When Is It Enough?

Greetings and welcome to Inside Baseball with Old Chestnut. I'm Liam Allen with my friend Morse Sacks. How you doing, MB? I'm doing great, pal. It's great to see you. How are you? Um I'm fantastic. It's good to be back with you after a a weekend off and uh we had an exciting week. Where do you want to start? I d I w don't really know that my week was that exciting. So why don't you

'Cause you don't care about GameStop. So like any anyone like you're you're the perfect person to talk to this week'cause that like it might as well have not happened in your world. Um it it only happened because like had a number of um Well documented memes showing us talking about GameStop or the movie Dumb Money. All right, so now be honest, be honest. What did what did you know? What did what what did how did you build up to this to this fireworks show? Because you prepped us

Three weeks ago. Was it was it four weeks ago? That all the whole audience knows. That you you knew something, dude. Like dude, we've been sitting here for four years and you randomly pulled dumb money out of your hat when dude it's been a total cave with it with an occasional bat flying out of that cave. Okay. And now MB shines a little light in said cave and tells the whole audience, you gave us four weeks to watch the fucking movie.

I did I I I didn't even watch the movie. I don't I have not watched the movie yet. Okay. But then what happened? Dude logs on to Twitter, one little picture. Away we go. The rest is history. I got every mouth breather from the firehouse calling me saying, what do I do now? I said, I said, you listen to episode two of Inside Baseball. Okay. Dude, I I uh all I'll tell you is I had no fucking idea.

I mean it this is a sad note, but how did I know to belong a shitload of front end on nine eleven? I I d I don't I don't know. I mean, am I happy what happened? No. I it just You know, when you prepare for exogenous events. And and the GameStop thing, I want to be clear. What I cause a a young person called me the other day. And was wondering, was I kind of like lionizing the situation? I said, not not not at all. Although, truth be told, having watched that movie three times now.

I am so Jonesing to start trading again. I can't tell you. Thank goodness I have the maturity. to know that that would just absolutely be the worst thing I could possibly do. The best thing I ever did was not watch the movie, dude. If I had watched the fucking movie and I had seen that meme on Sunday night, dude, I would

I would have been hawking stuff at Greenwich Pawn Shop Monday morning waiting for nine thirty, okay? So I could load the boat on GameStop. Thank God. Dude, who who wins? Who's the winner on that? Citadel? Citadel's the winner. W w winner meaning what? After all of that, after okay, well we know that GameStop, like the the GameStop Corporation issued X amount of shares, so they flooded the market with shares. So th they won.

off of the insanity. And there's obviously people that made money that had those the options. You know, there's some people. But like all those mouth breathing idiots that went in and bought it at whatever yeah, that that to me is You know, I comedy hour. It's it's farcical. Why I liked

Let me back up. Why I love the movie is because It's common knowledge that I gotta bug up my ass about hedge funds, right? And I I I I'm not gonna bore you again with all of my very reasonable reasons why anyone who invests in one's a a fucking idiot. Um you know. But you know, Gabe Plotkin? I mean Gabe, change your name. First of all, get a different name. Second of all. You just have to watch clips of this movie. So you have the multi billionaire criminal Stevie Cohn.

He's got a fucking pig walking around his house. Okay. Explain to me. Talk to me like I'm a three-year-old. How do you have how do you have a grown pig walking around your house? You know what it tells you? It tells you you are just so full of yourself. that you want to do obnoxious things. Another example, the picture of Bobo and Le Cuomo standing next to the organ grinder, thinking she loves them. Craning he craning his neck to the point where his yarmulke almost fell off.

Who's the schmuck? Um but uh yeah, I I just think, you know, they show these guys and and I'm sure being Hollywood or whatever, there was some latitude taken, but but not a lot of latitude. And um, you know, it's like, how'd we do today? Lost a billion. Yeah. What did we do yesterday? Lost a billion. Maybe there's a clue there. Yeah. Yeah. But no, he's too busy bitching that he can't get a house knocked down to build a tennis court during COVID. You know what?

The world is round, my friend. You know what? Walmart. Go to Walmart. Get a job. See what real people uh you know and and then and then when you got to a hundred million net worth, you'd have quit. Yeah. Why? Because it's plenty.

It's it's plenty. It's enough, yeah. Yeah. Um I don't know. Uh I I didn't really spend much time looking at the market. I did make a couple of minor Portfolio changes. Not that it really matters. Um you know I've I've fiddled around in the municipal market and um the shape of the yield curve is such that as you go out the curve there's no real advantage. anymore. Uh so I I sold what I could at good prices. Uh I still have some stuff. I'm I'm waiting to get a very full price for them.

But when you get into the five percent treasury bill, and keeping in mind that's a taxable five. the the munis are tax free, you know, yada yada yada. I I just um I don't like owning long end paper. It it the fact that the curve is inverted. Mm-hmm. And you know, the one mistake everyone has made.

us included, is that we've tried to forecast the market based on using historical approaches and as we've mentioned a number of times, the COVID thing should have been a wake up call to us that has changed any number of things and we needed to rethink how

And um so so here we are. But uh, you know, I'm again I've gotten to a very large percentage in cash. And I'm I'm very happy to stay there. I I I you know, I was received um an article about Seth Klarman, who's, you know, one of the the big names in today's baseball picture. And he had a lot of very uh salient points. Um

I would encourage you to look it up on your own. I'm not going to read them all to you, but the ones that resonated with me were, you know, new products are aren't designed to help you, the investor. You know, I that sounds obvious but Um imagine that. Mine said he was out at a dinner and some guy said hindsight's 50-50 and he spit his margarita out through his nose.

