Animal Spirits Podcast

Animal Spirits is a weekly podcast where I get together with my friend and colleague Michael Batnick to discuss what we’ve been reading, researching, writing, watching, listening to, and thinking about. We talk about all things financial markets, personal finance, our favorite books, movies, and TV shows, parenting, the asset management business and more. Our goal is to make finance more accessible, speak in plain English, and share our own personal experiences in the markets.

Email us at animalspirits@thecompoundnews.com with any feedback, recommendations, or questions.

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Episode List

Money Buys Happiness

Talk Your Book: Private Equity Deals with Ted Seides

The Most Bullish Backdrop

Talk Your Book: The Next Catalyst For Crypto Assets

Are You Middle Class?

Talk Your Book: Opportunities in Commercial Real Estate

The Michael & Ben Origin Story

Talk Your Book: Investing in Free Cash Flow

When Your Friends Are Richer Than You Are

Talk Your Book: Dividend Stocks Are Cheap

Founder Mode

Talk Your Book: Balancing Risk & Yield

What is Wealth?

Talk Your Book: Finding Small Cap Diamonds in the Rough

Talk Your Book: Alt Goes Mainstream with Michael Sidgmore

Inflation or Price Gouging

Talk Your Book: Quality Growth Investing

Boomers vs. Millennials

Talk Your Book: Back to the Futures Market

Flash Crash or Recession?

Talk Your Book: The Housing Market with Mike Simonsen

How to Pick the Winners

Talk Your Book: Investing in Blackrock’s Mega Forces

Talk Your Book: Investing in Corporate Culture

Living the Dream

Talk Your Book: Future Proof

Fast Food Inflation

Talk Your Book: Trend Following with Eric Crittenden

Buying a House at the Top of the Market

Talk Your Book: Public and Private Credit Opportunities

Talk Your Book: Why We Don’t Build Enough Houses

Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck

Talk Your Book: Income Outcome Investing

Who Owns the Stock Market?

Talk Your Book: Growth Stock Concentration

The Fed Needs to Cut

Talk Your Book: A $20 Trillion Opportunity

Addicted to Trading

Talk Your Book: Utilizing Dividends For Income

The Consumer is Slowing

Talk Your Book: Supply & Demand Always Wins

Has the World Gone Crazy?

Talk Your Book: Growth Stage Investing

Wages Are Beating Inflation

Talk Your Book: Higher For Longer

When Will Houses Be Affordable Again?

Talk Your Book: Defined Protection with Strtured Protection ETFs

Fighting Inflation

Talk Your Book: Bitcoin Flows

Negative Arbitrage

Talk Your Book: Hedging Your Portfolio with Options

A Healthy Pullback

Talk Your Book: The Bull Case For India

The Yeah But Bull Market

Talk Your Book: Diversifying Away From the Magnificent 7

Enjoy the Bull Market While it Lasts

Talk Your Book: Emerging Market Fundamentals

The Never-Ending Travel Boom

Talk Your Book: Preserving Your Capital

The Roaring Twenties

Talk Your Book: Finding a Bottom in China

This is a Good Thing

Talk Your Book: The Mount Rushmore of ETFs

The Richest Country in the World

Talk Your Book: The Bitcoin Halving

Things Are Getting Stupid Again

Talk Your Book: Private Investing For Fiduciaries

Now Show Japan

Talk Your Book: Investing in Income

The Fed Should Cut Already

Talk Your Book: Putting a Floor on the Nasdaq 100

Passive is Eating the Market

Talk Your Book: Talking Bonds at the New York Stock Exchange

The Holy Grail of Investing

Talk Your Book: Investing in Infrastructure

Gen Z is on Fire

Talk Your Book: What’s Going on in the Bond Market?

New All-Time Highs!

Talk Your Book: Live at Farmcon

The Cash Returning Machine

Talk Your Book: Building Portfolios with AI

The Fee War Comes to Crypto

2024 Predictions

What Will Perform Best in 2024?

