing well, right?
Price rules everything around me.
Yes. All right. What do you got?
All right. I want to get on my soapbox one more time talking about how careful you have to be as a market consumer. As somebody who listens to a lot of different opinions, you have to be careful. Exhibit A: tech fund flows are going straight up. This is from Callum Thomas. We're looking at the rolling 12-month net ETF flows of tech stocks and it's off the charts. We've never seen anything like this. Simultaneously we have...
This is very surprising to me.
That it's dwarfed the other periods from the cycle by so much.
It's like triple the size.
The numbers are bigger, but still even if you normalize it as a percent, it's crazy high. We also have near-record retail buying from Robinhood. Sherwood has his chart showing the Robinhood traders' net 21-day single-stock purchases as a percentage of the max, meaning the most that they've ever done. They're anchoring to that.
Everyone in the pool, right? Everyone's okay. Uh, antenna up. Everyone's bullish. Oh, yeah. Okay. Goldman, uh, they have a positioning indicator. It fell for the sixth week in seven, moving further into negative territory, the most negative since June 2025. What do we make of this, Ben?
Well, the sentiment indicators are completely broken. You trust the flows, not the sentiment indicators. You can't ask people what they want to do or what they feel. You have to look at what are they actually doing. So the flows matter.
I agree. But I do wonder if the sentiment indicator is quantitative. I'm guessing it's got to be mostly quantitative. This is not survey-based. The point is just be careful with surveys. Obviously, it's really hard to say everyone is this or that because the Robinhood trader behaves very differently than the Goldman institutional investor than the Schwab self-directed investor. These are categorically different types of people. So it's really hard to say everyone is this or consensus is that. Sometimes it's easier than others, but right now it's difficult.
So I was going to put this in the doc, but I didn't want to. But The Atlantic had this piece where they said that there is a sex recession in America. Okay, I'm going to bring this back to center. And they show that the only people who are still having the same amount of sex, this is married couples, are religious couples. So it's like religious attendees, how much sex do you have data? Is this on like the eye watch? How do they get this data?
This was my question. Who in their right mind is answering a survey like this? What is your religion? Are you having sex with your spouse? No one in their right mind is answering these questions. How can you think...
These are weirdos. It's just...
Weirdos are not having sex or whatever. Like correct. Who is answering these?
Who's answering these? There's no way you can...
The average age is what? 68.
I just don't know who is answering questions like this. You're right. Um, all right, let's talk bonds a little bit. Uh, let me start with this. Hey guys, I listen every week and love the show. We got 12 or 13 different emails like this probably where the market is. You said last week you bought bonds. Can you elaborate on that? Did you purchase actual bonds or ETFs? What types of bonds? All fair questions. And again, a bunch of people asked us this. Michael and I are totally contrarian indicators. And here's the thing that I will say on this bond purchase.
Wait, what do you mean contrarian indicators?
Because everyone else is getting in the pool for taking on risk and we're going the other way with a...
I think a lot of people are turning bullish on bonds.
I don't know, man. Maybe.
So here's what I did. I did this in my brokerage account, and I've never done it in my brokerage account before. My 401k is still 100% all stocks. I did this in, I bought an ETF. You can buy individual bonds, but it's a pain in the butt if you're not someone who knows how this stuff works. You can go to TreasuryDirect and buy treasuries right from the US government, but it's an old, antiquated website. And I don't know why you would try to buy your own bonds when you can just buy an ETF. That makes it easy. It's low cost. Most of them are very liquid. It's just simple. And the thing is we are obviously early here. You and I are not going to be like, we bought bonds, so that's the top of rates.
No, there's definitely not the top, right? I don't...
I never look at, and this is how we think about this with our clients too. I do not look at this from a, I'm trying to time an interest rate market. I think rates are going to fall this much by this date, and like I don't even care if rates stay where they are.
Right. So it's a risk-reward.
Yes, I like the yield. That's the thing. Well, speaking of yield...
Wait, can I say what I did?
Because I'm glad that you said that. I also am not touching my 401k. I'm 41 years old. Um, I don't care really where the market goes over the near term. Now, if you told me for sure with 100% certainty that the market would fall 30%, well then of course I would sell all my stocks and put everything into bonds. But I'm not buying bonds. I still like stocks. Now, if stocks go up, if stocks rip 15% into year end and they go up another 25% in 2027, might I consider owning some bonds? Yeah. If I think like we're really in a bubble, will I own some bonds? Sure. Okay, fine. Not that. Uh, in my brokerage account, like you, Ben, I am down to one and a half stocks. I still have a pretty full position in IMAX and I own another stock. Doesn't even matter which stock. But I sold all of the ones that I'm embarrassed to mention. What's that?
You embarrassed to mention it?
Well, I just... it's a small position. So I... No, I own Clear. Thicker is you.