Yeah, I mean I I I remember the And I I distinctly being in a meeting uh at the height of the housing situation where somebody came out with this constant proportion debt obligation, which was basically English for you add to losing trade. Wow. Yeah, this is this is no good. Yeah. Um so you know keep it simple, stupid, right? But the the most poignant thing Seth said and I'm Hugely paraphrasing is, you know, nobody cares more about you than you. Meaning you you need to take some responsibility.

for uh your own situation. And, you know, I'm fortunately uh Uncle Mark has come to visit for the weekend and we were just, as we normally do, uh we were just sitting around the kitchen table. talking about the markets and and he's like, Why why do you think so many people have trouble investing? And I said, I I don't think that's that hard to understand. I said, first of all, people generally have a difficult understanding money and

And the discipline isn't there. And then the investment community is really geared. for one thing. It's to separate people from their money. Now I'm I'm not for a moment gonna say there aren't really talented caring people out there. And I've had the good fortune to know some of But I've had the...

unfortunate experience of knowing many who are, you know, from that famous law firm Do you cheat'em and how. Um yeah, and and uh I have a friend that put money in a 401k option that was run by one of the banks in over the last 10 years his account has not gone up at all. Zero. I mean, if you put in 20 grand ten years ago, it's still 20 grand.

Yeah, yeah, I I suggest that you get a lawyer is just not his way. Um but I don't think that's necessarily terribly unique. Um you know I complain about my situation.

I'm very cautious about what you and I do here because we've been fortunate to gather a small but consistent audience. And and I feel like even though we don't take a penny for doing this by design, I feel like they've made a commitment to us and I I feel like we have an obligation to to some extent to them. And and and so, you know, I don't want to repeat the same things over and over.

And I don't want to sound like a angry old man. The the difficult part about the angry old man thing is There are very few warm and fuzzy stories that you're going to learn anything. And anything I tell you, which is an example of someone behaving badly. you can get dismissed as well, he's just a bitter old man. Well, you know

Maybe maybe there's a reason I'm bitter. Angry old man's good for the show. Nobody wants nobody wants you to be fr nobody likes it when you had a good week and you're all happy. I wanna I wanna hear about I want you bent out of shape. We're doing a show here, okay? So I was thinking about, you know, sort of the outside managers that I have engaged over the years to

Pretty consistent disappoint disappointment. Um you know, I've mentioned I've tried to get my money out of a fund years ago and the money is still parked in a side pocket. And by the way. I'm I can't guarantee this, but generally when a position that you've had for a long time Is in a side pocket, it means you can't sell it, which means it's not doing well. Like anything that's doing well, you can get out of. Right.

Um, I'm thinking back because I just got an invitation from my private equity manager. They're having their annual investor conference at your expense. Uh I think this year might be in Switzerland. Come on. No, no, it the the these guys got a stick so far stuck up their ass they can't see daylight. Wow. To tell you and it and I I won't mention the firm's name, but I'll tell you, these guys are so fucking arrogant. And you know what?

You know how you know you're in trouble, like you see something? I remember I remember I was uh sitting next to Eiji. And we get this memo, an investment memo. They're gonna buy. The Greek yellow pages. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Like, what? How is this? No slam on the Greek people, but number one, have you heard of this thing called the internet? That if if that internet catches on, that's gonna be big. Okay.

Who buys the fucking Greek yellow pages? Un unless there's some little You know, I'm sure what they thought they were gonna do is Go in and strip out, as Anthony would say, strip out anything worth it, lever it up, sell it, main pay themselves a big bonus. And And you know, so that's that's out of money. Then the guy with the side pocket, you know, that's another thing. But, you know, I've had some luck with some other things. And um

You know, I'm I'm still here. Uh Why I guess for me it was an exciting week, wasn't so much because of anything in the market. I I just read some stuff that. I I found it intellectually stimulating. And um the first one. It it starts out on a sad note. You may have seen in the new paper of record, the New York Post. Uh that a green beret died as an analyst working at at Bank of Bank America. And another one, two ninety

An another person? Another one, like yeah, like two nights ago, two or three days ago. Yeah. Yeah. So there two two journalists died? From B of A, yeah. Maybe it's the same guy. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. Okay No, you got the green no you're you're you're you You're right. Yours is correct. But I saw last night another one or two nights ago, another B of A employee died.

Well, okay. So let's discuss this for a minute and how fucked up this is. So um I had a lovely dinner the other night with some younger people. And one of the person one of the people there was an analyst at a hedge. And I said, you know, I've always been a trader. I've had analysts work for me, but none of them have had to do these crazy things. And I said, what what's it like now? He says, well, I'm an analyst at a hedge fund.

So it's not exactly what these people are going through, but he had been an analyst at an investment bank. And so what happens is a deal will come in and they'll they'll throw a bunch of information at these kids and they'll say, put together a pitch book. I want it done in eight hours. And you know, they put all sorts of pressure on'em. And, you know Being a young person when I was

moving along. I, you know, I probably was just as vulnerable to the the peer pressure wanting to s succeed um as as any of them. I think where my Split came was because I was a trader and my compensation was clearly the Revenues Less expenses multiplied by a percentage, that's what you got. Literally the bulk of my bonuses.

we're not even rounded. Like it could have been, you know, X and you know, four hundred dollars and twenty seven cents. I mean, it's just'cause why bother? Right. Um And early on, based on uh a role model. This fellow went down to the gym and Monday to Friday at precisely eleven twenty, and he worked out for two hours. And if there was a problem, we went and got them. And

Uh he did that for a long time. In the meantime, I'm running around, getting hardly any sleep, doing this and that, but making money and and loving the job. But you know, I'd have had this conversation with somebody. It might have been with myself, I don't know, but it was basically, you know, if you drop dead tomorrow.

There's gonna be somebody in your chair the next day and and your life's over and you know who cares, right? So I mimic this person and I went down instead of going at um uh eleven twenty I went down at eleven twenty-two to give him a chance to get changed and And um at first nobody said anything. Uh I wasn't running the group at that point, but I was

a senior trader. And um it went on for a month or two and then one of the head guys said something to me. It's like, Hey, what's this story with you going down uh uh eleven and working out and I'm like, hey, uh uh politely That's not part of my compensation. Nowhere does it show plus or minus more's works. And when I'm up at two in the morning.

dealing with the JGBs, well, what are you doing? You're sleeping. Mike criticized. So when the math stops working, then we can have a conversation about the, you know, my work ethic. And so I I got away with it, right? I could have I suppose been vulnerable to peer pressure. But I, you know, I was even I and maybe I'm telling myself stories, but even the people who work for me, I didn't have a vacation.

