Bloomberg Hot Pursuit!Barry Ritholtz on His New Book, the Ferrari 12Cilindri, and More
Barry Ritholtz joins the podcast to talk about his new book, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers and Behaviors that Destroy Wealth - and How to Avoid Them. Plus, Matt shares his thoughts on the Crypto Reserve, and Hannah defends the Ferrari 12Cilindri.
I'm Matt Miller.
And I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is hot pursuit.
Today. We have a very cool I guess is he a guest? Still?
I feel like he's a friend of the pod at this point.
Oh anchor kind of Barry Dholts is going to join us because he's just finished a new book.
How Not to Invest All of the mistakes that you're making when you invest in how to avoid them.
It's not specifically about cars, but since it's Barry, there's probably a lot in it about cars and movies and rock and roll and like cool stuff that Barry is always getting into. So first of all, Barry rid Hoolts, you were going to tell us a car story, like during the break and I said, no.
Wait, tell us you know me, I can't, I can't hold.
Tell tell me tell us the car story.
So the electric ev the electric non even one eleven.
It's quack.
Well, there's a couple of little tweaks it needs to make that I can't quite get the heat to work. Turns out there's an just a little connecting line that that came loose. But given that it's supposed to be four hundred horse and I know how much additional weight the batteries and the motor puts Like I've been in a bunch of other evasily lately, and I thought the car was fast until I got into a takend turbos and you know, my eyeballs get sucked to the back of your head. So I brought it to my regular nine to eleven guy who is there. They're just such car nerds, and they're super enthusiastic about what can we do to make this faster? And I also want to put on bigger breaks. The eighty seven. You can't just drop a set of turbo brakes on it because the suspension everything is different. But you could go to the bigger disc and a four caliber from a two caliber and just the additional weight and speed. You know, that car was two hundred and ten horse when it first came out. But anyway, I was complaining there's a little ring that on the sport button that doesn't light up, and it turns out that I wasn't engaging the sport button properly. You have to there's a series of steps you have to do to do it. And mechanic called mean, he's like, this thing is now a rocket ship. So you better put those new brakes on because it's so you're really excited.
So in your own custom made nine to eleven ev you weren't properly putting it into sport.
You know, it's quick, it's fast off the line, and the problem is generally, look, those cars historically have been a little tail happy, and they were never designed for three hundred plus horse power, right like the original g body eighties series' right. Well, now it weighs a little more, So I've added about three hundred pounds, so outcomes the motor and the transmission which is a good couple hundred pounds and is replaced by a Tesla motor and two sets of batteries and so net net you're plus three hundred pounds. But it's much more center of gravity oriented and much lower, much more center of the car. It's no longer a seventy thirty, it's more like a sixty forty, and the center of gravity is now very low. The problem is those aren't exactly big fat tires and a little bit of moisture on the ground, or if you make the mistake of stomping on it with the steering wheel not dead straight like, yeah, how.
Much are you driving it in the winter time?
Not much, although we've had a it's been a surprisingly cold to in New York, although we had.
A couple of days.
So if it's warm and sunny out, I don't care. If it's forty five degrees, the top comes down taking something fun stuff and you know, nine to eleven throw off a lot of heat, as does do BMWs. So you can take a top down in February, my wife insists on sixty. I'll take the top down at like forty five to fifty. You just have to, you know, have gloves on, and that's really be dressed.
I've been driving with it in this Corvette that I'm driving with the top down. Yeah, and it's been you know, forty or fifty, but I don't care.
And you know, the more modern car is like the next scar from.
And just.
Yeah it's no mine does well.
I know yours doesn't, assuming the assuming the vet doesn't either.
No, no, it doesn't, but it doesn't. It's such a small amount of openness, if that makes sense, right, because think about how tight of a two seater and the convertible only a little bit goes open.
I just saw something on the new twelve cylindery the Ferrari. They even have these little arrow right behind the buttresses that back your head to prevent air from from coming into the cabin. Because when when you know, when you're put eight hundred horsepower, when you when you mash the pedal into the carpet, the last thing you want is just a disruptive breeze, so I guess, and people have been very very I don't know if you've gotten to that car yet, Hannah, but.
Oh honey, I drove that car in Italy.
Oh you mean, oh yeah, I.
Love I'm a I'm a big, big fan. I mean I like the styling in Miami.
Yeah, I like the styling of the eight twelve better, but this is supposed to be a much more refined ride.
Extreme. It is one of my all time favorites. This or the A twelve, the twelve twelve cylinder Child.
Well, I wish it had the I wish it had the lines of the A twelve with the refinement of the the.