Talk Your Book: International Growth Investing

The Most Crowded Trade on Wall Street

Talk Your Book: What is Private Credit?

Dunking on Doomers

Talk Your Book: The Companies Are Fine

The Ben Carlson Top

Talk Your Book: High Prices Kill High Prices

$525k to be Happy

Talk Your Book: Strategic Income

You Can’t Quantify Happiness

People Love to Complain

Talk Your Book: Bitcoin Fundamentals

Finally, a Slowdown

Talk Your Book: Betting on Duration

The Biggest Rug Pull of Our Lives

Talk Your Book: Investing in Luxury

Higher For Longer

Talk Your Book: Equities with Guardrails

Talk Your Book: The State of Venture Capital

Does Government Debt Matter?

Talk Your Book: The All-In-One Home Equity Loan

The Worst Bear Market Ever

Talk Your Book: Investing in Music

YOLO Spenders

Talk Your Book: Compounding Machine

House Poor

Talk Your Book: Where Leverage Comes From

Americans Love Borrowing Money

Talk Your Book: Customizing Alternatives

Is Apple the Next IBM?

Talk Your Book: The Macro Case For Crypto

Talk Your Book: Need to Have Cars with Car Dealership Guy

The Market Cap of Taylor Swift

Are You on Track For Retirement?

Talk Your Book: The Largest Active ETF

Rates to the Hilt

Talk Your Book: Customizing Your Assets

How Much is Happiness Worth?

Talk Your Book: Large Cap Alpha

Do Valuations Matter?

Talk Your Book: Compounding with Concentrated Portfolios

Everything is Up This Year

Talk Your Book: 100% Downside Protection

The Wealth Paradox

Talk Your Book: Future Proof Festival

Recession Not Required

Talk Your Book: The Impact of a Bitcoin ETF

Is Twitter Dead?

Is the Housing Correction Over?

Talk Your Book: Optimizing Your Credit Card Points

Why Crypto Needs Blackrock

Talk Your Book: Advisor Best Practices

Why Are Housing Prices so Expensive?

Talk Your Book: Internet Stocks with Income

Are Stocks Cheap?

Talk Your Book: The Electrification of America

Is the Bear Market Over?

Talk Your Book: Investing in Treasuries During a Debt Crisis

Something Has to Break

Talk Your Book: Upside and Downside Customization For Your Portfolio

Tech Stocks Are Back

Living a Rich Life with Ramit Sethi

Talk Your Book: Streamlining Alternative Investments

The Only Game in Town

Talk Your Book: Fidelity Digital Assets Mailbag

Business Optimism Crashes

Bear Market Lessons

Talk Your Book: CLOs – The Providers of Leverage

Millennials Will Buy All the Stocks

Talk Your Book: Diversify Your Diversifiers

The Crockpot Recession

Talk Your Book: Hidden Pricing Power

The Year of Disappointment

Talk Your Book: Defining the Downside

The 3 Levels of Wealth

Talk Your Book: No Bank Runs in Commercial Real Estate

Talk Your Book: Car Dealership Guy

The Worst Chart in Finance

Talk Your Book: Start-Ups in a Crisis

The Lender of Last Resort

Talk Your Book: How to Buy Treasuries

The Panic of 2023

Talk Your Book: The Carrying Cost of Crazy

How Much Do You Need to Make to be Rich?

Talk Your Book: A Bull Market in Tickers

Talk Your Book: Lifetime Income

Are Bonds Competition For Stocks?

Talk Your Book: The “Tech Heavy” Nasdaq

Talk Your Book: Investing in High Quality Growth

When Money Becomes a Liability

Talk Your Book: Bitcoin Doesn’t Know Its Price

Ready to Pop

Talk Your Book: The Prophet of Capital Preservation

Benjamin Graham Disciple

Talk Your Book: The Long & Short of Commodities

Is the Stock Market Getting Ahead of Itself?

