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Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Ben, good morning. How you doing?
Good morning. Someone said last week we didn't say welcome to Animal Spirits. So, um, it threw him off.
All right. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. All right. We're going to start the show today with an op-ed in the New York Times. I am generally a uh praised by name, criticized by category person. That's like the right attitude in life. Especially when you're talking to a public audience. Um
Yeah, that's true. I criticize permabears. That's my thing. So, there was an article over the weekend by uh our friend Kyla Scanlan, and it broke my heart a little bit like what Anakin did to the Queen in uh Revenge of the Sith, which I just rewatched with Logan and the boys and Kobe. I still love that movie even though Execute Order 66 was a bit silly.
Are we talking prequels here? The prequel Star Wars prequels. Is that
Yeah. One, two, three. Yeah. Revenge of the Sith.
Yeah, they're all terrible. I would see him in a theater.
Is it? I thought that was like universal knowledge that those are just really bad.
Well, the first one was a complete joke. Yeah.
Clone Wars was no better, but Revenge of the Sith was
I didn't mind. Is that the one where he turned into Darth Vader? I guess I didn't mind that.
That was that was pretty cool. All right, so anyway, um, so I'm going to criticize Kyla's piece because I think she's phenomenal, super talented, but this one didn't hit the mark for me. The title of the post, which she didn't choose, but still, this was the topic, so it was fair: why the stock market makes no sense right now. And Ben, is this text like a you pull this straight from the article?
Okay, all right. More broadly, and listen, I think what she's saying is what a lot of people are feeling. Everyday investors, everyday Americans are like, why is the stock market going? She says, 'More broadly, the markets are showing the single lesson that the past 40 years have taught them. It will always be saved. Markets are not properly pricing risk because they really don't have to. They have assumed that the US government will allow them to implode, and that assumption is putting the world economy at stake. What's more, the new rescuers, the new rescuer investors are counting on artificial intelligence, is vulnerable to the exact risks markets are ignoring.' So this was like the populist rhetoric that has taken the country over the last I don't know, decade, whatever. And this article is nonsense. This argument is nonsense because I think generally yes, I think everybody agrees that uh the government will not allow us to implode. The Fed put, duh, but that's not what happened in this go-around at all. I think the markets made perfect sense now. I think like in the beginning yes, everyone's like wait why aren't markets going down, why aren't markets going down, but after like a let's call it two to three to four weeks, I think investors settled and said, 'Well, this actually does make sense because we know that these headwinds are going to pass.' Everybody air quote knew, no, we couldn't know for sure, but everybody had a feeling and the market was right that we were going to move on, that crude oil would come down, that the dollar would come down, that rates would come down, and all the while earnings estimates kept going higher. And so, it was like a pretty linear, it was very understandable. It wasn't, this had nothing to do with the government. The thing is one of these things that we hate about the system.
I understand why people say that because we did get saved in the pandemic. It could have been way worse if the government didn't throw trillions of dollars at it. But also in 2022 it was the opposite of being saved. Remember the Fed was literally trying to make the stock market go down. They said that. Neil Kashkari said, 'I want the stock market to go down. It's a good thing when it goes down.' We brought rates from 0% to 5%. That wasn't them saving. That was them trying to destroy the market. Liberation Day wasn't the government saving the market. It was the government saving them from themselves, right? And that's the same thing that's going on now is that it's not a saving thing. Uh I think the thing that really makes people mad is that the stock market has been more right than anyone this decade. It was right about the vaccine coming. It was right about inflation being transitory, which kind of was. It was right about the Russia Ukraine war not sending oil to $200 a barrel. It was right about the fact that AI would matter more than tariffs. And it was right about so far the Iran war not having a huge impact on earnings. And that's the thing. I heard Steve Eisman on a podcast a few months ago and he said the stock market is amoral. It doesn't care about anything other than the numbers. That's all it cares about. And if this was impacting earnings, the stock market would be lower. That's it. That's all that the stock market cares about. Uh yeah, remember a couple of weeks ago I said if you think that the market is going to crash or whatever, like the burden of proof is on you because the market was telling you. Again, I understand the first two weeks the reaction. We were scratching our heads too right because it was like wait a minute, I thought the tariff moves was the black swan event like I don't, we didn't understand. But as it kept going, the lack of the selloff you had to say okay, the market is probably right. And it was right. And so I do feel uncomfortable calling Kyla out by name because she's a friend of the show and I think her work is phenomenal. But this particular piece of hers I didn't care for, and I'm still a fan of hers.