You take your vacation when you need it. Mm-hmm. And give me a little heads up so we got coverage. But, you know, just remember, you know, you get paid on your results. And if you're taking a lot of vacation and affects your results, the uh you're gonna get paid less. That's in in if you work so little, you're not available, then we'll just have to get somebody else. But it was never one of these um with one exception, it was never one of these things I was looking at my watch.

what time was somebody coming in, what time was somebody leaving? It's cause you you did your job and I I let you do your job and and I manage well up And got the people to let me run my show. Now in sympathy to the these younger people, um It's a terrible situation. Um You know, when you're I I often describe being in a bad trade you can't get in, get get out of, being in a in a barrel rolling downhill. Like you're not getting out till that till that barrel stops rolling, right?

And if you've mentally put yourself in that barrel rolling downhill It it can get dark and it can get lonely. And um You know, I'm not here to solve the world's problems, but uh you know, I I think for most people, uh you either have the mindset, the skill set, To manage the workload. And if you're getting to the point where you're losing your mind, you know, get help.

Cause you know the thing about dying, you that that's for real. Like you don't come back from that. That's a that's not a get a do you get a recall no you're you're you're it's not a divorce or fire divorce or fire sun's coming up

Sun's coming up. Yeah. I mean, like there's stuff you can handle, there's stuff you can't, you know, like You know, and and back when I was young, you know, working at Goldman Sachs had a cachet. Working at Salmon Brothers. had a sh had a cachet. Totally. I don't think, you know, like what's special about saying you work at Citadel? Or w what do you what's special about saying you work at Goldman Sachs? Uh

I'll tell you what's special about if you say you went to Colombia, what's special is you won't be doing any work for me because I will never hire somebody from Colombia again. How about how about Cromwell and Sullivan? We're we're we're digging. Cromwell and Sullivan came out and said, We're gonna start digging and if we find anyone anywhere that has even a hint of of the uh Of the anti of the anti scientists and you're you're gone and you're never getting in. Yeah.

And that's and that's Sullivan and Cromwell. That's that's not Horowitz, Horowitz, and Rabinowitz, right? Yeah, yeah. They put out a nice statement this week that I was like, oh, I have to I have to find that. And you know why I why I mean clearly I applaud it, everyone knows my political view, but if you're going to present your employees to client, They need to be agnostic.

in their their political views because they're representing your firm. And there's that stupid saying it takes years to earn a good reputation and hours to lose it, right?

Speaking of which, Danny Meyer is now um excommunicado. Um I told a a dad joke a while ago about some guy some guy goes out of town on business and he says to the cab driver, Hey, I wanna I wanna get some action. And the cab driver drives him down an alley and he says, just knock on that door and

So he walks down the door and knocks on the door and the little thing slides open and the guy says, Hey, I want to get fucked. And the voice says, Give me a hundred bucks, hands a hundred bucks, door slides shut. Nothing happens. Knocks on the door. Can I help you? I I want to get fucked. And the voice says what again? So I meet my friend Michael at Danny Meyer. Um Union Square. Union Square Cafe. And we have a delightfully mediocre meal.

And I'm I'm being generous. I mean talk about the bloom being off the road. So I still have like$400 on this thing. And so I go to I go to pay. And It fucking bounces the thing because the tip. Has to be paid on your credit card. Man. And it said the credit card on file is no good. So I said to the waitress or wait person, I guess I'll pay by credit card.

And I said, wait a minute, the credit card I'm about to give you is the same one that's on file. And she runs the thing through, goes through lickety split. I'm like, you know what, Danny. You need the money more than me. Okay. Yeah. You want to get fucked again? Yeah, that that's it. So Dude, there's so many restaurants. What are you doing going back there? Because I have this credit, or I thought I had this credit. Thank you, thank you. I just wanted to make sure.

I I I'm I've met him once or twice. Yeah. And I I I think he's a genuinely nice guy. Yeah. I I don't know, maybe it's just bad luck, but um You know, we didn't we didn't um uh podcast last week. I I had uh I wanted to mention this is completely unrelated to the markets, um, but who cares because it's free. Um there's a restaurant where the food is edible. up in New Canaan called the Elm. And um

They got Taylor they got Taylor Swift going there, dude. They got well, what do you okay, but we're more go ahead. Well The food's edible. I'm not saying it's good. Okay. You know, right, thank you. So but I go there, Cheryl and I just wanna have a you know, a night out without having to do the dishes and whatever. And I think it's a phenomenon of what happens when you get a little older.

in big rooms with a lot of background noise, it's it's kinda hard to hear. And y you know, Cheryl, with everyone other than me, she's very soft spoken. With me, somehow she manages to get her point across. Crystal clear. Yeah, yeah. Crystal. But we're having dinner and there's and and you know this cohort. There's four fake blonde haired women sitting in the corner. Sippin' their chardonnay, bitchin' about their husband And Cheryl even used the term.

A bunch of gaggling twats. It's like yeah. It was painful. It was fucking painful. Not long after somebody at a table across the restaurant got up, and we we fortunately they were able to move us. Like just pro tip, if you're in your 40s, living in New Canaan. It's not getting any better for you. Okay. Don't think that the loser you married, you know, you you're gonna separate from him and you're gonna find Mr. Wright. Because Mr. Wright ain't looking for you.

Dude, the place to go in New Canaan is tequila mocking bird. Okay, that's the pro tip for anyone. Great chips, great salsa, right? Great, great place to get tequila when you were underage. All right. So all right. So let me tell you, that's how long. And oh shoot, for also, so I'm four.

Uh uh exactly. I'm forty t I'm forty two, so I can remember going to tequila Mockingbird as and you know I'm probably eighteen, trying to you know, I'm like, oh I'll have a margarita, please, and some chips and a and a couple of burritos. No problem, sir.