Talk Your Book: The Biggest Short Squeeze of All Time

Is a Soft Landing Inflationary?

Talk Your Book: Investing in Fallen Angels

What’s The Negative Catalyst?

Talk Your Book: What Makes an Index Fund Work

10 Predictions For 2023

The Tesla Crash

Talk Your Book: The Rise of Thematic Investing

Buy the Dip is Dead

Talk Your Book: The Opposite of ESG

Peak Inflation

Talk Your Book: Insourced CIO

A Bear Market in Housing

Talk Your Book: An Update on Private Markets

Getting Rich Quick

Talk Your Book: The Buy-Write Strategy

A Confusing Year

The Crypto Blow-Up

Talk Your Book: Checking in on Buffered ETFs

Talk Your Book: Zillow For Farmland

No Soft Landing

A Housing Recession

Talk Your Book: Doubling Down on Crypto

Bear Market Math

Talk Your Book: It’s Good to be the Bank

Why Isn’t Inflation Falling?

Talk Your Book: Breaking the Housing Market

A Tough Break

Talk Your Book: Investing in Private Credit

Long-Term Bullish

Talk Your Book: Investing in Science Fiction

Powell Wants You to Lose Your Job

Talk Your Book: I Need to Do Some Hedging Trades

Is a Recession Bullish?

Talk Your Book: Portfolio Premortem

Animal Spirits: Live From Future Proof

Talk Your Book: Single Stock ETFs

Talk Your Book: Fixing Fixed Income

The Super Bubble

Talk Your Book: Interest Rates & Volatility

Why So Bearish?

Talk Your Book: Investing in China

Price Drives Narrative

The Animal Spirits Indicator

Soft Landing

Talk Your Book: Choose Your Own Investments

Invest in What You Know

Listener Mailbag

Talk Your Book: Looking Back at the Crypto Meltdown

Redefining a Recession

Talk Your Book: Investing in Whiskey & Wine

Extreme Cost Cutting

Talk Your Book: Real Estate and Innovation

Volatility Hits Main Street

Talk Your Book: The State of Commodities

Talk Your Book: The State of Venture Capital

The Pandemic Broke the Economy

Talk Your Book: The Bull Market in Stupidity

Are We Sure a Recession is Coming?

Talk Your Book: Expanding Access to Private Markets

Peak Pessimism

Talk Your Book: A New Way to Invest in Real Estate

The Fed is Being Punished

Talk Your Book: High Quality Growth Stocks

Good News is Bad News

Talk Your Book: Hedging the Different Types of Inflation

The Round Trip

Talk Your Book: Investing in Single Family Homes

The Most Obvious Recession Ever

Listener Mailbag

Obvious Signs of the Top

Talk Your Book: Locking in Higher Yields on Your Portfolio

The End of V-Shaped Recoveries

Is This a Bear Market?

Talk Your Book: Rethinking the 4% Rule

Elon Buys Twitter

Talk Your Book: Investing in Human Capital

A Recession is Coming

Talk Your Book: When Will the Housing Market Normalize?

The Fed is Making a Mistake

Talk Your Book: The Financial Advisor’s Cheat Code

Long Global, Short USA

Talk Your Book: Investing in mRNA Technology

Tighten Until Something Breaks

Talk Your Book: Protecting the Downside

Animal Spirits NFT Drop

Can the Market Cause a Recession?

Listener Mailbag

Is a Recession Bullish For Tech Stocks?

Talk Your Book: A 7 Trillion Dollar Opportunity

Talk Your Book: The Craziest Commodities Market Ever

More Sellers Than Buyers

The Financial Rails of the Future

A Moral Margin Call

Talk Your Book: Farming with Factors

The Craziest Housing Market Ever

Talk Your Book: Managing Risk Like an Actuary

Starting a Crypto Hedge Fund

Boomflation or a Recession?