New I like the line. It's not for you, No.
It's not bad. Yeah, it's interesting, it's modern, it's fresh, it's looking.
Yep.
The A twelve is just you know if you it's it's this is me being a little boy liking the big muscular.
I agree with front engine much. I think the twelve cylinder is a little bit more. I don't know if feminine is the right word.
It's smooths out and it's cleaners, a.
More refined palate, I would say, you.
Know, a more evolved palette. I feel like it's discus I feel like we have discussed this, right, Matt.
Yeah, no, we have, and I think it's true. Though, it's true the the eight twelve, it hits you like a sledgehammer. Look at that and you're like, God, damn.
I'm a sucker for those twin round tail lights, I agree, yeah, love them.
But and by the way, that's and Hannah and I have talked about this before as well. It's so important to have like a signature kind of tail light. Look to a car that's that's recognizable.
And now they're just lines, so just tiny, thin stripey.
I like them both, but I think the eight twelve, yes, it's definitely for the little boy in the room, it's right. But I want to get back to your comment on breaks, because I showed a couple of observations. One is I talked about this last week that I was in Austin riding Harley Davidson's last week and the first day I rode, uh, the Heritage and the Street Bob and the fat Boy and the Breakout, and these have only one break cylinder, I mean only one brake disc on the wheel right on the left side, because they want it's a profiling thing. They want to look cool from the but and I thought, wow, they these seven hundred pound motorcycles actually stop okay with just one disc. But then the second day I rode the low Rider s and the st and they have the twin discs, and this different story, right, a completely different story, I mean, like the responsiveness and the feel was amazing. And then so I was thinking more about brakes when I got home and I got in this Corvette, and I asked GM if I could test out the base Corvette C eight. I mean, it's still the three LT, but it's like just the normal, no bells and whistles. Not the Z six, not the E Ray, not the z R one. I do want to drive those as well, but uh, the braking is the most fun part. The brakes are so much fun to mash down. So I'm, you know, drag racing on the Bronx River Parkway, trying to get up to one hundred, just so I can mash the breaks down as hard as I can because it's so good.
You know. I've had that same experience with the R eight that if you ever have to slam on the brakes in the emergency, like you were shocked at the stopping distance, like wow. And I don't know if it's because it's a mid engine car or Audi just knows how to beef up the brakes. Yea.
They need to update that car. I mean that car is.
Isn't it going away?
It's gone?
Yes, it's a ten year old, fifteen year old car. Yeah, let's get something new. Audi. Come on, they.
Should they should, right, So I would like to drive more Audis. I don't ever see one or get one.
You know the They have a sister company you might be familiar with called Portie. Yeah, and they don't put their engines up in the front most of the time, so it's pretty cool. I know people who insist insist that the Cayman is a better driver.
Yeah, professional drivers I've had. I can't tell you how many driving pros have told me they prefer the caman because it's more predictable and balanced.
Well, it's men and not rear engine. But what's amazing is if you put a caman up against a G fifty, you know, eighties ORR nine to eleven, they're the same size, the new nine to elevens. They've just gotten sold swollen. They're really so you don't realize how big. They don't lie, Yeah, they just get big. They've just gotten bigger.
It's the Kim Kardashian fication of cars. I think there's something in there where we could we could track the idealized female form along the years as it corresponds to the form of a car.
I like where you're going with this. All of a sudden, I'm paying very close attention.
Yes and yes, it's a it's what's the miniskirt index? You know there?
Right?
No, not Mario Goobelli. It's the same guy who invented and his name will come to me in a moment, who invented the magazine cover in DEXI passed away not too long ago. Where the more the longer a skirt is, the more repressed and generally dour economies to be and when you get you know, there's the mini skirts, the super mini skirts that became very popular mid sixties. Hey, you're at the end of the cycle. Everybody's got a ton of money and we're all out partying. And that's late late days, not quite late capitalism, but late cycle indicator.
I see. I thought it was goodbelly because he's he he says that when I when I've had him on in the past.
Let me tell you exactly.
But in any case, I think this is a great segue into Barry's book. I feel like because we're so you know, we're sort of talking about the economy, and Barry has a new book out, which is kind of the whole reason why we want to to talk with you, as much as we also love your electric nine to eleven. Sure, I mean, How Not to Invest is a gripping title and one that I personally need to talk to you about because it's all about reducing mistakes exactly.
We have been we have been.
Oh, Laz Lobrini, youre talking abou Laz Labrini.