Yeah, place will have a place in my heart forever. But dude, it's still there. So, you know, you know, they're doing something right. I mean, dude, this is in the nineties, you gave a couple of kids margaritas. We'll look we'll overlook that. But if you have if you can be in New Canaan and crank out decent Mexican food for 25 years, good for you. So good. So if you skip the elm, the kilo mockingbird, let's have 14 margaritas and you can talk loud and go home. Let's be honest.

It's Mexican food. How hard can the fucking thing be? They made they make a million margaritas. You go have a delicious margarita, okay? I think I think you and I had dinner. There's a place up in Mount Kisko Chappaqua, somewhere in their area. It's called like Mariachi. Uh Mexico. Okay. So you know it was never big on ambience. You know, it was a cinder block.

kind of wall balls and this and that. But the food was made by you know a family. And okay. So Cheryl and I occasionally would go up there. And by the way, since I've been on the keto thing, Mexican food is not really where you want to go. But anyway, this was pre-that. And I don't know what happened, but we were sitting there and Maybe the vent on the waste pipe. broke or something. But we couldn't even finish the meal. It just smelled like a sewer in there.

And I don't know, Cheryl showed me the other day, it's just got rated like one of the top hundred restaurants in the United States or some fucking crazy thing like that. Okay. Can you imagine driving like I want to take it off the list and it smells like a fucking sewer? Can you go to Mal here I am in Mauquisco, culinary capital of the world, please? You know, going into Manhattan for me, I just it's working me over now. It's'cause I'm too old for it. Oh dude, you know me.

Dude, I'm too old for it now. How many I how how many how many hundreds of nights did I ask you for dinner? I've been to all the restaurants you've ever sent me to. Dude, that was that was my I mean now I have kids in it, but and that was my wife and I's thing, but like, dude, I cannot do

I can't do it anymore. The rigmarole, um, and getting in and dude, to get subpar. If I went to Union Square, if I slept downtown for the once a month to get and I went to Union Square and it wasn't it wasn't perfect. I that would I would be bent about it. Um Well, we're we've been talking about making some adjustments and stuff like that. Um

You know, I've got a guy that I've known a long time that drives. Mm-hmm. And he knows, you know, twenty six ways to get where you're going. So it's as minimal as possible. But dinner Monday night. I had to go. I wanted to go. It was a good friend, business partner, but it was an hour and a half. Yeah. Sitting in the back of a car for an hour and a half. Getting home is fifty-five minutes, which by the way, that's almost an hour. I know, I know it's on the you're on the I know, trust.

It's close but it's not. No, I get it, dude. Going yeah, and plus if you're gonna go all the way down to Union Square, it's not like you're going to Rayos up in Harlem. Um yeah, no, it's a whole different ball of wax. Yeah, I got a little view on Rayos too.

Well what's your problem with rayos? Not that I sucks. Yeah, it sucks. Exactly. What? It's small, it's crowded, they think who they are. And the food's no good. Yeah. Other than that, it's great. And you can't get in. Same page. Okay. Have you been there?

No, for Rayos, me go to Rayos. Dude, if I go to Harlem, I'm eating a dinosaur barbecue over on the west side. And even that, once you've done that You can get that up in Stanford. You can get it all over the country now. It's a beautiful thing. Um what you can't get.

is what I had last night, which is Shannon Day's world-famous smoked prime ribs of beef, which I had with my brother, and it was ethereal. You know, I I've I've never brought this up before. Shannon is one of these guys I met through cycling. One of the few guys I met through cycling that's like a real person.

Uh it've been over the years I've been more and more disappointed with the people I met through cycling. But Shannon is a a triple A guy. And he's I don't want to see a larger than life guy. because he's a very low key man, but he's like a man's man. Like he goes hunting and fishing and and so you know he does this whole barbecue smoking thing. And uh so he's been very generous with me. But um

you know, everyone listening to the conversation, he has gotten his pilot's license and he flies different places. And he was telling me how he went on a a trip with his son, I believe, and I forget exactly where, but they hired like the big time uh boat with the big time crew and he caught A four hundred pound bluefin tuna. And they reeled it in and they chopped it up and they froze it the whole thing. And I remember the last time I saw him before I was coming back to the United States.

You know, I I had a feeling he was gonna be giving me some barbecue. So I if I remember the timing correctly, I got a I went to the liquor store said I want your best bottle of bourbon. I know nothing about it, but and so they they're like this. Because secretly, I'm hoping on top of the barbecue is maybe a little bit of that bluefin tuna.

But four hundred pounds of it. He there he sho he should have surplus tuna. That's enough tuna for many men. Okay. And then hey the thing about barbecues, you gotta make a lot of it. So like he's gotta give you something. Don't don't think this isn't exactly like he's like

shaving truffles on your pasta over here. He's he's gonna use like I got like I got a hundred pounds of brisket. I might as well give some loves me. He would shave truffles on my pasta. I don't want to hear any different. All right. Oh so so

Can we change the subject for a minute? If you want to talk about Jim Simons. Oh, may he rest in peace. You got anything nice to say about him? Uh Yeah, I he didn't have a pig as a pet. Yeah, I spent a lot of time reading. It's just an interesting, fascinating life. Um and his numbers, which you like to herald, I mean his

the numbers at Renmac are just eye watering. Did I like I sometimes wonder what what they're there. It it's true. Well if If it hadn't been going on for so long, I would think there was some skullduggery there. And there is still the unanswered question how recently one year the employee fund was up some ginormous amount and the investor fund was down a ginormous amount. That's not tough. What once again

reason not to give other people money to manage, but hey, that's just my thing. Doesn't I think you're right. What? So the mid medallion was up eighty percent and the and the other one was like, sorry, we underperformed the SP. Yeah. Oops. Dude, could you imagine that dude? Like imagine they said that to you with a straight face where they were like

Yeah. How d how did medallion do? Up eighty. How did mine do? I must have been like, okay, seventy-five, seventy, tax it, I'll take twenty off. So the the the Hollywood movie thing would be this that back office person discovers the whole thing has been a fraud, confronts Simons, and he takes his own life. Yeah, yeah. And then in six weeks

it comes unraveled that the whole thing was a massive Ponzi's team. If I get if that if I get that right, we're raising we're raising the subscription rate. No, because he was just such yeah, yeah. No, I agree. Um

Okay, all right. So go go to your subject. I just wanted to get that off'cause I I thought I I honest did he not it sounded like he sounded like he wasn't a jerk. Like you you know, he he checked a couple of boxes that I thought f like he checked a couple of your boxes was like his P and L. Can't f it can't can't be can't be argued with, you know. Long longevity.