Yeah, I am too. I think she's done great work. I think that we see this, we've seen this every sort of downturn where people ask this whole decade, why isn't this worse? Remember how many people predicted when the stock market came rushing back in 2020? Like, yeah, okay, fine. It's going to roll. This is a dead cat bounce. It's going to roll over. We're definitely retesting the lows. Every smart investor was saying that at the time.
I said that. I remember in Mayish as the market was approaching new all-time highs and we erased the 35% decline, I very much remember saying on the show like, you're telling me that the market, the economy, businesses are in a better place today than they were pre-pandemic. And the thing is that's not how the stock market works. I was an idiot to say that. I mean, I listen, it was uh I think it was forgivable given all the deaths and stuff and all the scariness that was the pandemic, but that's not how the market works. It doesn't work on today. It works on the future and what it anticipates the future to be. So, a really great compliment to that essay was um Duality Research. He wrote, 'We're in a market environment that doesn't care much about how things looked today. All that matters is whether things are getting better at the margin because that's what actually moves prices. Like we said last week, we want to avoid static thinking and focus on where things are going, not where they are right now. Improvement alone can be enough to sustain momentum so long as that dynamic holds. The case for staying constructive remains intact.' All right. So this is the his kudigra. If you're having a hard time grasping the idea, remember that the stock market's job is to make you say this makes no sense. So, lean into it because this market isn't exactly rolling out the red carpet for anyone trying to jump back in. And that's kind of the point here. Yes, not always, but many times the stock market fools the majority. That's just the way that is. But here's a here go ahead.
I also think I can almost say with certainty, there's going to be a point where we're going to be complacent about risk. We're going to be too complacent and we're going to think, 'Oh, this will blow over too.' That is going to happen. And I think that's what people are waiting for. Like, oh, these idiots are way too complacent. This should be getting worse and it's not. That's going to happen at some point.
When you say these idiots, do you mean us too or the market? Because I was
No, not us. Everyone. I think I just think that, but trying to predict that ahead of time when the market is too dumb, and when the market is, you know,
That's one out of a hundred. Listen, this is Michael's number one rule of investing. If the market is doing one thing and most people are saying this makes no sense, most people are wrong and the market is right. That is just that's it. It is the collective wisdom of the crowds and yes, the crowd is wrong once in a while, but just assume that you're wrong, not the market.
Yes, that's a good baseline assumption.
I don't understand why. Yeah, you don't understand. You're wrong. Bezos once said, 'Contrarians are mostly wrong.' It's true and it has to be by definition.
Okay, so here's a great chart from Alex uh at Duality Research. S&P 500 price returns versus forward EPS growth. So it's looking at the price return year-over-year and the 12-month forward EPS year-over-year. And would you say these move in the same direction, Ben? Because I would.
So based on this, this makes the stock market makes perfect sense right now. Now, I know what I understand Kyla's post, right? It's she's talking to everybody, right? The average investor that really is like, wait, this doesn't make any sense. And I think she would probably, you know, agree with what we're saying here.
She's not she's not alone either. So, this is from Lisa Bramitz tweeted this from uh one of the chief investment strategists at HSBC. This doesn't make sense. Risk assets are detached from reality. This is how a lot of our meetings start right now. Uh and the thing is it's just it's that back to your EPS growth. It's earnings. I pulled it from exhibit A. Look at I pulled this consensus expected estimates from exhibit A. Earnings are expectations are accelerating. They're going up. Now, could it be that these expectations are too high and in the like if if actual earnings come in lower that then the market is getting out over its skis? Yes. But look at this one from Mike Bird at the Economist. Earnings expectations for American stocks are rising faster than after the 2017 tax cuts. They're rising at a pace you usually only see during recovery from recessions. The profit machine will not stop. So, this is 12-month forward earnings per share, percentage of change from year earlier. And again, it's accelerating. This is the thing the stock market cares about. And it could be wrong, but that's not what it's not what the stock market's paying attention right now. Like, could this be wrong? It's no, this is what's happening.
I forget who I saw this from. I think a lot of people have done this chart. You've never seen this sort of multiple contraction outside of a recession.
Because prices were rising or prices were falling as earnings were rising.
Yes. So it was like leverage on leverage.
So that was like the rubber band being pulled.