Nope, I'm talking about Paul McCrae Montgomery, who was the inventor of the magazine cover Indicator, which is actually referenced in the book. But one of the reasons I chose the title what is The book called How Not to Invest? The bad ideas, numbers, and behavior that destroys wealth? And I had a couple of friends and a few publishers kind of urged me to write a new book. It's been fifteen years since Bailout Nation, and I was reluctant because the thought process was, Hey, we've had tens of thousands of books over the past century. People are still telling us how to invest, and people are still generally pretty mediocre investors. And one day I just kind of adopted the Charlie Munger aphorism invert always invert, and started noodling around with the idea, what happens if instead of telling people what to do, what is if we just avoided the unforced errors that lead to problems. By the way, I'm not the first person who thought of this. There's a wonderful book from Charlie Ellis based on a paper he wrote in the nineteen seventies called Winning the Losers Game, and Ellis points out that when you play tennis, hey point one percent of people are professionals, and the pros win by scoring aces, hitting with power, hitting slices, placing it on the line, like they win by scoring points. The rest of us we don't win that way. In fact, we lose through unforced sts. We double fault. We hit the ball into the net, we hit it wide, we hit it long. And if you and this will be very familiar to what we've all learned at various driving schools. The closest one to me is skip Barber. But if you play within yourself, stay within your abilities, stay within the abilities of the vehicle and the driver, you make fewer mistakes and you're much less likely to have a bad outcome, whether it's a portfolio or going into a turn too fast. In fact, one of my favorite things you'll learn in the performance driving school, to bring it back to hot pursuetions, it is that what we pretend is high performance lessons, or really here's how to learn your abilities and the envelope of the car, the performance parameters of the vehicle, and stay within them. People don't get into trouble necessarily because their bad drivers. They get into trouble because whatever their skill set is, they exceed that and the vehicle, and it's exactly exactly this. Every sport has a metaphor for this, but it's really true. Stay within your abilities, don't make unforced errors, don't make dumb mistakes. Avoid. In fact, back to Monger, someone once asked him, are you guys? Are you and Warren Buffett so successful because you're smarter than everybody else? Classic mongerism. He says, we're not smarter than everybody else, We're just less stupid. And stop and think about you know, Matt doing a buck fifty on the b QE. You don't you want to be less stupid. You want to avoid those sort of risks.
And get that I got that wrong. So Barry, how do how do you even begin to know what your lane is as an investor? How do you even begin to know? This is my sweet spot? And I really should focus on this area or.
Safe So your default should be I don't know anything. And it's not that we're all ignorant, but you know. In the beginning of the book, I go through a history of some very famous forecasts and books and market calls, and you start to realize and I bring things in from outside of finance, from film and television, and music, because I kind of feel everybody can relate to those, and.
Your renaissance man as well well a little.
I mean, I just easily bored and distracted, so I have to keep myself entertained. But what you find out is that all of these experts really their expertise stops. Again, they should know their own parameters and their own limits. And so one of the examples in the book is, you know, the Beatles come on at Sullivan and you know, by the way, this is the second a third time their manager tried to get them on and they just kept getting turned down. In fact, Capitol Records, despite all these number one hits in the UK, refused to release Beatles songs here, singles here, because I think guitar music is on the way out. Obviously, Ed Sullivan's show was a giant platform for breaking new acts, and they were just being opportunistic when they finally, in anticipation of the show, released a bunch of singles and they all went to number one. But the reviews of the Beatles showing up on Insulvin were hilariously embarrassingly wrong. No harmony, no vocals. All I could see is a bunch of hair guitar music isn't going to be around much long. Don't think about the Beatles. They're not going to be around very long. And besides, they'll probably be bold soon, like just shocking. And no matter where you look, it could be filed, it could be television, could be books. It turns out that expertise experts have a limited expertise, especially when it comes to predicting the future. So one of the things one of my favorite quotes from William Gulman, who wrote Princess Brighte and you know he was a sharp eyed critic of Hollywood and media, is that nobody knows anything when you're looking at the future. He points out, everybody passed on Star Wars, nobody wants to make e t or Raiders at the Lost Dollars or Rocky Right, Yeah, you go down the list of all these things. More recently, it was john Wick, which has become a two billion dollar franchise. The first john Wick was made for something like twenty million dollars, which is for an action movie is considered modest budget. And the story is and I've never verified this independently, but it makes sense. Keanu Reeves had a fine and said himself, took a much lower salary, put up some money, got back end points instead of just getting a big, you know, aless celebrity salary, and that's probably worth you know, god knows, close to one hundred million dollars to him.