You know, and he wasn't and he didn't seem like a massive prick. So well, I take that as a compliment, thank you. Um I I think the real accomplishment is where was the scalability. Like I I know there's been some talk about whether our results, yada, yada, yada, are right. I I still got a stack of Bibles and can prove that those numbers we put up are valid. Um

But we couldn't scale it up five times. Long term capital tried to do that and it did it didn't work, right? Um so yeah, he he had some technique of analyzing relationship. And and he m made a shit ton of money and I I more power to him. I think that's and he did seem like a decent guy. Which which w one more thing before I forget, because I think in his own words he said, My life story is I was good at math. I made a lot of money and I gave most of it away. And I so like

I'm not talking about the giving pledge. He he personally funded down in Union Square somewhere in the Flatiron District. I read a long article about how he funds these research for you know, pick a pick a pick a cause. Um So his philanthropy, he very quietly did m does millions of dollars of university work. Um so I thought, yeah, that was that to me. I was like, all right, well I don't have a you know I think I think that's great. Yeah. So during my uh reading of famous people period.

One of the things I saw about Rockefeller and Carnegie was one way or another, they believed They were religious and they believe God put them on earth to make a lot of money and to give it away. Don't give it away wantonly, make sure it's It's well done. So Rockefeller started University Chicago and I think had a couple of failed attempts before I got going. Uh Carnegie is big on library.

Because he liked to read and and then Carnegie Hall and and those sorts of things. But you know, his Carnegie, I believe his comment was it is um I don't say an insult or a failure, but to die with a lot of money is

It was a terrible thing to do. Um Yeah, dude. I grew up on uh I grew up on the Rockefeller property down in uh Sleepy Hollow because my dad taught at Sleepy Hollow, which is adjacent the Rockefeller property. It's beautiful property. And it's open. So like I w I would go to school with my dad. If I didn't I went to Catholic school. If Catholic school was closed, I went to school with my dad and he'd send me up to the gym.

And the gym teacher would let me tag along for the day. And his routine was in between classes, he'd go run the Rockefeller property, which is the Incredible pastures of like, you know, magnificent. Dude, it's got a b well you should go to dinner over there at Blue Hill. They have a system. Of course. Okay. Well yeah, so you know the deal, dude.

Yeah. So Rockefeller and all right, I don't want to talk about Rockefeller, uh because you know, you know what he did to women, you know what You know, his idea behind uh getting getting the women's movement going was so that he could tap He said, Dude, we need half the population. He said we're only taxing half the population right now. We're only taxing working men. How can we change that? Let's get women to work and we'll have 50% more taxable citizens.

You don't know that story? No. That's the women's li that's how women's lib got started. So never mind the new the family notion of a women. I I gotta be careful here, but this is this is a a th Well you gotta you gotta be careful because you know we have a big female audience. Uh so so the so the so m I I gotta The idea, the Rockefeller idea, I believe, is that we need to tax more people. Let's get the women and let and dude How do how is it how can I frame this?

They don't care like the like the Rockefeller knew that all that women should be home raising their children and putting them into the workforce would destroy the like the nucle the the the family bond and like and it wouldn't be good overall long term for the society, but they wanted they needed the tax revenue. Okay. Go to work. Off you go. You guys can work.

Well we'll we'll get the guys in the booth to research that one because I I'll send you a couple of TikToks. I I'll send you it's yeah, I'm big on a girl, it's a woman that narrates this and she's like I just discovered that the women's lib movement was actually forced upon us to make us taxable citizens. And it I was like, oh, checks out. Totally makes sense. How how proud do you think the parents are of that Columbia grad who

Um, when she got a diploma, unraveled it, ripped it up, threw it on the ground in front of the person. Yeah. Did you hear about this? No. No, that's my understanding. I I I actually think I saw the video. She tears she takes the diploma, rips it in half, throws it on the ground, walks off the scene. like fine i remember they they interviewed her after they said mrs cunt is that spelled with a c or a k yeah i made that up dude Ripped up the degree from Columbia.

Yeah. There should be a powerful alumni that says to Columbia, look, I'm yanking my$50 million a year if you don't expel this student, keep the tuition and no degree. Oh, I'd be so bent about it, dude. Oh you should you should trust but verify. Make sure I have that right. I I it it it's I think another girl. What are you doing? The show's not over. Wrong studio. Yeah, wrong studio. Go play with your trucks overall. Um

What uh yeah, fucking kids, man. These kids you Yeah, he's like, Ah what you said something about a degree from Columbia?

Dude, which brings me to another thing. Okay. Higher I want to talk about let's go back to the market. I want to go back to before I get interrupted again. The market. I saw this notion, a clip from the the BlackRock CIO about higher rate. being good for the rich and bad for the lower half of the economy and that leading to more inflation. Yes. Which totally makes sense. Okay. Yes.

Well, sort sort of. The higher rates are better for people with money. Okay. The poor don't have money. The linkage between the rich having more money and inflation. arguably is a bit spurious because you know I I'm getting higher intro interest payments, but I'm not the it's not making me buy more broccoli. Yeah. Or cocoa, which I see there's a big squeeze on, or now it's on copper. Yeah. But it it goes back to what we said earlier was

you know, nobody really understood the effect that COVID had. And we're still because remember with COVID, we took the rates down to zero, right? Which for guys like me who had money, i it was It didn't wasn't as good. I wasn't earning any interest. Now the rates got jacked up. And to the extent I have cash, I get to earn a a higher rate. So that benefits me. But my inflation rate.

is going to be very different from someone that, you know, doesn't have as much money. You don't inflation doesn't touch you. Inflation doesn't touch you. You you like you don't have like You don't have a budget. Like I uh you don't have a nuts and bolt budget like an American household. Not that most American households, but say you're like I know Anthony always likes to say Joe Sixpack. Say you're Joe Sixback

Joe Sixpack in Sandusky, Ohio. Okay. He gets he gets whacked by it, dude, because his grocery bill goes from let's call it, you know, two thousand dollars a ye a a year or whatever the number is. to twenty five to th like to three quick in five or six years quietly and quickly.

