The Compound and Friends - It’s Not the Money, It’s the Mood

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

On episode 178 of The Compound and Friends, Michael Batnick and Downtown Josh Brown are joined by Robert Frank to discuss: how the richest people invest and spend their money, the wealth effect, how different generations view money, the soaring cost of vacations, the carried interest loophole, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Kelly Intelligence. To Learn more about the COWS and HCOW ETFs, visit: https://kellyintel.com/ Sign up for The Compound Newsletter and never miss out!: https://www.thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Instagram: https://instagram.com/thecompoundnews Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecompoundnews LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/ Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Josh Brown are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So where did you grow up? So believe it or not, Josh and I are both from America. OK, he's older than I am, but we there was not a lot of overlap. He's like seven years older than me. So we we lived across the street from each other for like a week. I was like eight years old before I moved out.

So funny. So, yeah, we grew up at the same time. And how did you get into this business? I met Josh at a train station. He saved my life. I was really f**ked. This was like 2000 and when I met him at a train station. He saved my life. I was really fucked. This was like 2000 and, when did I ever make him, 2008? And I was an asshole in college. So I got kicked out of Indiana University twice.

But I got kicked out twice. I was like real bad. Did not take school seriously. And so when I graduated during the crisis, I was like, oh, this is why people go to class. Like, why didn't anybody ever tell me that? I'm like sort of kidding, but not. Like, I was really...

And was it just that it took you a while to understand why you needed it? Or just like... So I was arrogant. Okay. Because I always did well in my tests. All right. That I always thought I would be fine. And it turns out like that's not real life.

Right. You know? So, spoiler, it wasn't fine. Right. Until I met him. So you met him. And were you interested in finance and stuff? Oh, Right. Right. Until I met him. So you met him. Yeah. And, and, but were you interested in finance and stuff?

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it was 2008. And like, who the f*** is hiring an idiot? You know? Like, I didn't have any skills. Well, back then a lot, actually.

2008. So, so, but after the wheels fell off, there was, you know, it was over. Yeah. So. I only go to Spanish barbers. Or, what? Yeah. Because they don't want to talk to me. Oh. Yeah, so I only go to Spanish barbers Yeah, because they don't want to talk to me oh They only talk they talk to each other. Oh, they are carrying on like these raucous conversations. They're laughing They're gesticulating. What did I miss an eye?

Could just I close my eyes. I feel like I entered you the halfway Because you don't get haircuts. I'm talking to Robert. Look at his head of hair. That's impressive. This is a man that knows about... No, but I don't know the most important thing... I used to go to hairdressers when I had a lot of hair. Ten years ago, I had hair down to my shoulders. And then I transitioned to barbers because it's almost a joke at this point.

But then the problem with barbers is they're really friendly. More friendly than hairdressers. And they do small talk. That's like part of their... And there's nothing wrong with that. There are some people that love that. They like really love to just talk. Hear themselves talk, give and take.

I hate it more than anything because not because I'm like too good to talk to anyone. I'm not good at it and I'm like have my topics that I'm interested in and I don't want to do weather. I don't want to do politics. I don't want to do Yankees. So I realized... Oh, is that Michael with hair? It wasn't even good then, by the way. I had great hair. I really did. You know what you look like? Who's the guy that's doing the new White Lotus? Mike Judge?

Mike White. No, Mike Judge is a bit of a somebody. I'll take Mike White. So I had this epiphany. I started going to Seven Stars Barbers in Belmore, New York. And they don't talk to me. They're not interested in doing small talk with me. It's not English isn't their first language and they have each other. And whatever they're talking about amongst each other is way more interesting. You would be like, once you get the barber indicator of what they're buying or selling, then it's time. I think you would be like that guy.

It used to be like the shoeshine indicator, but nobody does that anymore. You know what? Not anecdotally. I guess I'm interested if somebody does a survey but the one-on-one stock talk. Oh and by the way and you probably get this there's an expectation if they know who I am or if they know who you are. Yeah. What stock should I buy? Yeah. What's gonna happen with interest rates? I was with them at a high school and the ref came up to talk about like... See I don't get stock things. I get two

things. I get I have a cool Ferrari. You should come film it. I'm like, wow, you're the only guy that's got a Ferrari. Or they have like some problem like, dude, you wouldn't believe what housekeepers in Palm Beach are getting right now. It's awful. You got to do a story on it.

I actually did a story on it. Oh my god. Actually, you know what's funny about that story? It's so hard to find good help these days. That's the story. So I did a story on it. I actually did a story on it. Oh my God. Actually, you know what's funny about that story? It's so hard to find good help these days. That's the story. So I did that story. It was the first time I used OpenAI for a headline.

So it was a story about how, and this is true actually, I was like, well, that's bullshit. I found out it was true that housekeepers in Palm Beach, because of all the wealth migration, if you were experienced, 150 somewhere getting 200 plus benefits, you travel. Per hour. What? For the year. For a year. Oh, a salary. experienced 150 somewhere getting 200 plus benefits you travel her hour What right

Oh a salary there's salary in the household. That's right. That's next level shit. Yeah. Yeah, so So I actually for that article I just got an open AI is like give me a good headline for an article about housekeepers in Palm Beach making more and that headline came up, genius cleaning up. Oh, that's right. I could never have thought of that. Which, which, which LLM? I used OpenAI.

Now I use Claude more. I haven't used DeepSeek much. My, my daughters love DeepSeek. Why do you use Claude? Claude, I find is is good with deeper research stuff. Give me the correlation between the art market and the stock market over the past 30 years. It's faster and better with that. I wonder why.

I don't know. So my older daughter is studying AI policy. And so whenever there's like, I have an AI question, she's like, oh, use Claude for this, use OpenAI for this, use DeepSeek for this. Oh, that's interesting. Do you know about the Claude boys? No. You don't know about that?

Jean Claude and who's the other one? No, this is like a real thing. There's like this group of boys who walk around with Claude open on their phones all the time. And they ask it what to do, and they will only like make a decision if Claude says to do it. But you can't just ask it what to do. Like you mean I'm here at a store I'm interested in getting brownies. Yeah. Dude they love they love Claude. Like they're... It's very fast. It has the most personable

user interface which is kind of why I think it's very fast. It has the most personable user interface, which is kind of sort of why I think it's like that. It's also so damn quick. It's just like terrifying how quick it is. Yeah. So are you going to be a Claude boy? I don't know. I'm going to check it out.

So Robert, how did you get the beat covering Wealth? I know I just met you, but did you grow up in this world? Not at all. So I grew up, my parents were hippie artists. I grew up in the Hudson Valley. So my dad was literally like a starving artist. We had no money. And so the family I grew up in,

the main value was creativity. Can you see and discover things that no one else is seeing or see things in a different way? And money was just, it wasn't that we dislike people with money. It just wasn't a value in my family. I grew up with artists, with writers, with painters, with so so the arts were really important music. And people with money were assholes growing up.

No, no, they were people that supported the arts. So we knew that they were like they provided a positive for my dad and his friends. They were the guys at the galleries buying the artwork. So it wasn't like we hated them. A necessary evil. They were, yeah, exactly, exactly. No, that's probably right. My point is like, I didn't grow up with a strong view

one way or the other. It just wasn't in my value system. So, but I was very, you know, look, I grew up in the 80s, so we all sort of grew up with a very positive view of success, making money. It's different from this younger generation today, which has a probably more skeptical, broader view of wealth and inequality. Do we really think though? So I think they appreciate wealth, but I think they place a higher amount of cultural cachet

on people who have won it versus earned it. Wait, what do you mean by that? People that have figured out a loophole, or a bet, or they risked everything. Like even the streamers, like the biggest entertainers for people, let's say, between the ages of like 14 and 29. Right? So I guess that's Gen Z, sort of.

Or 27. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they appreciate people who are gambling 24 seven, playing video games for money, finding loopholes that enable them to like pull a hack. Beating the system. Beating the system. Beating the system, that's right.

And it's so funny you mentioned that because I've been thinking a lot, you know, at CNBC.com we have this make it section which is hugely popular and most of the make it articles are like this 26 year old is getting passive income and living in Mexico because he bought this vending machine company or something. When we were growing up. It we were growing up, it's a trick. It's a hack. It's beating the system.

And they're all about people retiring or making passive income at the age of 25 or 30. Being done with having to listen to anyone. Being done with having to work. Even like, so which I can't imagine growing up wanting to not work. Right. That my goal was not like I wanted to not work. That my goal was not, like, I wanted to find work that I loved that was stimulating, that had a connection to what I was good at,

that would help, you know, somehow communicate to others, maybe change the world, probably not. But the idea that my goal was to sit in Mexico and collect money from vending machines. Do they grow out of that mentality or? It's totally, I don't know what, but it's also like, there's more fondness for even criminals that have beaten the system. That's right. A hundred percent.

They respect people who, I won't name names, but that have been arrested and charged and they love these people. Yeah. It's no, it's not a shameful thing for them. It's like what you said about Waffle Wall Street, like, let's talk about the victims of these crimes. Like, Leo DiCaprio, just like Wall Street, the movie, like, Gordon Gekko was not, Oliver Stone, as you said, was not supposed to be a hero. He was an inspiration. He was supposed to be a hero. He became the same thing.