Just not want to point out that it's not nearly as good as Star Wars, Raiders Are Lost, Dark or et. I mean, I've watched all of the John Wicks and they're okay, you've.
Watched them all. So as a commercial property, everybody who focussed on that said that Matt Miller will never see any of these. He saw all of them.
No, I mean, I'm glad they exist for a number of reasons. My entertainment is number one, but also number two because I hope that Keanu is able to funnel more of that money into Arch Motorcycles, which is which are still around. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, still around. I just spoke with a guy, one of the designers at Harley Davidson who loves those bikes too, But I just wanted to say, like, it's not you know, et.
But the the key takeaway is that even the so called experts at the studios wait an a list at the time he had already had the matrix, he had already had speed. He's an A list celebrity, just Hong Kong Gung Fu point break using using guns. And here is a here is a retired assassin coming out of retirement because somebody killed his dog. Like I don't know who said no to that.
True, I would definitely say yes to.
But it just goes to show you stop and thinking about films are a great example. What you're doing when you greenlight a film is kind of making a forecast what the public's taste is going to be five years out from the day you say yes to whenever that hits the theaters or streaming a long period of time elapses. And so to bring this back to invest thing, if if you don't know what sectors are going to do really well, whether the economy is going to have a recession or not, whether the market's going to crash well, really the basic default should be the core of your portfolio should be an inexpensive total market index. And this way you own everything rather than trying to pick the Nvidio, whatever the next Nvidia or Amazon, or pick your favorite is that's coming down the road, the next Netflix, Hey buy them all they increase in size as their own market gap gets bigger and bigger, so you always own them. And that's a very humble way of saying, I really don't know what stock, what sector, what country, what style is going to be the best perform over the next one to five ten years. So by approaching that with a little bit of humility, you're more likely to have a much much better outcome. Now, if you wanna, you know, I use the metaphor of Christmas tree with ornaments in Garland. If you want to decorate that that index holding with here's a little momentum, And I want to own some India and I think Europe is too cheap, and you want to hang some ornaments on that, hey, knock yourself out. But as long as the core of fifty sixty seventy percent of what you're doing is a broad index, you're guaranteed to at least keep up with the market, as opposed to you know, the day every year we see all these runs of data is active mutual fund managers. The majority of them underperform in one year. By the time you get to five years, it's something like eighty five percent, and ten years is over ninety percent, So rather than try and pick the manager, you know you're not going to pick the next Joel tilling Has or Peter Lynch or Warren Buffett, especially when they're new and unknown. So at least have the core of what you're doing guarantee you're going to get some form of market performance.
Does your advice in this book apply now when we have a new administration in the office in office and you know, I just came back from Miami with a bunch of car sales and everybody's talking about tariffs and you know, buying cars as a way to you know, sink some cash somewhere. Can you talk a little bit about how what you wrote in the book applies, you know, this spring, this summer.
Sure. So there's a whole section in the book on why politics and investing doesn't mix because politics, it tends to, especially partisan politics, tends to be a very emotional sport, and emotions are the enemy of good investing. But that said, there's two ways to think about this, and both of these are somewhat helpful, maybe a little unsatisfying. So first, if you invest for five, ten, fifteen years out, you're saving for retirement or generational wealth transfer. You're not saving for a house in two years, but you're looking out. You're gonna look out past the next four years of turmoil. Kind of tune out that noise and think, all right, this is money for ten or fifteen years from now. What happens over the next four years doesn't matter in the long haul. That said, you can't just be completely oblivious and ignore the fact that and this was something I wrote up a week ago Monday on the It was a week before his quasi State of the Union address, which was, hey, we all have to be aware of the fact that, yes, you want to tune out the noise if you're looking out ten years, but in the here and now, we have to admit risk factors are rising, possibility of a recession is rising. You saw the Atlanta Now GDP. They do these real time prints and they get more accurate as the quarter goes on, but they're negative two point eight percent for the quarter as of the end of February. That's a kind of ugly print we have enjoyed.
Yep, that's not a GDP forecast.