Yes. That's if you want to make sense of the market, the earnings are this. This is the AAMS razor. This is the simple explanation.
I think this I think I actually think the market makes perfect sense right now. Everything that was holding the market back receded. Earnings growth is accelerating and also the biggest part or one of the biggest parts is people were way underallocated because they went, there was the biggest rush to cash ever. Now I know it's like on a dollar basis but still people were underinvested and now they're chasing. And will the chase go too far? Yeah, probably.
This is also a really good explainer in the stock market not always being the economy. Energy makes up 4% of the index. Technology is 40 or 50 depending on how you define it. And I know oil impacts everything, but obviously with these big companies that matter most to earnings, it doesn't matter all that much. All right, I looked at this, not trying to pat myself on the back here. Everyone said, someone emailed me last night and said, you know, that was really heartfelt uh kudos Michael gave to you last week. I think he actually meant it. I said, yeah, I kind of think he meant it, too.
What do you mean? Of course I meant it. That was
But uh I don't want to scratch the back, but look, the first blog post I ever wrote about everything is getting faster was 2014.
And even I could not have anticipated how much faster things have gotten since then in like the last decade. So this is from Bespoke. Since 1928, this is the first time the S&P has made new all-time highs in 11 days or fewer after falling 5 to 10%. Ma's proposal posted this, the 13-day NASDAQ return. So I think it was up 13 days in a row. Is that right? And he posts it on the greatest 11-day or 13-day returns ever. And he says the other dates are hilarious because it's all 2001, 2009, 2000, 2008, 2020, like after massive massive crashes like the snapback rallies. This one is in that same boat.
This was a weird one because the phrase is the markets take the stairs up and the elevator down. And that's usually true, right? Markets go up slowly and then they come down really fast. This was the opposite.
But we, this is the new normal, though. We've done it. We did. Listen to this. 2018 V-shaped rally, 2020. No,
This wasn't. But this my point is this wasn't a V because the V is V down, V up. This wasn't a V. This was a J. A
Rolled over slowly. Yeah. So, it was like a backwards.
It was weird. We took the stairs down. Remember, everyone was like, why aren't we going down faster? We didn't even have a 2% down day. The market took the stairs down, the elevator back up. It was very bizarre.
But I feel like every single downturn we've had this decade, you get stats like this going, 'This has never happened before. This is happening more and more often.' So 3 weeks ago, the S&P for a year to date, this is not the downtrend. This is year-to-date returns. On a total trend basis, we're down seven. The NASDAQ was down 9 and the Russell 2000 was down three. Now the Russell 2000 is up 13%. The Q's are up almost 6% and the S&P is up over 4% year to date.
Huge. And this is in three weeks.
So, I had Matt look at this for me. We've had seven new highs this year. I think we had three in a row. So, we had like two months between all-time highs. It was nothing essentially, right? We came racing back to all-time highs. So, I looked at new all-time highs by decade. And then I thought like, man, this is fast approaching the 80s and 90s bull market. So, if you look at from 1980 to March of 2000, which is when we peaked for the dotcom bubble, there was 505 new all-time highs in the market. From since 2013, when we hit new all-time highs again after the GFC for the first time through now, we're at almost 450 all-time highs. Look at the next chart. I had Matt update this chart for me. The bull market, the 1982 bull market versus 2009.
57%. We're a 57% move higher. And we equal the 1980s and 1990s bull market. That's where.
I know this comment is a reflection of where we are in time, but I also genuinely believe what I'm about to say. This is why buy and hold beats almost everything else. It's just too difficult. It's not to say that like yes, people don't have great calls and of course they do and of course there are very talented traders, but we can't all be talented traders. And this idea that you're going to jump in and out and in and beat taxes is such a joke. And if you don't understand that by now, now I'm not saying buy and hold is easy. It sucks. I'm not saying that you don't get lost decades. All of that sort of stuff still applies. But if you think that you're going to do better by, whatever, using your intuition or whatever, like you are very delusional.
Can I give you a sneak peek of my book that's coming out in about 3 weeks? So Churchill had the quote that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones. And my play on that was buy and hold is the worst form of investing except for all the other ones.
Yeah, it's good. And to be clear, we are not at least, I was to say I am not, but we are not. I speak for Ben and I like at Ritholtz we are not um uh shut up nothing matters buy and hold forever. Like we run a trend following tactical strategy. So, we understand the behavioral difficulties of staying invested, but just this idea that like you're going to non-systematically use your intuition um and your feel and do that successfully over the course of your investing career. Nonsense.