Liar's Poker was the same way. But I think this generation takes it to an extreme where they actually respect and admire people who break the law, who find a way to get back at the institutions, the man, whether it's the government or Wall Street or banks, and find their own way of doing it. I wonder if that's immaturity or that's just internet culture and it was like always trending in that direction. And then I remember seeing an Instagram post where Drake met Jordan Belfort, and Drake was like, it was like a big deal to Drake. It's like, wait a minute,

didn't you just spend the last 20 years like performing and acting and touring the world, and you're excited to meet this f***ing guy? But what about hard work and all that it brings? Not just that it's actually a more realistic way to get sustainable wealth and become really wealthy, but what it gives you in preparation once you get that wealth. But the internet did that.

The internet did that. But they're not clicking on that. They're clicking on the shit. They're clicking on things about generational wealth. Yes. Like they're more, it's so crazy. You have 19 year olds. So this word, generational wealth.

They're poor, but they want generational wealth. All of a sudden I hear all these athletes talk about generational wealth. I'm like, dude hear all these athletes talk about generational wealth. I'm like, dude, if you can even make it to retirement without going bankrupt, good for you. So I think this is internet culture. It's feeding them all of these stories, and some of them are real, about people who have tricked the system or found a workaround. And that exists.

You think about people buying Bitcoin at $50 per coin, they'll never work again. It's all real. Yeah. But like those are the heroes. Yeah. And I don't know that— and I don't know that that's permanent

because the Gen Zs will be turned 30 one day, and they will have lost a lot of money in scams along the way, and they'll realize, like, oh, that's not how you do it. Well, we can, you know, one of the things I always tell people that surprises them is, you know, they say like, well, how do most people get rich? And they think it's celebrities. They think it's rock stars. They think it's somebody who traded crypto, because that's kind of what they see on Instagram. And yeah, that's what's in their face.

It's the guy you've never heard of who built a packaging business or built a real estate business in Nashville all his life. Maybe his dad started it. He inherited a small stump of a business and grew it out. And you own a private company. How do you get rich? You start a private company, you build it, sell it. Here's the key. Exactly. I'll give you. You sell it. And it's just like, but that formula is gone. I'll give you a guy. I'll give you a guy. This is a guy, Adam Weitzman. This should be the guy that Gen Z emulates. He's our age or he's older than us.

This is a guy that had a like a garbage collecting business, like scrap metal. I love that. In Syracuse, but he's the most lit. He is the most lit person I've ever seen on Instagram. All his friends are rappers and basketball players and celebrities. He's like a big donor to Syracuse. Did he inherit it though? Did he like, did he, I guarantee his dad. I think he went to prison or something. Awesome. So this is like the perfect role model. No, but if you follow this guy and his family on Instagram, this is real wealth.

This is like a business that's not glamorous at all, but he turned it into glamour to the point where he's like at every restaurant opening. Like that's who Gen Z should emulate. It's like, this guy has a business that he spent 30 years to build. It only looks like overnight success. You're going to have him on ownership?

Maybe. It'd be awesome. I don't're gonna have him on ownership? You should. I don't know how to get to these people. I'm not as good at you at getting to these people. Alright, coming in with three clocks. Alright. This is so exciting. Hey, throw these on. He's not gonna go. He has like a nasty stick. You're good.

They're calling it friends. Episode 1, 7, 8. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop the clock. Here's a word from our sponsor. Today's show is brought to you by Kelly Intelligence. The Call of My Friends, episode 1, 7, 8. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop the clock. Here's a word from our sponsor. Today's show is brought to you by Kelly Intelligence. Duncan, did you see this article in the Wall Street Journal the other day? I'll tell you. Don't worry about it.

Here's the headline. The Magnificent Seven are sold last year. Cash cows are the new kings. All right. So what's a cash cow? A cash cow is a company that is doing, it's gushing cash. There is so much free cash flow you wouldn't even believe it. And that is what the Kelly U.S. cash flow dividend leaders index is trying to accomplish. It's trying to get you access and exposure

to companies that are hemorrhaging cash. H-Cow tracks this index and also sells calls on the constituents. It's got a 98.6% active share against this S&P 500. What does that mean? Don't worry about it. Here's what it means. Very diversified, not a ton of overlap. It's not just the Mag-7. These are cash gushers. To learn more, visit kellyintel.com. Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions.

Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the very best podcast in all the financial media. I say that, I hesitate to say it. I feel bad having to repeat it, but I listen to other shows and it's just it's so much mid And it's listen. It's nobody's fault. This is not easy to do. We have an incredible staff Nicole is here today Daniel is here

John is here the founding father of this channel Duncan Duncan is don't shake your head. You know what you've done. Do you have to have a beard to be on that side of the room? Duncan's our Ben Franklin. Look what you've done. All right. You guys, I am so excited for today's show. We cleaned the studio up extra nice

because our special guest is a fastidious man, I think. I have to say. Pretentious, probably. He didn't know you grew up as a hippo. Now I know the real story. Robert Frank is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author. He joined CNBC in May of 2012 as wealth editor. Prior to CNBC, Robert spent 18 years as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. That's where I first started reading your stuff. What was your original beat when you were writing the journal? So I started Journal in 1994, and my original beat was Air Cargo.

I was covering FedEx and UPS down in Atlanta. And then I moved, started covering Coke and Pepsi. Then I went to London and covered Eastern Europe. And they sent me wherever there was trouble. I covered the Northern Ireland peace process. Oh, wow. I covered the embassy bombings in Africa. And then in 1997, when there was the Southeast Asian currency crisis, the Tai Ba was devalued.

They're like, Southeast Asia is a shit show. We need somebody there. I was about to come back to New York. So in 1998, I went to Southeast Asia. I was about to come back to New York. So in 1998, I went to Southeast Asia. I was covering the Philippines. Indonesia was going through all these upheavals. So I was like, that was real foreign correspondent land where I'm in kind of at that point dodgy situations covering 14 countries. I loved it. Came back to the US and I was on the M&A beat. Now remember at the time, this was in 2000, 2001,

the M&A beat after Steve Lippen and Nick Diogen was the premiere beat in financial journalism, let alone the Wall Street Journal. It was the hyper competitive, you were competing against. Wait, Diogen came from the M&A beat at the journal? Yep. Wow. Diogen and I started the same month in Atlanta together,

so we go way back. Nick Diogon was running CNBC when I first started appearing there, okay. Yeah, and so I started covering mergers and acquisitions, and I was competing against Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times and David Faber at CNBC. It's tough, it's tough, but I loved it, because I got to understand how Wall Street works.

Because you're dealing with investment bankers, but you really want to understand the whole ecosystem of Wall Street. So that's that's kind of really. That was the LBO era of M&A. There's a lot of LBO, a lot of club deals and private equity. I mean, there wasn't much because it was right after the dot com bust. But exactly right.

So I so then I said, look, I'll do this for three years. I finished. I was doing my last story for M&A was a compensation story. And I got this chart on how many Americans were worth five million, 10 million. And I just got the research because I was interested in like where Wall Street guys stacked up, right?

I was like, holy shit. The numbers of people worth five million, 10 million, a hundred million, they had all doubled in seven years. And look, we all know that there was wealth created. We all know that there was like coming back to the US after being overseas for seven years, I just saw how much wealth there was all of a sudden. Yeah.

And so I was like, I went to my editors and I said, give me one year, I want to start covering wealth. And they're like, what? You know, what do you mean by wealth? What do you mean by wealth? Don't we already cover like making money? There's Forbes. I'm like, no, no, no.

I'm going to go at this to try to figure out where the wealth and how the wealth is being created. Who are the new wealthy? What does that economy look like that's growing up around them? Because we're talking... The services economy. So you were covering the people behind the companies.

Exactly. Exactly. And so my first article was in 2004, and I went down to the Fort Lauderdale Yacht Show, and the goal was to show how yachts had gotten so much bigger so quickly. And I was down there sweating in my suit for three days was 90 degrees no one would talk to me. That's the other thing about this beat like for years no one would talk to me. Like hi you're rich can I talk to you about your money? Yeah sure. It used to be taboo. Yeah. Well have

you seen that kid that walks around with the little microphone? Yeah I was like why didn't I? Now they're all talking. I know why I didn't think of that. I was genius. That guy. What do you do for a living? I mean, that's well, because he's not he's in a t shirt. I know. And he's disarming. He doesn't have a camera crew. I know I gotta change my clothes, get rid of cameras and be younger. Some of those guys say no at first and he persists. Yeah, he's very good. He's a genius. So I finally got him this like he had a 100 foot boat. And he's like, you know what? Like when I got this boat, this guy from Cincinnati started on this boat. He's like, when I got this boat, it was like, I was special. And now he's like, look. And literally next door and there was a 250 foot boat.

Paul Allen was building his 400 foot boat. And he's like, it's like a dinghy. And so he said, it's almost like a whole other country, a separate country. Yeah. I was like, ding, ding, ding. Like the rich have created their own country in terms of the economics,

in terms of what's a priority to them. Well, it's called Southern Florida. Yeah, it's that. And it's New York and it's Aspen and it's the Hamptons and it's all these places. But they have become a virtual country. And so the way I started The Beat was I loved being a foreign correspondent,

but I didn't like traveling anymore. I was exhausted. So it's like, I could look at wealth, I could cover it like a foreign country, but not have to travel out of the country. So my whole concept for covering wealth and naming Richestan, which is named my first book, was it's a foreign country

and I should cover it just like I did Albania or Thailand. Or Indonesia. Exactly. Get the maps, get the language and tell it, explain it to people who don't live there. That was the goal. So Robert, I was talking with Ben in the pod this week. Like when you think rich, do you have like a dollar amount?

