Ben CarlsonModify

Animal Spirits: When Genius Failed, Again

2026-08-05 19:15:28

Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by YCharts: This episode is sponsored by YCharts. To get your copy of Top 10 Visuals, and receive 20% off your first YCharts Professional subscription through Animal Spirits. Visit https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits (Offer valid for new customers only.) On today’s show, we discuss: A Bull Market in Nostalgia His Wedding Guests Were Arriving–Just as...

Spending Money

2026-08-05 02:29:15

Our kids were at camp last week so my wife and I took a last minute trip to Chicago. We stayed at a nice hotel, walked around the city, did some shopping, ate some nice meals and consumed a few drinks. It was a nice time. After dinner we took a stroll on the river walk. It was a Tuesday night. All the bars and restaurants were full of people. They were eating, drinking, smiling and spending money on $19 cocktails. I made ...

The Biggest Risk of Rising Bond Yields

2026-08-03 04:59:27

Long-term government bond yields are on the rise yet again: On the one hand, 30 year Treasury yields are now the highest they have been since 2007, right before the onset of the Great Financial Crisis. Long bonds yielded around 1% in at the Covid crash nadir so they’ve come up a lot this decade. On the other hand, the average yield in the past 50 years is 6.2%. From 1977 through the summer of 2001, yields on long b...

Why I Love the Stock Market

2026-08-01 10:28:53

I love the stock market for a plethora of reasons. It’s the greatest wealth-building machine ever created. It allows you to earn a piece of the profits in the growth and ingenuity of the biggest and best corporations. Plus the stock market is like a laboratory for human psychology and emotions. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it goes insane…because people are insane! The stock m...

Investing in Momentum

2026-07-31 02:26:16

A reader asks: I’m a follower of all things RWM so couldn’t help but feel a theme of Ben’s book (namely how difficult it is to beat the market over short periods) seems to contradict the Porterhouse active management strategy the firm just put out. How would you articulate the value of an investment adviser making active decisions for some portion of a client’s portfolio if you simultaneously also ...

Animal Spirits: 45 Million Rich Households

2026-07-29 19:15:25

Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by YCharts and Calamos: This episode is sponsored by YCharts. To learn more and get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription to take Y for a spin (new customers only), visit https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits This episode is sponsored by Calamos. To learn more about CAIE, visit https://www.calamos.com/funds/etf/calamos-autocallable-income-caie On toda...