If you include the last 20 years, which is like 2007, right before the GFC to now, I think it's proven beyond like a shadow of a doubt investing on your intuition is nuts. The best people in the world can do it. You Stanley Druckenmiller, knock yourself out. Everyone else, you have to have rules in place to guide your actions. You have to. It's never going to work. All right. I love this one from Sam Ro. Question. Is investing supposed to be fun? What do you think?
I will say this. No. Parts of your portfolio can be fun. So, even though I think that uh whatever percent, the vast majority of your overall portfolio should be boring as hell, you're allowed to have a little fun. I have a lot of fun.
So, I like this. So, but no, it's not fun.
Sam had a piece at uh at TKer and he said, 'Wait, I would get it wrong every time.'
As much as I enjoy the intellectual exercise of researching and writing about financial markets, I find the active investing can be very unpleasant. When stocks are up, I worry they'll go down. And when they're down, I worry they'll go lower. I think that's a many, and you nailed it.
You've said that before, too.
Well, my take on that is every time I think every time stocks fall a little, I think they're going to fall a lot.
Yeah. So he says, 'When even when I look back and see progress in my portfolio has made towards my financial goals, I struggle to recall moments when I felt totally sanguine about the money I had at risk. Sure, in hindsight, I'm grateful for how far I've come, but my memory of the process is of anything but a smooth ride.' I'm glad he said this. So he showed did this thing where he put money in uh last year right at the peak before Liberation Day. So he put a big lump sum in right at the peak, had a huge crash, but now the stock market came roaring back and he now that buy doesn't look so terrible, which is kind of my Bob the world's worst market timer. So he's saying like I'm the world's worst timer cuz I put a lump sum in at the peak. But he's saying even though it worked out, that was not fun. I didn't enjoy that. I think that's a good point that it's easy to look back and go, 'Ah, man, that wasn't too bad. This has been a bull market.' But it's has not been easy the whole time.
I am in complete agreement. Um
Yeah, this has not been a smooth ride.
And and in a million years if you would have told me in 2013 when we hit new all-time highs when remember people were saying this the market reeks of euphoria, our favorite quote from a permabear we know in 2013. 2013 by the way we were laughing in 2013 about that quote. Josh and I were in Austin. I'll never forget we were on a bus giggling. Now, it's been easy for people that are um completely disinterested in the stock market, right? I would say like for the average person that goes to work, contributes to their 401k, checks our balance once a year, yeah, it's been really easy. But for people listening to this podcast that are checking their balance, that are looking at the headlines, ain't been easy.
No. No, it has not. And it's funny, I had a client conversation. I may have told this story already. Stop me if I have. And kind of asked, this is like a week ago, like, 'How have you felt about this all this stuff, the geopolitics, the macro, whatever's going on?' And they said, 'Honestly, I've been so busy in my job that I haven't been able to pay attention.' And I said, 'All right, I'm not going to say anything else. If that's working for you, keep at it. There's no reason for me to show you charts and that's not a bad place to be.' Okay. I think one of the more interesting reasons why people would have had disbelief heading into this decade about not just all the stuff that's going on, but we're in a totally new environment, economic environment. So, it's crazy to me that we have the S&P essentially has the exact same annual returns in the 2020s as it did in the 2010s, but it's a totally different environment. So,
Can I say can I say the G-word?
It does feel like this is like Goldilocks for the economy.
Well, here's the weird part, though.
And what I mean it's like not too hot, not too cold.
It's sort of, you know, it's sort of just right.
So Matt Klein has this thing where he shows what the inflation outlook looked like before the pandemic and after, even though it looks like the inflation was kind of transitory because it went up and it came down really quick. Like we've reached this new equilibrium it seems where it like 2% really is 3 and a half%. And it seems like such a small number but it's that's a totally different ballgame. I mean obviously the guess what the wage growth has been a little higher, the economic growth has been a little higher, rates have been higher, but that's a that's a totally different world that we're living like this is a totally new environment. We have money, we'll spend it. I feel like for years particularly you have been asking the question like what stops us and it's just it's the labor market. That is it. And what stops that, you know who knows um
Pull this pull this chart yeah probably pull this chart from uh daily chart book. Naya Richardson for the four weeks ending March 28th, 2026, US private employment added an average of 39,250 jobs a week. Doesn't sound like a very big number, but it was the fourth straight week of improvement in hiring.
