The Compound
500 episodes listed below
PRESS PLAY
Animal Spirits is a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, listening to and watching. Look for new episodes every Wednesday morning. See our disclosures here - https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Animal Spirits makes market crosscurrents clearer through candid debate, concrete company examples and a willingness to leave genuine uncertainty unresolved.
Animal Spirits turns market uncertainty into a running argument between Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson. They move through charts, economic data, company spending and stock valuations by testing each other's assumptions in real time.
Michael and Ben get from Diet Pepsi caffeine to the Fed chair before your coffee cools.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Crypto plumbing, mapped through ETFs, stablecoins, and market access.
Animal Spirits uses this Talk Your Book stop to check in on crypto during a calmer stretch, with Krista Lynch, Senior Vice President, ETF Capital Markets at Grayscale, walking through where the market sits now.
A liquid case for commodities as a real portfolio hedge.
Animal Spirits uses this Talk Your Book conversation to treat commodities as an active portfolio decision rather than a fixed inflation lesson.
Structured income is explained through concrete examples, with the downside kept in view.
Animal Spirits spends most of its time on the mechanics of Simplify's barrier ETFs, with Jeff Schwarty walking through how options and structured notes are used to build income strategies around products like the Barrier Income ETF, Target 15, and Target 25.
A gold bull case built on debt, deficits, central bank buying, and hard assets.
This episode leans into a clear gold thesis, tying VanEck's Real Assets ETF, RACS, to debt, deficits, central bank buying, and the appeal of hard assets after the Ukraine war and the weaponizing of the dollar.
SPY becomes a sharp lens on concentration, yields, and the market's changing cash-return mix.
The episode uses SPY as a clean entry point into a broader look at how concentrated the market has become, tying AI, the other 493, and the Mach 7 into one frame.
A loose but useful market chat about breadth, rates, and housing stress.
The discussion stays in the market lane, with a useful thread on broadening performance and a separate stretch on apartment owners, borrowing, and falling rents.
Market anxiety, Mag 7 pressure, and a steady question of whether the correction is already underway.
The episode treats market anxiety as a starting point, then widens into a cleaner question: if earnings and revenue growth are still holding up, why does the market feel so brittle?
A skeptical, numbers-first chat about CapEx, AI spend, and what markets are pricing.
The episode follows the same question the market keeps returning to: how much spending is too much, and when does a giant capital plan start to look less like waste and more like the cost of the next wave?
Demetri Kofinas interviews specialists on geopolitics, energy markets, AI, and finance at length.
BBC's daily business show, from toy-industry founders to Anthropic's Pentagon standoff.
The hosts discuss how direct indexing, combined with long-short portfolios and margin leverage, can create significant tax advantages through loss harvesting to offset gains in wealth management.
This segment introduces the podcast Animal Spirits, focusing on markets and investing, with sponsor messages from Franklin Templeton and ClearBridge Investments.
This episode segment discusses the impact of AI on financial advisors, with hosts Michael and Ben sharing experiences from a live show and touching on market movements like crude oil futures.
The hosts discuss the broad ramifications of AI on markets, society, and human jobs, expressing concern about potential negative impacts despite possible stock market gains.
The AI conversation stays uneasy and mostly market-minded.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview Bill Mann, chief investment strategist at Motley Fool Asset Management, about the 'three A's' driving the U.S.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview Krista Lynch from Grayscale about the current state of crypto markets, discussing Bitcoin's maturity, regulatory developments, and emerging trends like tokenization and stablecoins.
Michael and Ben discuss market volatility driven by geopolitical tensions, analyze historic small cap outperformance, and explore extreme concentration in mega-cap stocks.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson of Animal Spirits record on a snow day before heading to StateConf in Arizona, opening with a lively debate about debt-to-GDP versus household net worth metrics.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss current market dynamics, including geopolitical impacts on oil prices, investor psychology, and AI's effect on productivity.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss investing in next-generation tech stocks, reflecting on past market trends like the MAG-7 dominance and analyzing current disparities between equal weight and cap-weighted S&P indices.
Michael and Ben discuss market trends, including the impact of MAG7 stocks and value outperforming growth, alongside personal finance topics like the psychological trap of reaching $1 million in wealth.
Michael and Ben discuss a viral AI doom article predicting massive white-collar job loss and a market crash by 2028.
Animal Spirits hosts Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview Ryan Lavelle, director of capital markets at Chainlink Labs and former Vanguard institutional specialist, about blockchain as the next-generation infrastructure upgrade for the financial system.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson welcome back Matt Bartolini, managing director and head of SPDR Americas Research at State Street Global Advisors, for a Talk Your Book discussion sponsored by State Street, creator of the original U.S.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson analyze a dramatic market rotation away from tech giants like the Magnificent Seven into sectors like consumer staples and small caps, driven by AI disruptions to software companies.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview David Shastler from VanEck about the bull market in real assets, discussing how AI-driven growth, government spending, and de-dollarization are driving demand for commodities, gold, and infrastructure, with insights into portfolio construction and market trends.
Michael and Ben analyze the extreme volatility in silver and gold markets, including a 33% crash in silver driven by retail speculation and social media trends.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview Greg Scherer from PIMCO about their active commodity ETF, discussing momentum strategies, gold's rally driven by geopolitical factors, and how AI and inflation are reshaping commodity markets.
Michael and Ben discuss market reactions to geopolitical tensions, AI's impact on jobs with examples like Block's layoffs, and trends in ETFs and private equity.
Animal Spirits hosts Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview Jeff Shorty from Simplify ETFs about a new category of product: autocallable barrier income ETFs that package structured notes, previously available only to institutional investors, into a liquid retail wrapper.
Michael and Ben interview Stephanie LaRose-Lierre from Invesco about navigating fixed income in a complex market.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss covered call option ETFs with guest Hamilton Rayner from J.P.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss markets, life, and investing, with a sponsored segment about Innovator's dual-directional ETFs.
Michael and Ben discuss their lack of knowledge about China and the importance of understanding the second-largest economy for US investors.
Michael and Ben discuss market trends, economic forces, and investing strategies for the new year, with a sponsor segment from YCharts.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss markets, life, and investing, with a sponsored segment from Trade PMR.
A podcast discussing market trends, investing strategies, and personal finance, with sponsor messages about ETFs and financial advisor tools.
This episode discusses the strategic importance of rare earth metals and the investment opportunities in the rare earth ecosystem.
Michael and Ben discuss the weakening dollar, rising commodities, and gold's performance as an asset class.
Michael and Ben discuss retail trading trends and futures with Craig Buick from CME Group.
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson interview Bill Mann, Chief Investment Strategist of Motley Fool Asset Management, about ETFs and investing.