Yeah, 10 million. Okay, that's it? Yeah, 10 million. Okay, that's it? Okay. 10 million liquid or just a network? 10 million investable assets. Investable assets, okay. Yeah, because I mean, yeah, if you own a private company

and if you sold this worth 10 million, you know, your lifestyle is probably not a 10 million dollar. You're probably pulling the money out. 10 million liquid. Now, I probably have to change that. I probably should update it to 30 million because just in terms of numbers since when I started, there are now around 450,000 people in the world

worth 30 million or more. That sounds insane. Yeah. Around the world, but that's seven billion people. I know, but that's not that many. No, but in the US, it's about 240,000. That's insane to me. 240,000 people.

Of a population of 225. 240,000 people worth 30 million or more. So I should probably, you know, the way I look at it is I cover the ecosystem or the economy around the wealthy. That's wealth management, it's philanthropy, it's the art market, the car market, private jets, it's all that stuff. It's you know, insurance, it's luxury estate, and really the people that are in that world buying a Ferrari, buying a penthouse, buying these,

really a private bank client of JP Morgan, it's really 10 million, probably more like 25. So I should probably update that. I should inflation adjust that. Let's not bury the lead here because you've launched something new, and I'm really excited about this. CNBC's wealth editor and best-selling author of Richestan,

A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom, will expand his efforts to report on the booming business of family offices and high net worth individuals. And so you've got this thing inside wealth newsletter and you're gonna be going, it sounds like deeper and wider. And then CNBC notes the population of the ultra wealthy, 30 million or more, has surged 50% over the past five years and the number of family offices has tripled. So it's trillions of dollars.

Everybody wants to do business with these people. Everybody wants to be in their orbit or marry somebody in their orbit. And you note as over a hundred trillion gets passed down to heirs as part of the great wealth transfer, inside wealth will chronicle how the next generation and women are changing the landscape of wealth and philanthropy. So there's a lot going on. How are people going to receive your stuff? It's an email? Yeah. Okay, it's a regular letter? Yeah, and let me tell you what the idea behind it was. So I've been at CNBC for 12 years and a lot of what I do, I do two things. When I came to CNBC, I was like, look, I'm not

going to become a TV person. I have no aspiration of being an anchor, of being a TV person. I'm a reporter and writer that appears on TV once in a while, probably less than you do. But the, the, so I've always been writing and I've always been covering wealth stuff because CNBC is mainly a stock investing channel. Now I covered the luxury companies. So I cover LVMH and Hermes and Richemont and Cary and all that stuff. I cover Ferrari, which is now a publicly traded company.

I cover, you know, things that Sotheby's used to be public. I do cover high-end real estate because real estate is interesting. But I have this whole other kind of life online. What we decided to do in the last year was to really become more essential to the audience that I have, which is a very special audience.

I mean, having covered this for 20 years, Forbes is kind of falling apart. The Wall Street Journal covers wealth occasionally, but it's not packaged or delivered or covered in a predictable way. Where you're like, okay, every week or every day I'm going to get something about what the wealthier are doing with their money. They'll do like a trend feature,

but it's not their burden barter. It's occasional. Same thing with the FT. Same thing with Bloomberg. Like they all kind of cover it and they would say they cover it and then Bloomberg. Rob report. Rob report also. best five best beaches

You know, I'm not the five best beaches thing. Do you know your audience is like is it aspirational with or is it the wealthy? So it's the wealthy Barry Riddles. It's it's so I was actually surprised At how many the wealthy love comparing themselves and and finding out number one What I do is like I cover the art market, I cover these markets that they're in and they're interested in. And their friends are always talking about it. So like the $6 million banana,

like what the hell was that? I explain it and I explain what's happening in the art market, the recession in the art market, watches, cars. So the wealthy like to watch me because at CNBC we cover the spectrum of money from the bottom to the top. I'm the top. What we decided to do was say, look, how can we become, we have a very special audience. It is the wealthy,

but more importantly, it's people that serve the wealthy. It's wealth managers, it's family offices, it's multifamily offices, it's people in philanthropy. When I, when Rich Stand became a bestseller, you know, this is before we had like good internet data and ebooks. I was like, who is who's buying this book and why? Because it was like, it blew up and we publishers like, it's so well written. I'm like, no, it's not because with all due respect, you know, it's not because I was telling you right bonfire with the vanities. No, no, absolutely not. Although that is one of the great books of all time about wealth, maybe even the greatest, but maybe next to Gatsby, maybe those two are the greatest books about wealth,

fiction ones. Yeah, I think so. So when I went out and started talking to people, getting emails, it was mostly wealth management people. And they're like, you taught me about the clients I don't have. You're showing me the clients, I know my own clients, but you were telling me where wealth is being created

that I'm not seeing, the types of people that I'm not reaching. How they make decisions. How they make, what their life is like. So I was like, holy shit, this is actually useful to somebody. So fast forward, almost 20 years, and now because my content is actually useful to people,

any company in the world that either wants a high net worth client or has high net worth clients wants to know what the wealthy are doing with their money. So this is a good segue to what you're writing about, which is the explosion of family offices because back in the day, these ultra rich individuals would work with like the private bank or maybe the advisor and now they're just doing their own thing. do you think that guy why do you think that's happening both of you? Cuz I have my theories, but I'm curious from your perspective. Why are people hiring their own in-house? Yeah, instead of saying a few to the system. I think first of all they could afford to

Well, I think this a vanity factor is number one number two Their kids are less and less use useful So they need somebody... Their kids are less useful. Listen, they're doing bill pay for the grandkids. Like they're paying car leases. There are adults in this country who have never been... They have never lifted a finger for themselves and can't do anything.

So part of the family... The family office is not like, oh, we're going to pick better ETFs than JP Morgan. The family office is we'll wipe your ass. So there's an element to that. Also, they don't want to be captive, right? To just be beholden to one bank's products. What do you think?

You sound like you have a great reason. No, I think all of that is absolutely true. I think the growth in wealth, I think the amount of responsibilities that they have for a growing family. I think what happened, what I'm told from family office, now I wrote my first family office article was in 2005 and it was about how family offices, to your point,

had become a status symbol. It was like, I got a family office. And the investment part of it was sort of secondary to the fact that you had this private company that handled all your shit, like whether it was the private jet fleet or the kids school or like whatever. What I think happened was after the financial crisis, a lot of wealthy people were like, I just got hosed by my private bank.

My advisor really didn't have my back. Whether it's Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, like they really screwed me. I need my own person that actually understands this stuff. I was at a meeting with- That only works for me. That only, that truly represents my interests. But don't you see how good or how bad that could be? For who?

For the buyer. For the family. Why? If you have your own quarterback, why is that bad? I know a lot about this world. So tell me. Okay. Tell the audience.

I know a lot about this world. So tell me. Okay. Tell the audience. I know a lot about this world. There are incredible family offices, like where they recruit top notch talent, people coming out of Goldman and great banks that are doing such high end work that the client says, how much do I have to pay you for you to not deal with anyone else, just come work for me?

Yeah. That's the dream scenario, and that exists. And there are really impressive people in the family office world. That's like for billionaire families. Then there's this sort of like next layer where it's a family office, and they're like almost duplicating an investment bank.

It's like, oh, we have somebody here that does M&A. Why? We have someone here that does stock picking, CFA, who's meeting with companies and listening to conference calls. So is that like- Hold on. We have a venture person. We have this, we have that. So I met the family office people and they're very serious and I'm sure they do a great job. They work- The family office people and they're very serious and I think I'm sure they do a great job. They work for... The family office people. They work for... No, I'm talking about a specific group.

This is hilarious to me. They work for one of the biggest retailer families, but it's like the fourth generation and they no longer own this storied like department store chain. And it's not Walmart. No, no, no, no, no. Not quite. That's billionaires. Yeah.

Yeah. So they have this whole office set up and they're explaining how they're different from an RIA. And I'm listening and I'm like, all right, I sort of understand it. So you guys aren't like a fee, like an AUM fee like we are. He's like, no, what we do is we come up with the budget of what it's gonna cost us to run this family office each December for the next year.

And we calculate the salaries of the people and the equipment and the travel and all this stuff. And I'm like, so what does that work out to? He's like, that's like 1%. But so my point is, I think the faster growing trend in family office is- Yeah, but what's the incentive for him versus the products? Well, here's the problem. Here's where I've seen it go really wrong. You have somebody in your life that knows everything about you. Yeah. You become wholly dependent. Your whole family becomes dependent on this person.

Yeah. And they're also involved in your investments. And let's say they're only really good at moving money between banks and answering your phone. Yeah. But they're not good at the investment part. Yeah. So now you can hire another person. Right.

Or you're going to have that person oversee these people. You almost can't get rid of this person from your life. And I've seen this too. And a lot of very wealthy families are saying, hold on, we got wealthy because we wanted to maintain independence. Why do we want to have W2 employees again? Right. Like what, why do we want to build the structure that now relies on us?