Talk Your Book: Accessing Commercial Real Estate

Inflation at Disney World

Talk Your Book: Disruption as an Asset Class

Stocks Work Best at Night

Listener Mailbag

Talk Your Book: Reinventing the American Dream

A Lightning-Fast Correction

Talk Your Book: Where to Find Yield on Your Cash

25 Million New Brokerage Accounts

Talk Your Book: Investing in Sustainability

Is the Fed Trapped?

Talk Your Book: Options Are Eating the Stock Market

Why the Bull Market Could Last a Lot Longer

Howard Lindzon Unplugged

When to Sell a Growth Stock

Listener Mailbag

An Extraordinary Decade

Talk Your Book: Massive ETF Inflows

Person of the Year

Talk Your Book: Investing in Carbon Allowances

The Most Crowded Stocks

Talk Your Book: Buying a Picasso

Talk Your Book: Down with Title Insurance

Housing Prices Are Still Too Low

Talk Your Book: The DAO of DeFi Index Funds

The High Beta Crash

Talk Your Book: Where to Save For Your Down Payment

Everyone Hates Inflation

Great Quartr Guys

Talk Your Book: Why Annuities Have Higher Yields Than Bonds

There’s No Crying in Crypto

Talk Your Book: Real-Time Betting Markets

Hyperinflation, It’s Happening

Talk Your Book: How to Use Thematic ETFs

It Wasn’t Transitory

Talk Your Book: Finding Growth Stocks Around the Globe

The 24/7 Stock Market

Talk Your Book: Investing in Real Estate Alongside Harvard

Unaffordable Housing

Listener Mailbag

Richer Than Ever

Talk Your Book: Accelerating Your Returns

The Next Lehman

Talk Your Book: The Fabric of Risk

The Crypto Gateway Drug

Talk Your Book: An Alternative to Low Bond Yields

Interest Rates Are Never Going Up Again

Talk Your Book: Insourced CIO

The Big Long

Listener Mailbag

How to Crush a Job Interview

Talk Your Book: Bring Your Own Deal

Ben Turns 40

Did Bitcoin Kill Gold?

Talk Your Book: Investing in Dual Impact ETFs

We Were Both Wrong About Robinhood

The Best Way to Get a Raise

We Love to Spend Money

Talk Your Book: The Netflix of Homebuilders

Prices Only Go Up

Talk Your Book: Invest by Avoiding Losers

High School Reunion

Talk Your Book: Investing in High Quality Growth Stocks

$35 Trillion Giveaway

Talk Your Book: High Yield Real Estate

The Wealthiest Generation

Talk Your Book: Anti-Carry

Lifestyle Creep

Fed Apologists

The State of the Housing Market

Permanent Stimulus

Talk Your Book: The Commodities Supercycle

And Then I Got Scammed

Talk Your Book: Listener Mailbag

The Worst Time to Buy a Home

Talk Your Book: The Case For Investing in Farmland

A Shortage of Everything

Talk Your Book: Growth at a Reasonable Price

Bubbles Are Forever

We Should Be in a Bubble

Talk Your Book: The Sports Memorabilia Boom

The YOLO Economy

Talk Your Book: Why the Real Estate Bull is Just Getting Started

The Dumbest Week Ever

A Shortage of Workers

Listener Mailbag

Housing Bubble 2.0?