And that across the board, you know? Um Well, I just put gas in the car yesterday. It was a dollar forty. How much? Dollar forty a gallon, maybe? No, it was not a dollar forty. Listen to what planet.

Four forty. Four forty. Four forty. Yeah. Yeah. Four forty. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That's expensive. Yeah. It was three twenty nine a year ago or so. Um But yeah, like like the gas doesn't bother me like big big objects, like big big purchases like If you wanted to go buy a car like car loans, like all right, so I do my little like neighborhood my neighborhood survey.

All right, so the the Honda dealer reported the worst two months and the worst two weeks were in the the bat the backlog of the calendar here. The Honda dealership said it was terrible. The pizza place, which I was surprised at, said it was terrible. All right. The bike shop said it was slow. I so I didn't I went around the hood um and I asked a couple of people what it was like. They said volume down.

That's that's the the the survey that go around that goes around. So i i i another element, if you if you would prefer to continue. Yeah no no no go So I'd mentioned, you know, in my real estate stuff, a lot of my things are coming up for refinancing and It's ludicrous what we're seeing. I mean, these property not everyone thinks their property is special, but our this property is so absurdly over collateral.

The the uh equity we have in the thing is extremely large. And The loan to value they're looking at like maybe, you know, 70%, 60%, and then they want treasuries plus 300. And then they want us all to open up checking accounts at the bank because they want it to be a relationship. So I I'm gonna have to put and I'm not gonna do this, but we want to borrow$4 million, and we'll probably have to put$4 million in a checking account. So the

Uh this is not gonna happen by the way. So they can take the four million, pay us zero on the checking account, and then lend us back the money that Treasury's Plus three hundred. Yeah, plus three hundred. Yeah, yeah. Like let's let's cut let's just cut the lawyers out of this thing. We'll just send you the money, right? And then paying legal fees on top of that. So you know This is the thing I love about banks. I you know.

The only time they want to do business with you is when you don't need them. And when you need'em they they don't they don't wanna know ya and I I you know it's not a huge story, but you know, back in the day and Cheryl and I moved to New York, um One of the guys proposed me to become a client of the United States Trust Company. And that was the old days where if they proposed you, they guaranteed you.

So the the sales burger was you will never have a check bounced here at US Trust. So if you wrote a check for a million bucks, yep, they pay. Um shows like, well, why you know, why are we opening up yet another bank economy? Like, because you gotta get into these places. when you don't need'em. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it I wouldn't say it was a tremendously fortuitous situation, but it it a couple of times, you know.

I mean if you need a a couple hundred grand in a hurry, who who are you gonna call? Yeah. I mean I I visa, I suppose. I American Express. I'cause your local bank don't want to know ya. I was gonna say I I was like, I got a guy in Brooklyn like Vinny, if you need money quick, like Vinny'll give you the money, but you're gonna I like my legs. So it's not like that any it's not like that anymore, okay?

Got anything else? Good private what you go to the private credit you go to private credit, and I've heard that private credit is just uh overfloweth with money that they want to loan to people these days. Is that they they say that, but I don't see it. Interesting. Interesting. I I think what happens is the the guys

the wealthy guys, the Steve Schwartzmans and the Stephen Grays and all those guys. I think that private lending thing is just them lending money to each other. I I I don't think that really I mean, yeah, maybe some hedge funds might end up getting into it because They can't make money any other way. Uh and they got that side pocket thing, which is a beauty. Um maybe that maybe we should start the IBWAC fund. We've been making loans.

And uh you know some people, you know some tough guys. I I well it's imagine the team we could build. I mean, like we have all ends of the spectrum, okay? We Rich, rich, Bill. Just put we could problem is we don't like charge of money for things, so that can change quickly with if I get another nasty email, it's gonna change quickly, okay?

Do we have time for me to tell you about my e-bike or are we out of time? Yeah, I got I uh I'm down. Yeah, I'll lock the door. The k the k go ahead. All right, this last story. So so you got a Scott E Addict, which is a skinny tire. drop handlebar racing bike like the guys riding the Tour de France, but it has a battery powered motor for the for the listening audience. Okay. You would never know to the naked eye that this is an electronic bicycle. It looks exactly like your old bike.

Yes, looks exactly like it. The motor, just so you know, it's in the rear hub. So it's something like I don't know. I didn't know that. I thought it was in the down tube. Fascinating. No, the battery's in the down tube. Okay. Okay. Well, the the motor is in the hub. So You know, uh my pal Nate, I get it shipped out from Arizona, and um Nate comes and puts it together and I said, you know, I read something about there being a wire.

connecting the battery, so it's a little difficult taking the rear tire off. And the reason you need to know about taking the rear tire off is occasionally people get flat tires. So he said, yeah, you should look into that a little bit. And so I go and and by the way, the joke is on me. The the the punchline is I'm the fool here. But anyway. Dude, you got ahead of it. You're already ahead of it. I I would have been I I would have been on the side of the road taking the tire off.

And then I would have been calling you. What do I do now? No, then I would have called Nate. So you're already managing risk better than I have. Go ahead. Go ahead. So I I go to YouTube and I type in uh um electric motor uh rear tire. And there's Some guy he's got kind of like a granny e bike version. Stop, stop, stop, stop. He's like a bicycle. He's the he's a cartoon bicycle mechanic. Okay. He's he basically has like a train conductor's hat, overalls.

