Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by YCharts. Mention Animal Spirits to receive 20% off (*New YCharts users only)

On today’s show we discuss
- The least amount of bulls in 20 years
- Some data on buybacks
- Mortgaging the future over and over and over
- The alternative to buybacks (this is so good)
- Facebook news, lol
- Remaking American capitalism
- Hollywood and China
- Explaining rotten tomatoes (a video explanation)
- How to get a better deal from real estate agents
- The economic case for paternity leave
- A survey from 1954
- Do stocks become less risky if you hold them long enough?
- Re-starting a hedge fund
Listen here:
Recommendations
- A Short History of Nearly Everything (next Re-Kindled)
- Ben is reading another detective book, allegedly
Charts

Tweets
$TSLA a much important barometer of the health of the market and attitude (good or bad) towards risk than WeWork…risk is still very much on…low interest rates are still what matters most for Macro picture
— BlockchainLindzon+ (@howardlindzon) October 25, 2019
The generational wave of buybacks we’re in is “the most acute debt-for-equity swap of all time,” says @EconguyRosie. “$4T In corporate debt issuance, used to absorb $4T of equity, to the point where the S&P 500 share count has dwindled to a two-decade low.”
(chart: Deutsche) pic.twitter.com/sJ7zZbBcWj
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) October 25, 2019
How's this for perspective….
At the bottom of the market in 2002, 43% of "big money" investors in a Barron's survey were bullish.
At the bottom in 2008, 59% were bullish.
At the bottom in 2016, 38%.
Now? Only 27% are.
— SentimenTrader (@sentimentrader) October 28, 2019