Talk Your Book: The Psychology of Investing in Bitcoin

The Active Management Resurgence

Talk Your Book: Investing in the Gig Economy

An Affordability Crisis

Talk Your Book: The Case For Emerging Markets

Super Bullish

Talk Your Book: Investing in Freedom

The Recession is Over

Talk Your Book: The Most Ambitious ETFs

Never Bet Against America

Talk Your Book: Investing in Moonshots

The Beanie Baby Bubble

Listener Mailbag

Bidding Wars

Talk Your Book: Madness of the Crowds

Money Tree

Talk Your Book: Commission-Free Insurance

The Big Squeeze

It’s Very Different This Time

Talk Your Book: Investing in Fixed Income

Micro Bubbles

Talk Your Book: Investing in Real Estate with Fundrise

Telsa is the Next Tesla

Talk Your Book: 2021 Outlook

Inflation Truthers

The Best of 2020

Everyone Knows Everything

Talk Your Book: Momentum Investing with Joe Terranova

Never Stop Buying Lottery Tickets

How to Start Your Financial Life

IPO Mania

Talk Your Book: ESG Investing

How America Invests

Talk Your Book: The Structured Marketplace

Raising the Minimum Wage

Talk Your Book: Investing in Bitcoin

Is Bitcoin the New Gold?

Talk Your Book: Direct Indexing

Cancel All the Debt

Talk Your Book: But What Happens Tomorrow?

The Vaccine

Farmland for the Modern Investor

Trading the Election

Talk Your Book: Stacker ETFs

The Worst Chart in Finance

Talk Your Book: Is the Fed Too Entrenched?

Bad Ideas

Talk Your Book: What’s In an Index?

Bearish the Whole Way Up

Talk Your Book: Protecting the Tails

Living Through History

A Random Talk with Burton Malkiel

Worst Recession Ever

Talk Your Book: Investing in Gold

It’s Hard Being Rich

Everything You Need to Know About Retirement

Upside Down Markets

Democracy Has Failed

The Economics of Parenting

Asset Price Hyperinflation

Talk Your Book: Sectors & The Business Cycle

Trickle Up Economics

How to Spend Money

The Four Most Dangerous Words

Talk Your Book: Understanding Opportunity Zones

The Smart Money

The Economics of Home Ownership

S&P 5

Talk Your Book: Fixed Income Investing in a Low Rate World

The Golden Age of Fraud

Talk Your Book: Edly ISAs – Invest in Student Achievement

10,000 Day Traders

This is a Bubble

The Future of Education

Existential Hurricane

Inflation Ahead

Talk Your Book: Advisor Solutions with Helios

The Opposite of a Falling Knife

Talk Your Book: Investing in Private Real Estate with Fundrise

Stock Market Euphoria

Talk Your Book: How to Make Better Financial Decisions with Daniel Crosby

The Unluckiest Generation

Valuations Don’t Matter

Talk Your Book: Investing in Commercial Real Estate

Is the Stock Market Wrong?

Too Young, Too Dumb & Too Inexperienced

Fallen Angels

Whatever It Takes Squared

A Noobwhale Picker’s Market

Capitalism as We Know It

Physical Delivery

Free Oil

The Second Wave

Mountains of Debt

The Fed’s Bazooka

Some Good News

The Great Unwind

Dead Cat Bounce?

The Historic Surge in Unemployment

The First Thing to Go in a Crisis

Bailing Out Main Street

Is This Worse Than 2008?

Talk Your Book: Positive & Negative Compounding – Trading with Direxion

Preparing for a Recession

Oil’s 1987 Moment

A Random Watch Down Wall Street: The Founder

The Emergency Rate Cut

Talk Your Book: Investing in Commodities

Michael’s Worst Investment Ever

Talk Your Book: Small and Mid Cap Growth Stock Investing

What Makes People Happier Than Money

A Random Watch Down Wall Street: Margin Call

Everybody’s Trading

Talk Your Book: How to Create Income in Your Portfolio

Do Economies Need to Go Bust?

Apocalyptic Thinking

The Short Squeeze

The 10 Best Jobs in America

Millennials on Communism

Everybody’s Busy

The Best Decade in Human History

A Random Watch Down Wall Street: Trading Places

Shopping Under the Influence

Talk Your Book: The Case For Tactical Equity

Murder of the American Dream

A Random Watch Down Wall Street: Boiler Room

It’s What It Is

Talk Your Book: Elimination Alpha

The Nastiest, Hardest Problem in Finance

Talk Your Book: Value & Momentum with Wes & Jack

Worst Call Ever?