That sounds like going in the wrong direction. Right. And so what I wanted to tell you, multifamily office, I think, is the real trend that will emerge from this. And define that. Well, we're running a version of it. A lot of RAAs are. What is it? A multifamily office is, we're your family office, but we're also the family office for 10 other families. We're gonna take the knowledge that we learned from working with all of you and wield it on your behalf, and you don't have to go to sleep at night thinking that we're a wholly dependent employee of yours.

Like if you go away, we'll be upset, but we're not your subsidiary. Like we'll be fine one way or the other. And I think that's liberating for a wealthy family to not be in this situation. If you can truly deliver the product. And secondly, if you can truly prove to them that you have their interests. And we should also tell people just like if people think, oh, family office, this is some obscure tiny corner. There are 8,000 family offices, 8,000 family offices now managing single family offices. 8,000. That has more than doubled over the past 10 years. They're managing $3 trillion right

now. John, read that chart. Let's put that up. Managing $3 trillion now. That is expected to- Is this what you're referencing? Yeah. There we go. Okay. So that's going to grow to 10,700. Now if you look at the dollars actually, next to that, the dollars grow even further. So right now there's estimates that

they manage somewhere, AUM for them is around three to four trillion dollars, going to go to at least five. So I know people often say, well, they manage as much or will manage more than hedge funds. Now a lot of them invest in hedge funds. That's like double counting. Same money. It's just some of it's the same money. But if you look at what they're investing in startups, you know, we now have a deal tracker where we look at family offices and what startups people the big ones like Bernard Arnaud, family office, Jeff Bezos.

So we have some great stories looking at what AI startups have Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Bernard Anou invested in over the past year. And so you can look at all those companies. Eric Schmidt's invested in 22 private AI companies. So they are becoming a force. Now they're not doing leverage buyouts yet. The big trend is toward direct deals, direct private equity, as you know, alternatives.

So private credit, they're less interested in private credit now than they were three years ago because the returns are crap and the product is not as good. But they are becoming a bigger force just because again, it's somewhere around three to four trillion in assets and will grow over time. So it's a pretty serious player. There are some sports owners with their own family office and it's a necessity I think. If you're a wealthy family and part of your wealth and part of your life is spent owning a sports franchise, there's so much peripheral business around that franchise that you need people in house that work directly for you and not for the team.

But like these are my people that keep track of my share of what's coming from the team. That has to be a family office. There is no organization that's set up to service you. But I know some of these guys and they are doing M&A with their own private money because they love. If you got rich making deals, why would you want to spend your time as a rich person not doing deals and being on the sidelines? Well, and if you spend your, if you made your money in the restaurant business or in the

retail business, you know it, you know it. And so you go find a private company, you invest, not only you giving capital that's very patient, much more patient private equity, we want out in seven years. Family offices are like, we want 20 years. But I'll also help you because I started a successful retail company or food company or whatever. And so you get the patient capital and you get the management expertise.

And the challenge to your point is they don't have the due diligence capabilities that a lot of the IBs have when they're doing these deals. So the big thing now is club deals. So, you know, it's- What, describe that, describe that. Club deal is like, you have three buddies that all have family offices at the

golf club. You're like, Hey, a guy has a building in Boca and we said, where is it going to become a new distribution center or whatever you in from mill? You're forming LLC and you and you going together. And because it's like, oh, it's my friend. They're all doing this. I just don't know how that's going to work out over time. They don't care though, because this is the part you're leaving out. They probably can't do the same level of due diligence. But if you have a B, who gives a shit? They don't. This worked, that worked.

That's true. Who are you measuring yourself against? That's true. So is there a level of wealth at which you think the single family office makes sense? Because if you're a billionaire and you're traveling and you need your bills paid, you need your travel coordinate, you need all your cash flows and this and that. The cutoff used to be $100 million when I started covering it.

Now I think, now it could go two ways. Some people say the cutoff is now lower because technology allows you to do so much automated now that you don't need a full staff. So there's some people that say you could actually do it for less than a hundred. But then it's machines and then it's like, what are you really getting? I think it's more like one fifty to two, where, you know, that one percent that you'd be paying someone else starts to make sense. You know, it's like, OK, that's two million dollars you're spending on a family.

What can you what kind of talent can you really get for a staff with two million dollars? Yeah. So I think it's really like $150-$2 million. But $100 million is what most people will say is the cutoff. More interesting to me is where is the line where RIAs can't encroach? So will RIAs get involved in travel agency like activities? Probably not. Maybe that's the line. Will RIAs get involved in travel agency-like activities? Probably not. Maybe that's the line. Will RIAs get involved in selecting a physician? Or insurance? Insurance solutions?

Well, so insurance, yes. But the concierge services, we can't do that. No, but you can have somebody who knows how to do that. And you can have a network. You can have a network of solutions that are just for this group. And I'm curious to you guys, one thing I can't figure out is, if you had a pie chart of who manages the money for people worth 10 million or more.

Advisors. Yeah. Percentages, like go through, what do you think it is for private banks, the wirehouses, the RIAs versus families? What do you think that looks like and how is it changing? private banks, the wirehouses, the RIAs versus family. Like what do you think that looks like and how is it changing? I can't figure out are the private banks losing share to IRAs? Are the IRA roll-ups like really capturing share?

To a certain level. So I think 25 million and up, the wirehouses are in really great shape. Okay. Because there's a lot of lending and a lot of money movement involved. 25 million up, number one. And number two, the source of wealth for that cohort is probably related to investment banking activity. It's probably either M&A or an IPO. That's how you get to $25 million.

Okay. So the wirehouses are in really great shape there. They have a lot of these businesses that cater to companies that have just gone public and, oh, we'll refer you to our wealth guy. So they're really, really good at that. 10 million to 25 million is an RIA business. I think unquestionably we're better at the wirehouses there because our pricing is more transparent. We're not selling them bullshit.

We're not selling them the fourth best private equity fund because we have access to it. I think we win there. 10 million and under is a real knife fight because then it's like a mirror prize and like insurance companies. It's the private bank at JP Morgan. JP Morgan has five different private banks. What you just described though is exactly why I get calls from people who've just had a liquidity event. They sold something for it could be 300 million, it could be 30 million. And they look at this landscape and they spent their whole life just living their business. You got to be obsessive just about your business. All of a sudden you've got this liquidity and they're like, I don't know what the hell

to do. I've got five different kinds of companies, all telling me they have holistic solutions to my entire wealth management and planning, my family, multigener... They all say they haven't. It's the same buzzwords. It's the same buzzwords, but to really figure out who delivers,

you have to become a client first and then it's too late. So what we just talked about is like, people think, you know, it's, look, it's a great problem to have, but when you focused your life on building wealth in a business and then all of a sudden you have to invest it, people screw up because it's so hard. It's hard and on that level you can't ask your friend for a referral. Hey, who's managing your through a million?

No, you have to, you have to, the first question is like what are the incentives? Yes, exactly. If you're facing five different people who are all saying we're going to do generational wealth transfer, we're going to do taxes, we're going to do insurance solutions, we're going to do holistic whatever. Okay, how do you get paid? And if the answer is, well, it's complicated. And then somebody is like, you're the only person who pays me that like for me, and that's why we set up the business the way that we did. For me, if you can look someone in the eye and say, you're my only payer.

I can't get paid by anyone. I can't send your money somewhere for a rebate. And then explain to them what your incentives for getting paid are. And that helps too. Of course. Alright, let's talk about the wealth effect. So Robert, Josh is a big wealth effect guy. Okay.

And... I think it explains everything. Okay. Truth or... I think that the level of spending has less to do necessarily with the value of real estate or what your cash is paying or what your 401k is. I think it's the economy.

Which is maybe sort of saying the same thing, but it's like, if Americans have a job, they will spend all their money. Yeah. I think it's as simple as that. They're, going back to Richestand, there are two economies, or probably like five, but to Josh's point, and I was a believer,

I continue to be- He's only allowed to know about the first two. Yeah. I- What's the third I wasn't listening to? There are five economies, I'll tell you about two of them. Yeah. Ugh. I've tell you about two of them. Yeah. I was, I've written about the wealth effect. I believe in it, but I believe in it because it relates to the people I cover. Now, most Americans get their wealth and their consumer

confidence from two things, their income and their house. Mostly their income. Until you get to the top like 10%, that's where asset values and the stock market start. Now, the reason the wealth effect is probably more pronounced today than it has been in the past is because the wealthy account for the top 10%, as you've reported and repeated, own about 87% of the stocks. It's a K-shaped economy. It's a K-shaped.

Did you notice any pullback in 2022 of these mega wealthy spending? 100%. Really? OK. OK. So tell me more. I'll give you some examples. The art market went into a recession. In 22.

In 22. Because the NASDAQ fell. It was a little bit delayed. It was a little bit delayed because the big art sales are planned six months in advance. But it started to happen in the back half of 22 and certainly happened in 23. Classic car market, the art market.

Rolexes. Rolexes crashed in price. And now some people, and the watch market was highly correlated to crypto. The lot of the guys in watches were crypto. So that was kind of related, but that's what happened there. The art market was interesting

partly because it wasn't so much that the stock market, because the stock market did so well in 23, I was like, what the hell, that doesn't make any sense. It was because interest rates were so high, the opportunity cost of then buying a painting versus putting it in 5% risk-free was competition. But what happened in 2022 is all these collectibles markets went into the tank.

Now, real estate was very location specific, but real estate suffered, it started to suffer a little bit as well at the very high end. Look, I always say, for the wealthy, it's not about the money, it's the mood. They always have the money. The desire to spend it is different.