It's a very small position, so it's not worth mentioning.
Clear as in like the airport thing.
The airport. The airport thing.
Um, so I got rid of, I cleaned up. I bailed on Netflix. I don't care if it's the bottom. I'm down 20% on Netflix. I got rid of Spotify. Like all the other stocks I took a chance on that I had like small losses on except for Netflix, which was a 20% loss. Gone. Whacked them off. I am very happy owning my 5% yields. So I've got a mixture of short, intermediate, and I did take a swing this morning on long, which I will probably get run over on. It's fine. Um, but yeah, this is not a stock market...
So that's a directional bet. You're going...
So I bought, I did buy TLT 30 minutes before this podcast started. It certainly feels like a blowoff top in yields, but...
But just to be clear for people listening again, this is not a bond market call to say that rates have topped or anything because they haven't. They just haven't, like they're clearly going up. The trend is higher.
In our investing life cycle, we've never experienced 5% bond yields before.
I got to do it. I got to do it. It's attractive. Okay.
And so we talked this week, we talked to Bill Egan from JP Morgan. He's going to be on the talk book in a few weeks. And he was like, you know, I'm getting 4% on T-bills. Why wouldn't I just stay there? Like that's an option for a lot of people too, still. Yeah.
And if the Fed keeps hiking rates, those three-month T-bills don't have interest rate risk and they'll do just fine too. And you got to... So the thing is, yields abound.
If somebody told you yields abound, if somebody told you in 2020 that you can get 4% in cash, the response would be like, 'All right, why would I really do much else?'
Right? The thing is, bonds give you the kicker. If and when inflation and growth stall, if they stall out, bonds are going to have a kicker. And let me show you. I had Sean and Matt working on me with some Bloomberg AGG stuff this week. So the AGG goes back to 1976. It was originally, little history lesson here, originally the Lehman Brothers AGG. They created it in the early 80s. Then they backdated it to the 70s. So this they can have a benchmark. No one ever had a bond benchmark before. Investment grade since 1976. This is one of the worst five-year returns ever. It's negative. It's never been negative before until this part of the cycle. The rolling 10-year nominal return. So that was like negative 0.3% for five-year annualized returns. For 10 years, it's 1.4%. If you add inflation on top of it, this is the worst 10-year real return ever for the AGG right now since the inception back in 1976. And the reason was even though inflation was higher and rates were rising even more rapidly in the 80s, yields were a lot higher. So this was literally the perfect storm for a bad bond market. Low starting yields, rapidly rising rates, high inflation. You couldn't ask for a worse bond market than we just lived through.
And on the other side of that is higher yields. That's our bond take. All right. Uh, I said last week there is no such thing as a K. Jim Bianco slid in my DMs and he said, 'Ben, this is the K.' He sent me a chart. We talked about sentiment earlier.
By the way, Jim Bianco turned bullish on bonds.
Yeah. So he said this is the K. It's the stock market versus sentiment. Stock market goes up, sentiment goes down. It's because I said there's no chart that actually looks like the letter K. He said no, it's a stock market versus sentiment. This is very bizarre. You can see in the past stock market crashes, sentiment crashes. Stock market goes up, sentiment goes up until...
We know the surveys are broken.
Yeah. Co did it. Um, here's the strange thing about the K. All right. K-shaped economy. Look at this. This is pretty surprising. Uh, they looked at household growth in income on an inflation-adjusted basis since the 1990s. The lowest fifth of, so they did the lowest fifth, median second fifth, and middle fifth. They're looking at poor and middle-class households. The lowest fifth has seen by far the greatest gains in income since 1990. Very surprising. Okay. They also looked at, uh, let's see, hang on. Oh, growth in wealth too. It's actually been pretty strong. Like throughout most of the 90s, income gains actually weren't that great for most lower and middle-income households. They've rocketed higher in the past 10 to 20 years. The Wall Street Journal has this piece. Inflation-adjusted median household income. Look at this. From 2000 to 2015, inflation-adjusted income went nowhere. Remember how mad people were about this? Look at how much it's shot up in recent years.
This is also an underreported part of the economy. And I'm definitely not saying that the lower fifth is like killing it at all because they're obviously not.
But on a relative basis...
No, no, no. That's not where I'm going. My point is they're still spending all their money...
...and now they have more money to spend.
Right. Listen to this. One more from Kohl Institute. Since 1967, the share of households with incomes of 150,000 or greater, that's inflation-adjusted, okay, has more than quintupled. This is the craziest thing. Look at this chart here. The percentage of people with $150,000 or more inflation-adjusted, 1967 was 5% of households. Today, it's almost 30%.
I don't think we celebrate enough how much wealth that we've created and how much better incomes are than they were in the past. One more. Blake Millard, friend of the show, uh, he was on a panel with me last year at FutureProof talking about content. Surging equity wealth pushed household assets above 10 times of liabilities in Q2 of 2026. This is from Bank of America. This is an insane chart. Household assets to liabilities is now 10 times. That's pretty crazy, right?