He's covered in grease. He looks like he hasn't left a bike shop in ten years. This dude is a pro that has changed ten thousand tires in the past. Yeah. I'm not uh diminishing the guy's level of listener to know because it's so good. Okay. So he he has this bike and he says, okay, the first thing you do is you turn the bike upside down so it's sitting on the handlebars and the seat, right? Which number one, in the rules of cycling number one is is is massive violation.

Okay. Just trust me, the rules of cycling by the Velomati, you never turn your bike upside down. If I see you on the side of the road changing a flat tire with your bike flipped over handlebars, I am s I might I might roll coal on you and blow diesel smoke. Okay. If you have your bike hanging on a tree, okay.

By a seat, I'm pulling over. I might have a pump in the truck. I'm gonna help out. Okay. I'm gonna see if you need to ride water. I might have a tube for you. Okay. So if the bike's upside down, it's a big problem. Okay. Go ahead. So I haven't changed that many tires. And you know, I can get it done. Like I can get it done well enough to get home. But I I'm not one of these 90-second tire change guys, right? So I want to make sure, because the way my life works.

I'm going to be 50 miles from home and I'm going to get a flat. No Uber. And I'm like Uber, right? In disgrace. So I turn on this YouTube video and the guy starts by taking the bike and turning it upside down. Then then he pulls out a set of wire cutters. And he starts cutting zip ties. He cuts all these zip ties off. And I'm looking at this thing going, Are you fucking kidding me? Like I'm gonna have to carry wire cutters. A leatherman. You need a leatherman.

And then he cuts the zip ties and then he unplugs it. Well dude, he's like narrating. He's like, first you gotta do this, and I'm like, you gotta do what with what? And then he's like, and then you gotta gently disconnect this battery. And dude, we're talking about like a hair thin wire underneath some like s hidden away, he's like you j gotta gently disconnect this. I'm like, dude, as soon as he said zip tie, I I started crying'cause I'm like, Morris is gonna ca zip ties.

Yeah.'Cause I'm into this thing for like fifteen thousand bucks. Right. So anyway, my head explodes. There's still skin and blood on the ceiling here. And I'm like, ah, geez. The problem the mistake I made was This is a new design. The wheel and the hub connects through the frame so the electricity runs through this contact point. So you really just have to take the tire off. And put the tire back.

So it it is, and I I thought I sent you a snapshot of the thing. It is a rather ingenious way to do it because you don't have to run all these cables and ziptops. You know, I'm thinking about it and As you know, I've struggled with the concept of getting this thing because to me it feels like it's cheap. So we've gotten over that. We've gotten over that. Well, a bit, but this is the part that I I want to discuss with you. So um The advantage of the motor is getting up the hill.

Cause the flats generally ye can hang with people generally. Um but the hills that that there's you gotta get up the hill, right? That's the thing. And so I was thinking about some of the great rides I've done in my life. Uh the first two that come to mind are the TermoLay and Alp Duez. Okay. So Just for those who aren't a denizen of professional cycling, the turmoil ride, you start out by riding a hundred miles on flat roads.

You hit the base of the climb and it's straight up for 20 miles. Okay. I'm telling you, I was hallucinating by the time I finished that. Now, what sort of accomplishment would it have been? If I get to the base of the climb there. And I just... Click the thing a couple of times and all of a sudden I'm like Mary Poppins riding up.

Dude, it would have been great. It would've been great. It would have been great. It would've been great. Yeah, because you get to see stuff. You you find you could you can finally enjoy a climb. Do you know how many climbs I've done where I dude how I staring at my front tire? staring at my front tire. Oh look and you get one glimpse of the sea, you're like, oh this is nice.

No, you don't totally unacceptable. We're we're we're gonna have to agree to disagree. Because to me the the the whole thing is the accomplishment. Oh yeah. You've already done it. You've already done it. You've already done it. You've done Leadville. You don't need to do anything else. You've done if you've done the Tor dude, you've done the tourmal, you've done Alp Duz, and you've done Leadville. You can get the fucking e-bike without any guilt.

You've done enough. You don't need to go do gimbals anymore. It's enough. It's like your money, dude. It's enough. It's it's it's a it's enough. It's enough. Here's where where I think you don't get me. I don't like riding my bike. I know. That's the one. I don't enjoy riding a bike. Now you can enjoy it. Like dude, I almost texted you on I rode my bike in Mayanis last week and I was like, ah, I should just text them. First of all I I

No texting more, so I couldn't text you. Okay. So I was like, all right, I can't text him. But I wanted to be like, hey, do you want to go like like Mianus, like fire road for 45 minutes? It's like 72 in sunny.

No chance. No. Thousands of hours on a bike. That's plenty for anyone. Yeah, so So what? So what? So what are you gonna do? So okay so what? It sounds like I'm getting an e bike. So you You've already talked your way into a gravel bike. I mean yeah, which you're just collecting dust, I know. But like the the e bike What are you gonna do? I'm gonna stick it in the corner and I'm gonna I'm going to give it a few tries, okay, and then Maybe I'll...

Warm up to it. I'm I'm I'm I you should go do some like epic ride with it. Well like you don't even enjoy cycling. Like you're not you're not gonna go up to like to the Berkshires and be like, Oh, I'm gonna go do like Greylock and like No and enjoy it. You're talking to a guy that rode up and down Bear Mountain for what six hours? You're talking to the guy that's done Bear Mountain five hundred times for for the fun of it. It's like my favorite ride in the world.

I I bet I've done Bear Mountain five hundred times, dude. I've spent countless hours. I love, I love every tournament, dude. Yeah. It is fun coming down. You hate it. I like descending it. That that uh So okay, I'm gonna uh dude, nobody will get down that hill faster than me on disc breaks. I'll say that right now. Anyone that wants to meet me at the top of Bear Mountain. Okay. Anyone in the tri state area? Okay. I will beat you down that hill. My wife is not gonna hear this, okay?