It's the confidence that is highly correlated. So when I worked at the Wall Street Journal, they were like, okay, you're gonna cover, where do you wanna sit? I said, I wanna sit where I always sat, in the money and investing section, in the markets groups. Because the markets group is where my people, it's how they feel every day,

because they're so tied to the stock market. Even if they have a private company, they're gonna look at the values of similar companies or their investments. So I think that the wealth... So you want to be right next to Jason Zweig. Exactly. Jason's awesome. He's the best. He thought I was hilarious. He's great. And I love the show you did with him. But so I think the wealth effect is important for the most important group of consumers and investors right now. The top 20% account for over half the spending. That's probably even more true today with inflation than it was before.

But if you look at, you know, so there is no such thing as the economy, which is why and one of the reasons I started Inside Wealth is because it's irrelevant what the economy is doing. Do you think there used to be an economy? More of it, yeah. I agree. In the 50s and 60s, there was certainly, you know, we all rose together. Less stratified. We all rose together.

I agree with you. But if the rich people pull back spending, does the economy even feel it? Or is it like segmented to their richest standard, wherever? What's the general economy more correlated to, the bottom or the top? Bottom. It's more correlated to the bottom, right now. But there are certain parts of the economy that are correlated to the top.

But these things can't exist independent of each other. In other words, you're not getting rising wages at the bottom. No, for instance. Unless the wealthy are spending money. Right, that's right. Now look, you say the wealthy. The wealthy are spending at Costco, right? We know that Costco and Walmart too, they're getting a higher share.

So it's not just that LVMH or Hermes are the measure of what's happening. The wealthy spend in lots of different ways. And it's going to take a horrific situation if the wealthy stop spending at Costco and Walmart. So I think they spend all along the chain. But just in terms of raw numbers and the marginal propensity to spend, which is the idea that when each dollar that comes into the wealthy, more of that is saved by the wealthy than the rest of Americans spend it because they have to.

So I think because of that, it's felt less. It's weird. They're like sucking money out of the economy. They are sucking out of the money. And I have a grand theory, Josh, I'm curious, as more and more wealth is concentrated at the top and just has to go somewhere, is that one reason why markets are so stubborn to go down?

And look, you know... I think that, so I espoused the theory 11 years ago called the relentless bid. And the general idea was that people, financial advisors create financial plans. And the more equity risk your clients take, the higher the likelihood that your clients are going to hit their targets. And you know that because of a Monte Carlo simulation. And as we started to disincentivize stock trading by getting rid of commissions for

retail brokers, so we disincentivized transactional business and we emphasized more long-term, more ETF allocation. So advisors would build these financial models for their clients and when the market's down 5%, it's like, oh my God, if I rebalance now by my clients more stocks, look how much better the plan looks. It's like pulling the lever. We do it faster and faster now because we all know what our clients really need given the longevity of rich people. When you hear the actuarial tables, you're going to live till 72. Yeah, probably not if you're a client of Morgan Stanley. If you're a client of Morgan Stanley, you live to 100. Yeah. So you need more stock. Yeah. The only answer to every

question is more stock. Yeah. Okay. For people who are already wealthy and they already have that. Well, I also think it's important, you know, you go back to inequality. In your book, you talked about like the way to fight back on AI is to invest in AI companies. No choice. I've had the idea of like the new pitchfork is the brokerage account. Put down your pitchfork and open a stock account and buy stocks. Robinhood blew up. Because you're not going to hedge your life entirely no matter what occupation, but unless you're wealthy, the best way to not ever get on that boat, or at least to try to bounce some of it,

is to buy stocks. I think that message is hitting, because Robinhood's latest quarter. Young people get that. The account funded blew up, they're getting a lot more people as customers. Yeah, their earnings were just bananas. You know the folk story about John Henry?

So he takes on a steam shovel, and at the time, steam powered equipment was like the bet noir of the working class and it was like, oh my God, look at this machine. It used to be 500 men with shovels tunneling through the side of a mountain for a train track and now there's just this steam powered engine that's going to shovel. And I don't think that the Gen Zs would like lionize John Henry in that scenario. They'd be like, what a dumb f**k. What they should have done was invest in their own steam shovel and had a more powerful,

you know, better technology. Yeah. So I think the kids understand that concept. And let me give you some numbers to prove it. So, you know, we don't really realize how much wealth has created since the pandemic. It's like, okay, we all know that there was a ton of wealth, ton of liquidity flooding the system, both from fiscal and from the Fed.

So from COVID to now, the top 1% total wealth went from 30 trillion to 49 trillion. That's a gain of 63% in four years. That's more than a decade of wealth creation. It just happened really in, it was really in three years because you take the market out in 2022. The top 10% went from 70 trillion to 107 trillion. So they added 30, 37 trillion in wealth.

Most of that is Elon though, in fairness. Most of it is Elon. Exactly. So stock will, let's just look at like, okay, well, what was driving all that wealth creation? Real estate. AI. It's almost all stocks. All stocks. Yeah. We'll see. It doesn't appreciate that.

The stock wealth of the top 1% went from 12 trillion to 24 trillion. Yep. Just in those four years. Found the bubble. And the top 10% went from 19 to 43. So the wealthy got a lot wealthier. I mean everyone did well, but the wealthy got wealthier faster because of stocks. You know what's crazy?

15 years ago, the most likely way to become a financial celebrity was to be one of these guys telling you not to invest. do what it sure what go on Twitter and tell everyone the next 2008 crash is coming Any minute that was how you built renowned is to call crashes and look at everything and say it's a bubble teach a Retail no nothings had a quote-unquote hedge their portfolio ouracher had an article, Don't Invest in Your 401K, that like went mega viral. It was like a big deal. So 15 years ago, like if you wanted to make a name for yourself in the financial media, the fastest route to doing that was to talk people out of long term investments.

And of course, that proved to be disastrous to anyone that heard that siren call. Just wait. Can we talk about this New York magazine? Oh, I love this. I love this. This is awesome. So this hit this week and a lot of people were talking about it and I thought it was a pretty well done article.

Although I sent it to my wife and she goes, this is nothing new. Here's the lead. New York has always been stuffed with rich kids chasing the dream on daddy's dime. However, it didn't always feel as if those were the only people who could live here. As if the whole city bent to the budgets of the secretly funded. It does feel that way now because we're living through a catalytic overlap. Rent prices are shooting up, salaries are gone, and boomers are prepared to die. I agree with Josh. This is not new.

But wait, finish this though. It wasn't always this way. They quote a realtor who says in 1989 a one- one bedroom on the Upper West Side was $63,000. Like to purchase, not to rent. The equivalent of about $157,000 in today's dollars. A similar unit in that building sold recently for $730,000. Some of this, Robert, is a story of New York just being a way better place to live now than it was in the 80s. The crack smoke in 80s. There's a gentrification angle to that in a good way, like less crime. And then some of that is just an explosion in wealth. And the boomers wanting to watch their children spend it, not leave it to them when they're dead.

Yeah, so that article reminded me, you know the Franny Leibowitz line, was like, nobody can afford to live in New York, yet eight million people do. How do we do it? We do not know. Yeah. That's true.

But it's also what- But you live in Manhattan. This must have hit home for you. It did, because when you go downtown and you see all these 20, 30 somethings in cafes in the middle of a workday living in the West living in the West Village. You're like, how are they doing this? Well, that's not and that and that you're right. That hasn't happened. But because every real estate everywhere has gotten so expensive, but particularly in New York, where studio

apartments are one and a half million dollars. Brooklyn's a million dollars. You can't buy anything in Brooklyn for a million dollars. So I think it grates people who are struggling to rent here. Now two thirds of apartments in Manhattan are rents not buying, and very few first time buyers are buyers in Manhattan. Most of them are second, third time buyers moving up. But if you walk into Via Corota and look around on a Tuesday,

everyone in there looks like an Abercrombie model. But those are the rich, those are the children of the wealthiest people around the country. So let's widen the lens and talk about the great wealth transfer. Because this is the most important thing that I've been covering once we started Inside Wealth, and it will be, I think, the main issue. So over the next, you know, let's say 30 years, around 100 to 130 trillion dollars will be passed down from baby boomers to the kids. So where will that go? The first transfers, what we're seeing now. And by the way, I was extremely skeptical of all these numbers for years,

because I'm like, baby boomers are the ultimate hedonists. They're going to burn the shit out of their fortune and like party up in Ibiza and everywhere else. It's too much money to spend, because they're old now. And they're not going to leave anything, because they want to enjoy it. But what private bankers are seeing is that it is happening.

They're already seeing it happening. So over 100 trillion. So the first will be the spouses. So the wives will get it because rich guys marry younger women, women live longer than men anyway. And so the spouses are going to get it first. The second group that's going to get it is GenX. So if you're a wealth management firm,

the people you want to target right now is GenX. That's who should get it. GenX, absolutely. I'm sorry. GenX is going to… We're the last generation that knows what to do with money. These people have no taste. Otherwise, it's incredible. They're going to get $39 trillion. GenX is going to get $39 trillion.

If you buy it or not, you're going to get $39 trillion. Fine. Millennials are going to get… The reality still bites. Then millennials are going to get 40. Millennials will be the richest generation when it comes to these great wealth transfers. Now here's the other thing about millennials. This goes back to this whole issue of rich kids.