I believe they called it a narrative violation.
That's it. You know, the funny thing about all the risks that we've been talking about for God knows how many years is that a risk happens, we dissect it in every detail and then it kind of just goes away and then we forget about it. We move people we move on to another risk and then we worry about that for a few weeks.
Do you think that the biggest candidate for that, the risk that we're obsessing over is private credit?
I do. I think people, it's likely because again the workouts on these things take so long. Even if it is bad loans, it's not going to be like one day there's going to be a headline going all the loans went bad,
It's going to take years and years to work out and they'll probably they have all these covenants to go through and
And commanders have a ton of money. Yes.
What's a what movie was a squirrel from where the Oh,
Ice Age. Right. Right. Yeah.
Where he can't get the nut ever?
Uh, all right. This is an interesting one. Um, I forget who I who shared this. We've spoken about this like the internet didn't do anything for productivity. If you just look at the trend line, which kind of sounded like a maybe a legitimate data point that just was hard to believe. Can't be true, right? Internet did nothing. Then maybe we're measuring productivity wrong. So, I saw this from Morgan Stanley. We are likely in the early stages of another productivity boom. Now, the way that they're measuring this is non-farm business labor productivity. So, output per hour. Okay, I'm not exactly sure how you measure output per hour, but according to this metric, internet adoption had a massive impact on output per hour productivity, which is, you know, sort of intuitive. And they're showing that AI adoption and interestingly this chart did go straight down.
Well, it would just it wasn't increasing at as large of a rate.
Right. But they're showing AI adoption bending and potentially turning higher. And I mean I would expect this.
I mean it has to otherwise all there's no other choice. Right.
I uh what was I doing this morning on the machine? Whatever it is, like just everything that you use it for. It's just like this would have been so much harder without with just Google, right?
Yes. Yes. It's turned into my search engine for anytime I need like a question answered.
So, I got some angry emails from Gen X people in recent weeks.
Oh, yeah. Because they're the forgotten generation. And I think I said something that like Gen X never had anything and they had it easy. Uh when I talk about demographics, my tongue is usually planted firmly in cheek.
What do you mean? Why? Why? This is the lamest Grand Rapids head I've ever seen. It stand on something.
You're allowed to say what you feel.
Oh, well, I said last week, I think boomers had it easier than anyone. Like, by far.
That wasn't tongue. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Not to be a dick. That was that's not tongue and cheek. No, I was being tongue and cheek about Gen X not mattering and never having because Gen X they so they the Wall Street Journal did something. They showed Gen X charts now and they were saying that like but actually buying homes for Gen X in like from 1990 to 2015 was a pretty great time to buy a home. Obviously rates were coming down and prices were pretty low. Um but Gen X did have to like when they were just hitting
There's two crashes. Yes, they the 9/11 into dotcom bubble bursting into GFC. Now, in hindsight, because I remember I had this story of someone telling me, one of my brother's friends said,
I started working in 2000. I lived through two recessions. Stock market went nowhere for a decade. I put more money in than my account is worth in 2010. And he's telling me like, tell me something good here. And the only thing I could say was, you just dollar cost average for a decade and think about what that's going to be worth. Think about it's what it's worth now 15 years later.
So the good news was you got the dollar cost average through a bad, the bad news was you had to live through a crappy decade. But here's the one that like I think is just the what do you say the cudigra? So they show the average household net worth by millennials, Gen X, baby boomers. Here's the one thing to take away from this chart.
Which chart are we looking at?
So the very that shows average household net worth in 2025 on an inflation-adjusted basis. Eventually every generation is richer than the one before it. Gen X is ahead of baby boomers. Millennials are ahead of Gen X and boomers. Like this is the thing to put hang your hat on. People always say like, are we better off than our parents' generations?
But it's average. It's average.
No. Well, if you care about wealth and equality, then you know how much the average skews things.
I think the median would be pretty similar.
Do you? Okay. Well, here's my take on the generational intergenerational stuff. I think every generation has it hard because life is hard. Life is not easy for anybody. Everybody goes through the same personal stuff. Now the environments and the things in the background are changing, making things maybe different, but we all, us, our parents, our kids, we're all people and we all have the same
And the generations are like 18 years wide. So you and I being older millennials, we have a totally different experience because of when we bought houses than younger millennials do who got boxed out of the housing market.
