Episode summary
A 25 Year Bull Market | Animal Spirits 420
Animal Spirits
· · Hosts: Michael Batnick, Ben Carlson
Summary
The hosts argued that the market’s rebound from the spring drawdown has been unusually fast and unusually broad, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, emerging markets, and Europe all bouncing sharply after the post-Liberation Day selloff. They suggested this looks like a healthy bull market rather than a narrow, Mag 7-only advance, and even floated the idea that the current cycle could end up resembling a 25-year bull market if AI keeps extending earnings growth.
They also spent a long stretch on deregulation, arguing that the policy pendulum is swinging back toward the “wild wild west” after years of tighter rules. Their concern was that new products in private markets, tokenization, 401(k) access to alternatives, and leveraged or options-based ETFs could create both legitimate innovation and new ways for investors to blow themselves up. On policy, they were skeptical that anyone will seriously reverse the deficit trend because taxes keep getting cut, and they said the Fed’s recent cycle has been less important than people make it out to be.
The episode also returned to labor-market stress for younger workers, especially recent college graduates in white-collar fields, while pushing back on the idea that this is necessarily a recession signal. They argued the data still look closer to normal after an unusually hot post-COVID job market. Later, they contrasted current frustrations with life in 1776 and even the 1980s, then noted that today’s affordability problems are real because healthcare, housing, cars, and lifestyle spending have become so expensive.
Key takeaways
- The hosts think the stock market’s snapback from the spring drawdown supports a broad, healthy bull market rather than a fragile one.
- They argue deregulation is opening the door to useful investment products and dangerous speculation at the same time.
- They believe taxes have consistently moved lower over time, making deficit alarmism more political theater than policy reality.
- They say the job market for recent college grads is weak, but much of the pain may reflect normalization after an exceptionally hot labor market.
- They view housing and lifestyle inflation as the core reason even high earners do not feel rich.
Notable quotes
“we're entering the the wild wild west for the at least for the foreseeable future”
“Taxes have nowhere to go but up, right? I've heard that my whole life”
“the job market for recent college grads is the worst we've ever seen, including COVID”
“I feel like we're just the normal run-of-the-mill middle class family”
How the episode opens
Today's episode is brought to you by cash financials who operates cash exchange fund been one of the defining features of the bull market over the last 15 years has been mega cap tech and tech in general and one of the defining features of those companies is the way that they compensate an employee their employees is through equity compensation. So, you've got all these people running around with gazillions of dollars uh of stock in their company, heavily concentrated. We we've spoken on the show about Nvidia, how many millionaire employees they have.
So, these people are heavily concentrated in one individual stock, right? Lowcost basis. So, I met with Sarant who is the founder of this company and he was at at Uber.
So he was looking for a way to diversify out of Uber and into a broader basket of stocks. And the way that this was traditionally done was through an exchange fund. Okay.
So their flagship product is an exchange fund, but it's uh it's built for the modern investor. So this product, the exchange fund is not new. Uh the wirehouses used to do this very common theme where you will exchange your fund for a basket of diversified stocks and some other things.
Uh but it was was and is very liquid. That's part of the feature of it. But high fees, high fees.
So he said there's got to be a better way. So they started with the NASDAQ 100 focused exchange fund. Lower fees started at 60 basis points per million minimums with for 100K just a year after launch.
The proof is in the pudding. They're at $500 million in assets which is pretty wild. So, they have a new one, uh, a new S&P 500 one and an S&P 500 growth fund where they're use utilizing the 351 transaction, which I think we spoke with MEB about that, um, to help employees or help people, not just employees, to help people with concentrated positions get more diversified.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- stock market recovery
- long bull market
- deregulation
- us dollar
- housing market
Watch the episode
Watch “A 25 Year Bull Market | Animal Spirits 420” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Animal Spirits
Animal Spirits, this episode and its artwork belong to The Compound. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