Yeah, but when we're 60. You could wait. 30 years. It'll take a while. I think the millennials have gone and knocked down. So the average billionaire is 69 years old. Nice. This money is going to start flowing pretty quickly. But here's the thing. If you look at millennials as a whole, they are not as well off as baby boomers were at the same age of 35.

I think it's like 30% less than boomers were. Because of cost of living. Well, even if you adjust everything, they just, you know, salaries, et cetera, cost of living is exactly. But if you take the top 10% of millennials compared to the top 10% of baby boomers. The super millennials. The super millennials.

Now, not everyone you see who looks like Abercrombie and Fitch models is a rich kid. They've got good jobs on Wall Street. They're analysts. They've got good jobs in media. They've got good jobs at a tech startup or a tech company. So there is this section of millennials in Gen Z that has very high paying jobs. So not everyone that we see that's under 30 or under 40.

They're not idle. They're not all idle. They've got very highly skilled jobs that pay a lot of money. So that's number one. But there is this inequality now within millennials that the wealth gap within millennials between the top and the bottom is the widest of any generation.

Oh, that's interesting. So one of the reasons I think millennials have a jaundiced view of wealth and resent it is because they see more inherited wealth in their generation than we saw when we were growing up. So when we were growing up, you had like the rarefied Astors and Hursts and like Vanderbilt's, but there weren't that many

as a proportion of the overall billionaire population. Inherited wealth was not a factor after the late 1980s, early 90s. It was almost all, 85% of millionaires were self-made after the 1990s. Now what I think is gonna start happening, and what's already happening is millennials see more of their own peers inheriting wealth and getting wealth.

So that's gonna change your entire view of the wealthy. Because if it's the lucky sperm club versus somebody who worked their ass off for 50 years, of course you're going to hate rich people. Does this partly explain Gen Z's unexpected move toward Trump in this last election? Are there enough Gen Z people who are either currently wealthy or aspirationally wealthy that they said, this Kamala message doesn't resonate with me at all? I think what we feel like as a culture,

I think there's less of an idea that the way to reduce inequality is to make the rich poor. I think everyone agrees that what we really need to do is help those at the bottom. So I think the idea of like, get the rich guy. Well, because nobody did do the jobs that no one wants.

If everyone's rich, it doesn't work. The idea of like, get the rich guy, oh, and also there's some, I think there was a perceived risk that everyone's taxes would go up under her. So I think on the economic, aside from inflation, I think was the main thing that drove people. But I think that's.

Let's do these charts. Let's do these charts. Yeah. Just getting back to the original part of the article, which is like, how are these people affording these $5,500 rents? So we made some charts on New York City housing, both for the sales price as well as rentals.

And this actually shocked me. We're looking at the median sales price. Shout out to Chart Kid Matt. And it's gone sideways in Manhattan for the last 10 years. Really price haven't gone anywhere. Where prices really exploded for sale were Brooklyn. Right, like that story is well known, the orange line. Brooklyn prices are up 128% since 2010.

But here's the thing that's really pissing people off. It's the rentals, okay? Next chart, please. Look at this. So the price to rent in Manhattan is $4,365. That's the median. The average is over 5,000. The average is over 5,000.

Yeah, that's nuts. So this is the chart that's destroying people. Yeah, and two thirds of all apartments are rentals. And yeah, that's what's killing people. So when these people know that their friends are being backstopped, how could it not lead to resentment? It does. How could it not? It absolutely does.

It does. And I've been talking to brokers recently, and a lot of brokers I've talked to recently said almost every deal they're doing now involves a trust. The parents, or trust fund trust. A trust fund. And the article made it sound like these people, they feel shame. And it's not that they did anything wrong. Yeah.

But it does suck to know that like, I'm only buying this because my parents and my friends are f***ed. It's a tricky situation. Yeah. Again, I knew people, Josh, you probably both know people when we started coming to New York City and we all knew people that had parents help, whether it's through rent or whatever. But I do think you didn't have to though. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Because there were that's right. My first my first apartment was on East 77th Street. I lived down the street from the Coconut Grill, if you remember. Yeah. I brother Jimmy's around the corner. Nobody had any money on my block. These were like five story. I don't want to call it townhouse, would be to romanticize. These were walk-ups.

But like you could look, I think my rent was $1,100 a month. Price of seven. I was like a loser stockbroker. That same place is probably 10 grand now. But I could afford it. Yeah, if it hasn't been bought by somebody who just turned it into something. So my first lease was in Astoria and it was a big apartment. It was $2,000 and it was, that's probably five right now.

And that's what's different. Now it's very difficult to picture somebody moving to Manhattan without two roommates unless the parents are helping them. And that's an interesting point that you bring up, which is that the inequality within millennials now trumps the millennial versus boomer shit that we've just lived through. That's over now. The new generational warfare is within millennials. And it'd probably be true for Gen Z as well.

I don't know. Millennials had it rough because they came in during the financial crisis. They came at financial age. They've got student debt. They started investing late. They got student debt. They don't own houses. They're not forming families, which sort of helps generate wealth when you're dual income.

So they have all that against them. Gen Z probably came up with all this liquidity so they'll have it better. But I do think the millennial stuff is going to be a big source of tension and I think it's going to, I wouldn't say radicalize, but it certainly helps explain why there's a more negative view of wealth among millennials than there were like baby boomers or even Gen Xers. Let's do this Disney thing. Annual vacation budgets. Robert, you saw this article in the journal? I did, yeah.

Alright, so this is, let me set it up and then you can tell us what's going on. Even Disney is worried about the high cost of a Disney vacation and we have a chart for this so there's they made a great chart in the journal showing the income quintile from the bottom 20 to the top 20 and the annual vacation budget and For the people in the middle and the fourth of fourth fifth. It's impossible the the entire Annual vacation budget is blown out by Disney even for the 20 dollars. It becomes unaffordable Yeah, so there was there was apparently a hack, I don't remember this, but the Gini Pass, the Gini Plus passes over the last three years from October 21 to June 24 generated 724 million dollars in revenue for Disney. So like Disney has become...

Was Gini Plus cut all the lines? Yeah, but like if you look at... so when I talk about the economy around the wealthy, you know, we aren't talking about this tiny slice of people that's only like X number of millionaires. If you look at like the boom in private clubs right now, almost every part of our economy now has a VIP version, right? In some ways inside wealth at CNBC, if you look at CNBC, we're kind of the Mercedes of- You are that, you are that.

But I'm like the AMG, which is like the next level up. And so I think what the Disney thing reflects is that the wealthy aren't just getting wealthier, there are more of them. And more and more of the economy is sort of roping off an even special version for the wealthy. The other thing that's happening is, everyone thought this was gonna start happening

10 years ago, it's really happening now for the first time. The experienced economy, travel, dining, food, that's where the wealthy are spending their money. Yeah, they're buying stuff. They're still buying stuff. They still like their cars. But they experience. But what is, and this is why LVMH

went into the luxury lifestyle business with buying a hotel chain. They're sort of putting restaurants in their stores now. The Tiffany, the biggest success in that new Tiffany store is the Blue Box Cafe. So they're creating these experiences, part museum, part food and dining, where they know, they've seen that the wealthy, what they really love, is not more stuff.

And I think that's true up and down generations. It's exclusive experiences. They want great food, they want great wine, they want great visuals. Robert, technology is enabling this though. They want great food, they want great wine, they want great visuals. Robert, technology is enabling this though. Disney's got so many different ways to give them money now. You think about the concert experience. Bruce Springsteen, the working class troubadour that he is, decided that he wanted to do demand-based pricing pricing and he gets to hide behind Live Nation,

of course, so nobody thinks it's him. But like the price of a Bruce Springsteen ticket is whatever price the buyers stop buying at. And that's where it is. And like, there's no limit. But back in the day, Bruce Springsteen in the seventies, the eighties and the nineties, they would print the tickets on paper. The price was the price.

You might've had three zones, 100 section, 200 section, 300. Now it's this technological advancement where the price will go wherever the next person is willing to take it. And Taylor, of course, was able to do that. I think that pisses people off too when they're just like,

wait, I don't understand, why am I priced out of everything? Because the technology is enabling it. Well, and there are just so many rich people now. But you can't get to restaurants anymore. You can't. And that's why, so one thing I couldn't figure out private clubs, and there's at least a dozen new private clubs in New York that open. It's Zero Bond, it's Castor Cipriani. That's pure status though. No, it's, so why are they paying you know x whether it's 10 000 a year or 1500. I mean we went to cast a chip Riani last year it's pretty awesome. It's beautiful.

Yeah but I have too many rules. Cast a two on the upper east side. It's like a strip club. No they changed it the escorts they got rid of no they got rid there were too many so they got rid of it. I took a picture at Casa Cipriani and posted it. Yeah well that's not supposed to do that. Person who took me got rid of them. There were too many, so they got rid of them. I took a picture at Casa Cipriani and posted it. Yeah, well, you're not supposed to do that. Person who took me got arrested.

Yeah. I'm not a fan of that shit. No, but so the reason these clubs are popular, and Casa Tua just opened the Upper East Side, there's already a wait list, is because you can't get a reservation anywhere else. So all it is is, so when ZZ started Miami, and somebody called me up- That's a major food group. That's Carbone. Yeah, major food group.