But we also had 2008. So it's like you can go back and forth a million different times. Um, all right. I was going to talk about young people one more time with the labor market, but I guess I don't really have to. My one thing I want to say here is that economic data has gotten so good and there's so much of it now that you can always do an exception to everything.
Like good news, bad news, slice and dice like within the data. So, I did this thing a couple weeks ago where I posted. So, if you look at the Fed has this great thing that I look at all the time with like net worth and assets and what they're worth since 1989. And if you look at since the end of 2019, if you look at the top 10%, the next 40% and the bottom 50%. The bottom 50% and the next 40%, so the bottom 90, okay, had higher asset growth than the top 10% this decade by a pretty decent margin. Does that make, so the growth in assets or the growth in net worth for that cohort the bottom 90% has grown faster than the top 10%. And I said this is surprising data. I don't think anyone would have believed you if you would have told them that. And then people say well yeah of course it's coming off of a lower base which is in fact true.
That's a true statement but I still think it's good news that like the bottom 50%, the bottom you know or the bottom 90% owns more stocks, has seen their wealth rise. I think that you have to start from somewhere is my point.
Yeah. How could you say that's bad news?
A lot of people on the internet did.
Anyway, I think that's the thing that kind of irks me with economic data is that it's so great that we can slice and dice it. But you can always find some little thorn in your side to say like, 'Yeah, but what about this? What about that?'
Definitely can. All right. Uh transcript pulled some stuff this week from them as I always do. More on the economy. This is from Pepsi and I would say that Pepsi serves a pretty wide diverse, Pepsi serves everyone. Who doesn't drink Pepsi? You drink
I am a convert. I used to be a Diet Coke/Coke Zero drinker. I now drink the Pepsi Zero, whatever it's called. It tastes better.
Well, here's what their CEO said. And I must say obviously we're looking at this every day globally, not only the US but globally. And we're seeing the
The consumer is quite resilient, very resilient. We haven't seen an impact on demand since the war started. Here's Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. The US consumer continues to spend through all these different platforms here at Bank of America. Again, a company that serves everybody, Main Street America. To put that in context, the total spending by consumers across all the ways they move money into the US economy at Bank of America is $4.5 trillion a year. For 2025, you could see that it was up 5% from 2024, and that 5% growth has been consistent in the first quarter of '26 compared to the first quarter of '25.
That's above the average, that's above the rate of inflation.
The financial health of consumers and businesses remains strong. Consumers are spending more than a year ago, which includes spending more on gas, but they haven't slowed spending anywhere else.
And if you look, not to belabor the point, but if you look at the state of the consumer, which powers 70% of the economy, and if you look at the tech giants, which powers a lot of the growth in the S&P 500, it's not hard to see why the stock market is going higher. It actually makes perfect sense. So, you don't check your mentions on Twitter anymore, but some guy wrote us and said, 'How could the consumer possibly keep spending through all this stuff? How is this possible?' And my simple answer is just the amount of wealth that's been created in the stock and housing markets this decade is probably on par with anything we've ever seen. And that piece gives the 65% of people who own a home and own stocks so much of a backstop and a margin of safety.
I'm a perfect example, and I know that I am fortunate, I am blessed, and I am at the upper end of the income. But here's an example. So, I don't know what compelled me to... and I caveat because anytime I talk about stuff, 'Oh, it's easy for you to say, you got blah blah.' Okay, I get it. We're very blessed. I got an envelope from one of the credit card companies, and I don't know why I opened it, but I opened it. They always go straight in the trash, right? I opened it, looked at it, and it was a 0% APR for the first 12 months. You've done this before. We spoke about this. I called you. I said, 'Hey, how does this work?' So you said... and what it is, is you could transfer a balance from a previous card, but usually there's like a 3% charge to transfer the balance. So no free lunch. I went on Claude and I said, 'Hey, are there any 0% cards, 0% interest for the first 12 months with 0% transfer fee?' Turns out I found one. The company is called Fairwinds. All right. And I applied. Listener of the show. Got my application. Took care of me. Thank you very much. And this ties into what we've been speaking about with like how expensive it is to own a home. So, my Navian... for listeners who were with us last week, my cold water issue has been fixed. There was an issue with the whatever. It doesn't matter. Who cares?
You finally have hot showers.
I have hot showers. $1,200 bucks. I have hot showers. Worth it.
But my house is always the wrong temperature. It's either too hot or too cold.