We spend a lot of time talking about the liabilities and not enough talking about the assets. To that point, JP Morgan had a similar report this week titled 'More US households are supporting spending by drawing on investment wealth.' So the flywheel of stock market gains flowing into the real economy, which we've been discussing, is spinning fast.
Okay. I have a question about this. I have a question about this report. Give the data, then I'll ask my question.
Okay. You know I didn't make this report, right?
Yes. But I just have a take on it. Okay, 8% of people withdrew money from investments on net over February to April 2026. That's up from 4% over the same period of 2019 and just 2.4% in 2015. High-income individuals are much more likely to use investments to support spending. The share from the top income segment rose from 6.6% from February to April 2015 to 20%. That's unbelievable. So the stock market is just a big ass piggy bank for people that have been invested for a while. One more thing and then you could ask. They also showed the cash withdrawn from investment accounts as a share of spending, and of course for the top 10%, it is so far up and to the right. It used to be like less than 4% in 2015 and now it is, I don't know, over 10%.
So I read this report too. This is...
Oh, you want to go on vacation? Yeah, sell some stocks.
This is showing the wealth effect. Isn't this also just baby boomers retiring and spending more from their investment accounts?
I don't know if it's just that...
...but isn't that a big part of it?
Um, of course, it's part of the story.
Okay. I thought... All right. I think stats like this are going to be skewed by baby boomers in the years ahead.
Both of them can be true.
Do you doubt the direction of this chart is absolutely telling the story? Think about how many baby boomers are like, think about where baby boomers were in 2010 in terms of how prepared they were for retirement and going, 'My house got killed. My stock portfolio got killed. I'm never going to be able to retire.' And now they're looking at, 'Oh my gosh, everything I own is up. I'm doing way better than I possibly could have imagined.'
That was a dumb take. Baby boomers cashing out their 401k was going to crash the stock market.
Oh, yeah. Because that's how it works. People when baby boomers turned whatever the age is, what is the age of withdrawal? 69 or 65? 69 and a half?
59 and a half you can start.
Say I'm not a CFP anyway, um, that they were going to just like go to cash simultaneously. Dumb as ever.
All right, we have a heading for inflation here. We haven't used it in a while, so I put something in here just because this is inflation-based. John Arnold tweeted: As of August 2026, the national median rent sits at 1390, almost exactly where it would have been if rent growth since 2020 had remained on the slow and steady trajectory it had been on pre-pandemic, 2% annualized since 2017. So you had this huge enormous spike in 2021 in rents and ever since 2022, rent growth has completely fallen off and it's back on the pre-pandemic trend. I'm not sure how many people would believe you if you showed them this.
You don't think rent growth slowing is good news for people, especially young people who are boxed out of the housing market?
Come on. I know there's nothing people on social media hate more today than good economic news. Eddie Alamine says that all the time.
I know. I know that's true. I'm just saying inflation was so horrible that it's just difficult to celebrate this. But this is literally the biggest outlay for 90% of households is housing.
And for people who are renting, the fact that rent...
For people that are renting, of course it is good news.
All right. Let's talk about... So you said you've been... I liked your take that you don't want to hear what people are doing with their agents or AI or like it's like fantasy football. Stop telling me what you're doing. I don't care.
I am violating my own rules.
I'm sure you are. But you're using some of this stuff. I talked about playing around with Muse last week. Uh, so Torsten Slok has a... he said Muse and similar agentic AI assistants could soon sweep household cash automatically into accounts paying 3.3 to 5% instead of 0.1% on the national average on checking accounts if every household used AI agents to optimize the return on their cash.
Stupid. This is very stupid.
Yes, banks could lose a large share of cheap deposits they rely on to make loans, which would be a problem.
Here's... if I had hair, I wouldn't be bald. Here's the thing.
First of all, they can't do this. The banks will shut them off if you just keep pinging their bank account.
Yes, that's a restrict access.
Like, listen, I've said from the start, the only thing I want from AI is Scarlett Johansson as my assistant. And it sounds like we're really getting close to that or we're already there.
That's all I want. I want the assistant. I think it's got to get better. I'm never a first user for these things. So I'm probably going to wait till Apple does it to use it. I've been toying around with Muse a little bit.
Um, but I'm probably going to wait till Apple gives me a really good one and probably use them just because I think it'll be easier.