Exactly. It's Las Neck and Carbone. And they do a great job. And they said to me, somebody said to me, oh, they're charging $20,000 just to make a reservation there. I'm like, why would anyone, that's stupid. Well, then they raised it to 30, then they raised it to 40. There's still a waiting list of hundreds of people.

The sushi's fine. Dude, this kind of means to crash. There's too much fucking money sloshing around. there's still a waiting list of hundreds of people. The sushi's fine. Dude, this kind of means to crash. There's too much f***ing money sloshing around. You know what you do when you have a private, when you belong to a private restaurant? You spend the whole week calling and trying to get people to go with you.

Yeah. Everyone goes with you the first time. They're, they're, they're... It's like, I ran out of people, I gotta get, I gotta get repeatings. But they're always crowded and they're waiting lists and, you know, whether they go or not, these people are making money.

And it's just because there are so many people able and willing to pay a fee for not even going. So this new paradigm. It's like Planet Fitness with an extra ten thousand dollars instead of ten dollars a month. Does this go into reverse in the event of a recession or is this just the way it is for now? So the thing about luxury and the spending of the wealthy going back to it's not the it's not the money it's the mood mood. I think right now, so there was a burst of spending by the wealthy. You saw it in luxury companies, you saw it everywhere else in the art market right after the election. There was a burst of spending. Private jet companies tell me

everyone said the wealthy just like went out and spent. They were selling cars on Bring a Trailer, they're selling $250,000 Porsches on Christmas Eve. And they had never seen that before. Remember the excess savings? That story was supposed to be over three years ago. Yeah, I know. Well, but the... I know it's different than your people, but...

There's more excess and excess savings at the very top. So I think what everyone... It's hard to say the wealthy do anything because it's such a diverse group now, but I do think they're kind of in wait and see mode right now because you've got the tariffs, you've got the inflation interest rate situation sort of unclear where that's going.

And even though there's a lot of euphoria in the animal spirits and all the stuff people talked about after the election, I think the picture is a little more cloudy now. And so I think my sense is there was this burst. Now there's a bit of a pause in the real estate world. The art market might have a good spring, we'll see. So things are better than they were at this time last year.

But it would take a major correction in the stock market for any of this access to work. I would argue it's not about the severity of the correction. It's about the duration. We have not had a 12-month downdraft in the market. We had a pretty substantial eight-month in 2022. In 2022, it was two years before we had new highs. No, but I'm talking about being down and no recovery. Okay.

This is different. And I lived through this in the 2000 to 2002 period. It just wore people out. It wasn't about when do we get back to new highs. It was like, oh my God, I can't take it anymore. We haven't had that in 20s. We really haven't had it since the great financial crisis. I want to do two more things with you.

The carried interest loophole. Yeah. It's a big part of the wealth discussion is like why does some types of wealthy people have the special deals in the tax code? Yeah. Trump like out of nowhere just like randomly blurted out. Yeah. We're going to look at the carried interest loophole. Yeah. And I think like everyone did like the meme, they did that side-eye. The risk guy with a billionaire cabinet wants to get rid of carried interest. What's wrong with this picture? Yeah. All right.

So for people that don't know, this is hedge fund, private equity, private credit, private venture capital, venture capital, because they are quote unquote taking risk, LOL, because they're taking risk, they don't pay taxes as though it's w2 income they're being taxed as investors and it's a favorable tax rate on the gains when they sell a property or a comp or they have a liquidity event or whatever. And that is obviously how the rich get richer it's one of the principal vehicles by which we have people Steve Schwartzman was born 50 billion dollars. Okay. That happens in part because of his investing acumen, but in part because he doesn't pay taxes as though he earned the money working at a law firm. Okay, fine.

You love it. You hate it. We're not going to do that today. He said it once. That was it. Nobody argued with him. Right. The private equity executives would not, could not be reached for comment. Yeah. Because they know the thing with Trump is never disagree publicly. Yeah. Do you think he's going to bring that up again? So he brought it.

Is that on the table? He said it in 2016. He promised. He didn't mean it. He just said it once. He said it in 2016 and they did actually, in the 2017 tax cuts, they extended the years by which you have to hold the investment to get the special capital gains treatment from one year to three years.

So they sort of made it less attractive. Now you're probably going to hold those investments for three years anyway as a private equity fund is usually like seven to 10. So fine, didn't matter. But there was something symbolic that they did. So he could say, see, I promised it, I did something. Okay. Biden promised the same thing in 2020. Democrats said, no, we're not going to change it. Steve Schwartzman, David Rubenstein, they're very powerful lobbyists and they've got a lot of money. So this thing gets killed. I think this time they might be able to get it through because I think it's only going to raise about a billion dollars a year by closing it.

It's not actually going to solve any problems. It's not going to solve any problems. So what does that tell me? That tells me that the rich guys have figured out a way around it. Already. Already. What do you think it is? I think it's offshore. It's a management company that's offshore. That's part of it. Dubai or something. No, it's like Caymans or Puerto Rico or whatever. Jersey. Yeah, that.

And it's also somehow using the, you know, it's a pass-through structure and using pass-through, the beneficial tax interest and tax treatment of a pass-through versus ordinary income, somehow using that 20% less that you get through pass-through that way. So I don't know exactly what vehicles are using, but my guess is they've seen this coming. They've got, you know, these tax strategists now in trust and state law, they are geniuses. And they work faster than the IRS. They're Navy SEALs. Exactly.

So they have already figured out a way around it. So my guess is because of that, the private... Now we had Joe Lonsdale on recently who I think voiced support for keeping it and says, look, this is small businesses, this is mom and pops, this is sweat equity, all the reasons they usually give for. There's an argument for like, you don't want to divert people from going into the investment business because they create jobs, but it's like, come on, is that really going to stop people from going into private equity?

He's like, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to make this huge investment and get a billion dollar payout because I'm going to have to pay 17% more on my taxes from that. No, it's not going to change anything. But it's a loophole. Now, the tax code. So when you think about inequality, it's like, OK, Robert, you've been covering wealth 20 years. How do we solve it? I think when you look at the tax code, and I'm obsessed with taxes, I love the tax code.

I think the two things that stand out to me is step up in basis is ridiculous. Kill that. So, you die, your kids start from scratch with where the price is now. What's the origin of that? So, I don't know. It's a good question. I don't know what the exact origin is. I mean, I know what the origin is, but it can't be explained.

What it is is, let's say you start a business, you buy Apple stock, whatever it is, you bought it at a dollar, it's now worth a million dollars. When you die, the basis of that for tax purposes goes to a million dollars. So there's zero tax. Suddenly that tax just disappears when you die. I think that's wrong. I don't know how it ended up exactly in the tax code.

I mean, there are some reasons, but in today's capital world, it doesn't make any sense. The other thing I think we should think about is the capital gains tax itself, which is preferred treatment 23.7 instead of 39.6, or 37 plus the 2.3, was based on a time when capital was scarce, when you had to incentivize people to invest.

We have to get, otherwise people won't invest. We have a surplus of capital around the world now. Do we really need people? Now, investors are gonna kill me for saying this, but I think something we should look at is like, should it be closer? Because I don't think, you know, taxes are designed in some way to incentivize behavior

you want and disincentivize behavior you don't want. There's plenty of money in the world. But they would argue putting money at risk is different than income that you earn in a vocation. I would argue you have risk either way, but I understand, at least I understand the philosophical idea behind it. Well also those people who are like, why am I giving up more money to the government I already pay them. Yeah, but the flip side of that is Josh, should work be taxed higher than wealth? All right, Che Guevara over here. No, I don't know the answer. That's the flip side. Like, you know, that's the flip side. All right, Jamie Dimon. Good or bad? Awesome. Yeah, I agree. And the building is awesome. Jamie Dimon is my president. He's so awesome. Okay, he had... And by the way, their private bank is like, I mean, it's the bomb. Yeah, it really is.

It's, uh, it's, uh, in and of itself. It's a massive sprawling operation. They have this, they have this conference every year that I've been dying to go to. They'll never let me in. But it literally is like just billionaires that go. And Jamie- Oh, the one in Miami? Yeah, yeah. I know somebody that goes to that. I heard it's Liddy.

When I ask billionaires, what's your favorite event of the year? It's like not Davos, not SunVal. It's like, it's that one. Cause it's all billionaires and they're all just hanging out and they've got amazing speakers, athletes, celebrities. And it's like that.

Well, the conceit of the event is that there's nobody here that's going to go type this into an internet field. And more importantly, the wealthy only want to be with people who are as wealthy or wealthier. If you're ever doing a seating chart for dinner and you want like some make sure you seat them next to somebody who's wealthier because they don't want to go to anything unless there's somebody wealthier than them. And the beauty of that conference is the reason everyone likes it is because billionaires can go and know that there's somebody even wealthier than them. There's a multi-billionaire. Yeah.