But dude I know every no Term. I love that hill, dude. It's the best mountain around. So any of you punks from the city that think you're like Central Park hot shots because you can do hot laps at 530 and your stupid CRCA race. Losers, you waking up at five o'clock to do laps of Central Park and you think you're hot shit. I'll see you up at Bear Mountain. That's where the big boys ride, okay?

That's what that's where the big boys ride. The big boys ride at Bear Mountain. Um and I'll take a I'll I'll take a shot at the sprint too. I I might have the KOM of the sprint. Of Bear Mountain. Okay. So or the Grand Fondo NY went through and all the dopers might have taken it. But I think I have the uh the organic grassroots like word on the street. I I own the sprint to the top of Bear Mountain.

Yeah. It's fun to talk about cycling. It's fun to talk about. You got it. You got me talking about it. And now I could go back with the e bike and I could rip up that thing. Yeah, dude. No, that doesn't you know. It's you know, the part of it is the Feeling like you gotta earn it. I don't feel like with that battery there. Oh by the way, just Just to take a one level further to the bulk of the people who don't care, to buy candles like shit.

Okay. The bike handle's just like it's like you're pulling a fucking sled with kids on it. That's what it feels like. So just to be clear it's a Scott addict e-bike a Scott. Dude, I I love my Scott. I ride a Scott addict to this day. I have that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not it's they can call it a Scott addict. It can look like a Scott addict, but it ain't a Scott addict. Yeah, it's got a battery and a and a thing in the back and it's all it's all

Interesting. Interesting. That's so funny, dude, that you don't like bike ride. Do you like rock climbing? Do you enjoy rock climbing? Love rock climbing. I like mountain biking out west. I really like mountain biking. Because it's cerebral. Road biking is just it's you just go into a catatonic state. Yeah. I just don't think about the pain. Yeah. What fun is you know that I mean it's like being a prisoner of war. Yeah. And just sitting there until it's over, right?

I got other things to do. I you know the the five-hour bike ride that I used to worship is like, what were you thinking? You had nothing better to do than to sit and ride your bike for five fucking hours. I mean, it's embarrassing. Did you you you verbatim what my wife says to me?

And I'm like, I'm like, you're right. I'm like, I'm like, don't get me wrong. I'm like, I those were great days. I enjoyed them at the time. But like to if I said today, like, uh, I'm gonna go do like a buck twenty-five out on Long Island and spend eight hours. Got kids in a life now. Like Y you know, the sad part is I and I got sucked into this is

You know, the bulk of the group stuff is just about humiliating other people. The only reason I went, dude. The only reason I dude I hated road biking, dude. I was a mountain biker. I went for the social. I went to hang out with the bros because I, you know, I went to I cause dude. At twenty five

I was done playing Men's League Lacrosse. Men's League Lacrosse wasn't doing it. And I wanna like I the guys like so there was a good bunch. So now like Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Saturday, Sunday, I can hang out and I can bang shoulders with these guys. And once I get good at it, I can bully some guys. And then it'll s like sometimes you'd get into like there would be good confrontation. There's a

It was like Dave Visaki. If I saw Dave Visaki on Saturday morning, like I I I was gonna pick a fight potentially'cause I didn't like him. And I like took like I took joy in making him uncomfortable and miserable and bullying him. I really did because he bothered me. Well, he's got a big mouth. He's got a big fucking mouth. He was a big mouth and he had a shitty rider and he barked at me once and I'd hold a fucking grudge forever.

That's why I was so fucking popular. That's why I was so fucking popular on gimbals. Everyone fucking loved me because I didn't Once I got good it was yeah, that was fun, dude. That was a lot of fun, dude. My favorite thing and and we'll close on this note, because I don't know how long we've been going, but it's been a while. Um Every Thanksgiving, there's a ride from Greenwich High, goes up through Ridgefield.

And we come back and it's, you know, it's supposed to be like a four-hour ride, four and a half hour ride, and it's it's billed as a no-drop collegial ride. First thing is anytime you hear no drop, it's drop. Race pace. It's race pace. So one guy a bit older than me. doesn't know the route and he's a little bit anxious about getting out up in Ridgefield and then um not knowing how to get back and the ride leader same guy all

says, Oh, don't worry, you know, I'll look after you, you'll be you'll be fine, whatever. So we we ride up, we do the loop at ri we get up to Ridgefield, which is north, and Once you make this right turn on to Route 35, the ride all the way back to Greenwich, which must be 25 miles maybe-ish, is primarily downhill. And that phrase, the horse can smell the hay, once you make that right, it is a fucking balls to the wall. No friends, just hammer fest. And

This poor older guy, German fellow, he gets left in the middle of fucking Kishnav. It takes him like eight hours to get home. The the the chatter on the Strava, how could you do this? Yep, blah, blah, blah, blah. So The next year. The next year. I'm only gonna go if you guys promise Once again we make that.

Right, and you know that right I'm talking about, right? Route thirty scummy it's such a scummy place to go fast because it's a busy section. If anyone wants to look on the map, it's one twenty one south, Route thirty five and cross river. And then you're gonna make another left on one twenty one at the reservoir. And then if you don't make it across, it's probably a quarter mile of pothole stricken, fucking busy.

Soccer moms SUV on the weekend there might be a soccer game going on at the high school there and it's a shit show. And gentlemen would slow down and go together and instead they hit it at race pace and then they're gone. And if you don't get with the group when they get back on one twenty one. The group will go thirty miles an hour.

And you can only go twenty if you're not with the group and it's and it's it's over. It's over and that is a long ride back to Greenwich. And those are little bumps in the group and then they turn into death hills when you're alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a dark fucking place, dude. What if it's cycle th those guys are such assholes. That's what he gets for going two years in a row and getting dropped at the same place. I I don't know that it's just in two years in a row. It might be more.

I just stopped going. Yeah. Anyway, it's great to see you. All right, buddy. No show next week. It's Memorial Day. I'm going to Maine. Oh. But I'll be back Monday. Maybe we'll do a maybe we'll do a Monday night show when I get back if something exciting goes on. But I'm yeah, I'm going to the woods for the main. Good. Well, have fun. All right. All right. Be safe. Take care. Bye.