I want to... before we get into the agents, and I've been using this out of instinct over the last week and it's absolutely incredible. So I'm going to violate what I said last week about not sharing. Sorry, don't care. Uh, it's unbelievable and I want the audience to know about it. I want to say this before we return to the agent stuff. I don't know if this is controversial or not. I don't give a damn about AI slop. How about that? I don't care. Here's my take. I understand why people do care about it. I really do. I think it's coming from a good place. I think that there's worry that we're losing our humanity. But can I tell you something? I just don't care. I don't get caught up in what other people are doing. If you want to write me an AI-crafted email, I'll just delete it. Or maybe I'll read it. I'm just not that bothered by it. I feel like AI slop has become like the term 'doomer' on the internet. Um, I don't care.
I guess I'm like you or I'm not, and I'm sure most people are coming around to that or will come around to that. I'm like you. For me it's a filter to ignore someone. If you wrote a blog post using AI and I could tell immediately, I'm just not going to read it, right? So it's just a filter for me.
I guess people are making the leap that like there will be nothing left other than AI-produced content, and I just reject that. It's just nonsense.
I do too. And also there aren't that many good writers out there. So if people are using AI to write better than they could by themselves, I don't know. Why wouldn't you if you don't like writing or you're not very good at it? Um, so anyway, I'm bullish on the agent thing.
I think it's going to be...
But I love the fact that we're getting to the point where we're trying to figure out what it's going to lead to. And I like... listen, it's not that hard for people to take money they have now and move it. It's not hard to do.
Like just having an agent is not going to make you much better. I love the fact that people are trying to think through what having an agent will do. Here's the thing. I think that's totally unanswerable right now. How many people are actually going to use these to the fullest extent? Because I know people who are all optimized to the hilt love these things. How many people actually need a personal assistant for their life? How many people have CEO-level or C-suite-level lives that are so busy that they need this? That's a question I don't know the answer to.
I think it's the wrong question.
Who says everybody has to use it for it to matter?
Well, if it's going to lead to a bank run, then everyone has to... that's what I'm saying. Fine, I didn't... that nonsense. Okay. I think everybody's going to use those things.
But I do think the people who do use them, they are going to get... but I think after a while you're going to go, how many restaurant reservations do I really make? How many travel reservations do I really make?
Everybody's going to use these things.
Of course they are. But I don't know if they're going to have the societal impact that...
God damn it. Let me finish.
When I say everybody, because I've been using it all week. You have not. So, let me just talk about this.
Well, since Future Proof, since I downloaded it.
And I cannot go backwards. So, you are a late adopter. Admittedly, you just discovered Apple Pay. I don't think that 100% of society is going to use this. Obviously, when I say everybody, I don't mean literally everybody. But, Ben, it is incredible. It is absolutely incredible. Don't think of it as like, oh, does everybody need an assistant? No, not everybody needs an assistant. It just does so many things for you. So, as an example, and I'm not saying that this is the end-all be-all, I'm just sharing with the audience who's like, 'Wait, what are you guys talking about?' So, Instinct is a company that is similar to Muse, which you may have heard about from Meta. What's interesting about Instinct, and Patrick just had the founder on his podcast, the kid is 23 years old, which is totally mind-blowing. They're growing 10% a day. They just raised a billion dollars at a $10 billion valuation. Okay. So, what is it?
If Apple comes out with a serious assistant, that company's nuked overnight.
I don't know. Maybe perhaps...
It is a text messaging platform where you text it to do anything. And when I say anything, Robin will send me like, 'Oh, can you get this basketball for Kobe? Can you go do this? Can you do that?' So now Robin and I have our Instincts synced to each other where they're talking to each other. They're putting stuff on our calendar. They're buying. They're scheduling. They're returning. So as a tangible example, I said, 'Can you help me with my Disney subscription? I think right now I pay for Disney, Hulu, and ESPN Plus bundle with commercials. I just want Hulu and Disney, no commercials. What am I paying now? What would be the new price? Can you execute this for me?' All right. So it said, 'I'll pull what you're paying now, price it out, blah blah blah blah.' Found it. And I don't need to read every text message. The point is it does things for you. It doesn't just tell you what's happening and then make you do it. It does everything for you. So there's going to be a lot of concern about safety, how secure these things are.
Yeah. I'm simply not ready to give my information up to these people. No way. I'm not a lot of... Okay, Noah said the founders...
But AI probably goes, 'Ha, idiot. I can hack into all your stuff anyway. I don't need you to give it to me.'
Noah said after three weeks, 40% of users are sharing a personal credit card. So I've shared everything. Maybe I'm an idiot. I don't care. It is doing all of my everything. Move money here. Oh, my account got overdrawn. Oh, what happened? I had to move money from this account to this account. It repaid it for me. It is just doing everything. It's crafting emails. It's...
I'm just totally not there yet for moving accounts. I do not want an agent that can go rogue to move from one account to another. No way I'm trusting that. Maybe I'm like just naive here, but I'm not doing that. No way.
Totally fine. I'm not you. You could do whatever you want. My point is that this thing is going to be adopted in a big way. And that is why...