Diamond went on quite a screed this week. He's got employees signing a petition against five-day-a- week return to office policy. And here let me read this. During an animated town hall meeting on Wednesdays yesterday, the 68 year old was questioned on the petition which has garnered roughly 950 signatures. In a recording reviewed by Reuters, Diamond said, quote, don't waste time on it. I don't care how many people sign that petition, end quote. He also said that in office requirements would not be left up to managers,

adding, quote, there is zero chance I will leave it up to managers. Zero chance. The abuse that took place is extraordinary. Abuse. The abuse of work from home. Yeah, he's got people walking around a shopping mall talking to the customers of the bank. The whole thing is a joke. I think when the branch people had to show up every day and then to tell the managers

or everyone else, you don't have to do what the branch people had to do. So I have flexible work policies here. But if I'm him, I probably wouldn't. Because I think it's a different kind of organization. That's a bank, I'm not a bank. And I think he's absolutely right. You don't have to work here. No, look, I think the whole power shift is happening. We're all waiting for when labor starts

to lose some of their power, and management starts to get more some of it. And they're like, look, when can we finally have enough leverage as management to tell our people we want to get back? And I think Jamie's leading the way on that. And he's being unequivocal. Like, we are a better company. You are better people and employees if you are together during the day and learning from each other. Do you agree with me in terms of like, can you imagine the nerve it takes? We're at the threshold of the age of AI and you're putting your name on a petition for why you shouldn't have to show up at the office?

It's very short-sighted, very dumb. I would not advise that. Very dumb. I would not advise signing this paper. On the other hand, you could say like, it's a reflection of the culture at JPMorgan that people feel like they can voice what they think and feel safe. I don't know that you would feel that like Metta, you know, Metta you'd be out. Tesla you'd be out.

I think if you're the CEO of the firm, you have to set the tone. You have to say, this is what we do. And then if there are people that work there that don't agree with it, they could say something. And they could also just quit and go somewhere else. And there are plenty of financial services firms you could work at where they don't care where you are. But that's not one of them. And that's just like, it's not a democracy.

You work at a company. And JP Morgan, I would guess, are probably paying above market salaries for most roles within the bank. And you don't have to have one if you don't want it. I know a lot of kids that just graduated school that would kill to go work in an office building filled with coworkers and would love that role. So I agree with that. All right.

Did you have fun on the show today? It was great. I mean, one last thing. I'm just curious. You guys, you guys have fun on the show today? It was great. I mean, one last thing, I'm just curious. You guys have a lot of 20, 30-somethings. How do you think the people that you deal with and your audience thinks about wealth? Do they still aspire to have it? And what is their definition of wealth?

Do you think both your clients and the people that watch? That's a great question. So I think a lot of the conversation that we had earlier in the show about how different generations, how Gen Z thinks about wealth, I think a lot of it is online. It's a lot of what conversation that we had earlier in the show about how different generations, how Gen Z thinks about wealth, I think a lot of it is online. It's a lot of what you see on the internet. And I don't really believe that the entire generations think so much differently about money than we do.

Because if that were true, Instagram wouldn't exist. Like Instagram is, a lot of it's showing watches and cars and that kind of thing. You look at the funded accounts on Robotoad. People are wise to the fact that equities are how you build wealth. Now, a lot of it is crypto too. But ownership. But what does wealth mean to them? Like what is their, like, I don't know, when I was growing up it was like the nice house, the car, like...

Same thing. Same thing? I mean, right now it feels out of reach for a lot of young people. Because it is. With 7% mortgages, with prices like this, unfortunately, real estate is not a reality for a lot of people. But this idea that people are just like, full on nihilist and don't give a shit about anything, I just don't really believe that. It's a section of the internet for sure.

Josh, what do you think your view of wealth growing up versus the aspirations when they define wealth with today's trend? So I grew up upper middle class but didn't know it. And the disparity between my own situation and my friends Was pretty minor There's Thinking back. There's nothing that I was able to do that anyone else I was friends with couldn't do So we weren't I wasn't rich we didn't do crazy shit. Yeah, and we lived in a suburb. That was fairly

That was fairly homogeneous economically like Roughly everyone's parents could sort of do the same thing. I still live in that town today and it is not that way. So for my kids, they're experiencing the world differently than I did. There's more dispersion, way more. And my brother's kids, forget about it,

he lives in Calabasas. And in Calabasas, they're probably all very similar, but like in the city of Los Angeles, in Calabasas, they're probably all very similar, but like in the city of Los Angeles, that wealth disparity would be off the charts relative to Long Island. So I do agree with you that the interesting thing now, and probably the biggest area of tension, is intra-generational wealth disparity.

I don't know what you really do about it and I now that I have a college-age kid like the things that I've seen and heard you can't even imagine you cannot even imagine what goes on in the mentality of the parents and I think people get serious about wealth when they have kids because from my perspective I didn't really, I wanted to be successful. I didn't really care that much about money. And then as my kids, no, not really.

Not when I was in my 20s. I wanted to have fun. And then having kids in my 30s. But then in my 40s, when the kids were teenagers and everything started to cost a lot, that's when I became way more driven about how much am I gonna pay myself. So I think that that's not uncommon.

I think that's most people, frankly. But I do think the disparity, even within suburban communities, within cities, is probably way bigger than it was when you and I were kids. And I say that as though, are we the same age? I'm not sure. No, you're younger. You're a lot younger than me. I'm a lot were kids. And I say that as though, are we the same age? I'm not sure. No, you're younger. You're a lot younger than me.

I'm a lot younger? Yeah, I think so. But I feel it. Anyway, I want to tell you, you're one of my favorite reporters and writers, truly. And I love that you cover your beat without a disdain for people who have succeeded, but also not in a celebratory, masturbatory way.

You just tell the stories of the people. Years ago I was talking to Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas billionaire, and I was telling him what I do. You know, I cover wealth from a financial point of view. He goes, I get it, you get it. You're the thinking man's Robin Leach. So that's what I use. We always end the show with champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

We always end the show, Robert, with one thing that you're looking forward to in the future. Seeing you down at Future Proof. Look at this. Great answer. Can we talk about that for one second? Yeah. I have a great guest down there. Alright, so that's what I want to get to, but I actually have some details on this.

You have a session called Rockstar Energy, Rockstar Wealth, an interview with Russ Savage, which is going to happen at Future Proof Citywide in Miami. Is that the Trace Comas guy? Trace Comas. March 18th at 11.25am to 12pm on the Loomis stage. And you are moderating and Russ is your guest. And people are really excited about that. I just learned of it today.

And there's like a buzz within Future Proof. So he's awesome. So he's a guy that started Rockstar. His dad is Michael Savage, the famous conservative radio host. And he started Rockstar, sold it to Pepsi for $4.7 billion in 2020. Amazing.

And I first knew about him because I was at a yacht show and I saw this insane yacht. It had like, you know, the most insane party amenities of any. And he had Rockstar energy drinks everywhere and it was painted like, I was like, this guy is awesome. So now he trades. He trades his own stocks. Oh, I love it. So what I want to look at is how do you go, that transition, as we talked about, from entrepreneur to investor is very hard.

And he's learning the hard way. But I want to talk to him about how he built that business, why he decided to sell it, and how do you make that transition to an investor. And so that's what we're going to talk about. And he's awesome. He's like everything you could imagine. We're so excited to have you at Future Proof Citywide.

And that's definitely going to be a highlight. So I will be definitely on hand for that. Michael, what are you looking forward to, my friend? There's a new movie coming out with Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd. It's called, by A24, it's called Friendship. Is that the right? Is it called Friendship? I saw the trailer yesterday and in my mind I'm like, oh this looks like, like twisted I Love You Man. And at the end the tagline was it's I Love You Man but for Sickos. And I said, I'm in. That's me. I got Cable Guy vibes from it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Remember Cable Guy? Of course. Duncan, is that in your uvra? Cable Guy? Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick? It's been a long time.

That was one of the better, to me, that was one of the better Jim Carrey movies. Before he went crazy. Yeah. Well, because it's like male friendships are weird to begin with a little. Yeah. Unless you made them when you were a kid. Right. It's kind of like, what is this really about? Are we wives friends?

Are we official? That looks like a perfect, like awkward version of it. I can't wait. Josh, what are you looking forward to? White Lotus, the press machine has ramped up. There's a New Yorker profile about Mike White, who we talked about a minute ago for some reason. I just, you talk about The Wealthy.

That's such a great show from a class warfare standpoint. 100%. Because you've got the people that work in these resorts and cater to them, even like bartenders, prostitutes, you name it. And then you've got the patrons who are completely out of their minds. And they've captured the texture of the wealthy very well in that show. What they read, how they talk, their clothes.

To me, Succession is the goat when it comes to recent series about the wealthy. I mean, they got it right with that one. But Lotus is very entertaining. I think Lotus is one of the few shows where they threw out the entire cast and the show was even better and no one was mad about it. They had one holdover cast member from season one to season two. Nobody does that. That's American Horror Story does that.

It's an anthology series. No one in television has the balls to say, this was a huge hit. Get rid of all the actors. Get rid of all the actors. Get rid of the setting too. We're going to start from scratch. This is one of my favorite things about it. And they have one holdover in this coming season.

They brought somebody from the Hawaii cast to Thailand. The Wargur. For season three. So, all right. That's it from us. Guys, thank you so much for listening. I want to let people know where they could subscribe to Inside Wealth. What's the, how did they find you? cnbc.com slash insidewealth. cnbc.com slash Inside Wealth. And Robert, you are active on X, LinkedIn, Instagram?

Some on Instagram. Mainly, maybe LinkedIn, but if they sign up, they get my weekly newsletter. OnlyFans? Oh. Not yet. Thank you guys. You guys are awesome. We appreciate you so much. Shared so much insight with us.

Thank you. Great job to the whole cast and crew. Guys, thanks for all the likes and subscribes. We'll see you soon. All right, great. I know. This is really great. That was so cool. That was great. subscribe so see you soon.