Talk Your Book: Defined Outcome Strategies with Jason Barsema of Halo Investing

I’ve Never Used an Emoji

Talk Your Book: Coaching the Yankees

The World’s Worst Investor

CEO Departures

Talk Your Book: Crossing Wall Street with Eddy Elfenbein

The Least Happy Age

The Undies Indicator

Winners of the Financial Crisis

Free Trading

Stockpiling Cash

Talk Your Book: Investing in Private Companies with EquityZen

Michael’s Brain Fart

Economically Unattractive

Who Are the Losers?

Best Case Recession

Paycheck to Paycheck

Talk Your Book: Invest Like a Hedge Fund With Titan

Business in a Box

Re-Kindled: Amusing Ourselves to Death

The Bankrupt Barber

Rush to the Exits

Shielded Alpha

Re-Kindled: Superforecasting

The Next Big Short?

Talk Your Book: The Acquirer’s Multiple

A Single Push-Up

Talk Your Book: Global Factor Investing

The Great Depression of 2073

The Four Most Dangerous Words in Podcasting

Talk Your Book: Trading With MarketSmith

Dad Cat Bounce

Talk Your Book: The Net Lease REIT ETF

The Influencer Bubble

The Podcast Power Law

The Absence of Stuff

Re-Kindled: Where Are the Customers’ Yachts

Talk Your Book: Jeremy Schwartz From Wisdomtree

Michael’s Fitness Pal

Talk Your Book: Help With Your Down Payment From Unison

The Rorschach Test

Re-Kindled: The Big Short

Remember Gchat?

The Re-Readables

Money Made by Chance

Money Makes Money

The Netflix of Financial Advice

Footing the Bill

Talk Your Book – Creating a Buffer

The Expectations Gap

Talk Your Book – The Low Volatility Anomaly

Where Were You At the Bottom?

Supremely Efficient Markets

The Rich Man’s Disease

Denominator Blindness

The Rich Man’s IRA

Banning Buybacks

Adverse Variance

Stay the Course

The Richest 50%

Record Outflows

The Market Swoon

The Bear Market

Breaking the Market Cap

Everyone Should Earn 3%

Talk Your Book – International Investing

Late Cycle

The Sellers Are In Control

Talk Your Book – Investing in Commodities

Passive Income

How to Ask the Right Questions

How to Create the Perfect Fund

Spirit Animal

Panic a Little

The Next Subprime

The Healthy Correction

A Committee of Geniuses

Buy the Housing Dip

Looming Disaster

Borrowing From the Future

How the Financial Crisis Affected Millennials

Do We Need a Recession?

When Hitler Took Cocaine

Why Andy Dufresne Would Make a Good Money Manager

Funding Secured

Despite All Logic

What Worked on Wall Street

The Worst 401(k) Advice

Half the Population

Ring the Bell

Black Swan Growth

Individual Alpha

The Mother of All Credit Bubbles

The Oracle of Brooklyn

Big Mistakes

Stocks Are Not Bonds

What it Takes to be Wealthy

The Podcast Boot Camp

Tesla Hathaway

Micro Bubbles

The Collaborative Podcast (with special guest host Morgan Housel)

Some Things We Learned

The False Breakdown

The Lump Sum

Horizontal Support

The Magic Number

Goodnight Moon

Brothers From Another Mother

The Closet Indexer

Phony Happiness

The Meltdown

The Noobwhale

Cash on the Sidelines

Nobody Wants to Listen to Your Podcast

The Melt-Up

Hedge Fund Myths & Casual Investing Advice

The Happiness Smile

Invest Like the Worst

May Day

A Random Walk Down Nowhere

Bitcoin, Bubbles & Bananas

Wave Pools & Market Inefficiencies

Evidence-Based Investing Conference Post-Mortem

The More You Pay, The Less You Get

Investing is Game of Relative, Not Absolute Skill

Animal Spirits Unleashed – How We Invest Our Own Money

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