That's the GDP right then and there, right Yeah, And like during the during the pandemic. At one point you were negative forty seven percent. Not just a crazy number, but that was that day and it tends to be a version of that. But at the same time, we've enjoyed a VIX of volatility index of in the teams for the past five years. Not only is it crept up to twenty as of earlier this week it was twenty four. Once you're looking at a twenty five vix. Hey, we're suffering draw downs. We have a lot of volatility. It's a little more nerve wracking to say nothing of. You know, we have the exorbitant privilege of the dollar as a reserve currency to the world. What does this geopolitical realignment due to that? What happens when we I don't get the idea of a strategic crypto reserve, it's pointless. You want crypto, go by crypto. So all these risks arising. Listen, I didn't imagine that the US as an ongoing entity, that that was at risk, but it used to be pretty much zero and now it's a non zero number. So risks are still relatively low across What are the odds that the dollar is no longer to be the world's reserve currency still low, but higher than it was a month and a half ago. So I don't want to just be you know, sanguine and say look out twenty years and this will all be forgotten. And that's probably true. But the chances of an unforced policy error, the chances of either the federal government making an error or leading to the federal reserve making an error, that has continued to increase. There are all sorts of unintended consequences from you know, the geopolitical realignment, from cutting spending on USAID on just what's going on.
With joining forces with Russia.
It's it's you, you don't you. I don't want people like you, don't want to just ostrich and put your head in the But it also I don't want people to overreact. And so that is the challenge to split that difference.
Can I ask about investing in cars? Because so I think about what's your strength, right, and Hannah seems to have a great ability to watch the car market and pick good entry points, you know, and then everybody else goes in after her to buy the same vehicles. Is it advisable for Hannah to then invest her you know, savings in cars rather than the sp.
Or dollars cash.
So the way I look at the car market is if you buy a good car intelligently, you know, you get to drive that car for how many years you want. I picked up a five to six YSL twenty years nice, I kept that eighty six. I kept that.
I had that same car.
I kept that convertible for like seventeen years, and seventeen years later I sold it for what I paid for it. Now, granted you put a little money into it insurance, but it was blast. I had a ton of fun with it. So for me, I love that car so much being able to drive that around and just have fun with it. So most of the cars I've purchased.
By the way, how do they drive? Because I love the way they look.
I've still driven one solid bank vault doors. They're not especially fast, and I wouldn't want to throw them into a clover leaf at ninety miles an hour, but their confidence in spiriring, they're steady.
It's it's incredibly well built, right.
Yeah, they're absolutely just solid. You want to be a little aware if you look at the I think it was the three eighty came with the single timing chain and you had to upgrade that to the double.
You also want to be aware of how tightly the roof fits, because some of them tend to squeak if it's not.
And not only that, you know it's so there's generally speaking, they're really solid cars. The biggest risk for buying one of those is when those transmissions go. It's an expensive rebuilt. Like the engines are just absolutely brick houses. They they're just rock solid. Those transmissions Occasionally you have a tendency to go, and especially if you're heavy footed, and so you really have to stay on top of that. I don't know what your experience was.
I would say that's true, but there's I mean, there's always an exception to every rule, and the one we have five sixty and eighty eight and that car had problems with heat soak that we really ever beat ever, And you know, we kept that car for a year and it was one thing after another, and ultimately that's what I traded him to. The Rolls Royce, which has been far more reliable, completely counterintuitively and completely counter preventional wisdom, which kind of goes back exactly to what you're saying, Barry, which is you don't know anything.
Well, you know, a well sorted car. And you know, I grew up as never a crazy nine to eleven fan, always a front engine V eight muscle car sort of guy. But I have to tell you my entire experience for the past twenty years with a variety of Porsche products is just how well designed and well built they're made. And the old joke is, you know, Porsche drivers by cars, Ferrari drivers, biodometers and one hundred thousand mile Porsches kind of just loosening up and getting going. In fact, the EV was a three hundred thousand mile car and someone bought the transmission and engine because it was it's very drivable and very.
Wait, you bought the car and then you sold the transmission an engine and put a battery in it.
So it when it the folks at Moment Motors where the car was, they take everything that's guess you know, the gas tank, the oil, everything that's related out and a local dealer helps offset the cost ever so slightly of the upgrade by they buy the training and the engine. Even a three hundred thousand mile Porsche of flat six is still a pretty damn good engine.
I'm kind of obsessed with this. Uh, you know the idea that Mercedes Benz over engineered cars for you know, until basically the nineties, till the technology started, or the idea that I mean. I had a nine to eleven for ten years and I never ever had one single mechanical problem with it, and I drove it hard. I drove it a lot, and I don't necessarily maintain vehicles very well. You know, I'm not like a stickler for it. It's just so well built, and this is what I'm looking for in a vehicle. That's not why I bought a Dodge Challenger, you know. But I think it's so cool that at least at some point car makers said, I want to make sure this could be a dead man's car, right. I had Tom Wagner on this morning from the Head Capitol on my TV show and he said.
Oh, we just swapped emails today. That's so fat And he said, you know his involvement with Singer, Yes, exactly.
So I was talking to I was talking to him about Singer, and I said, you know, people, car guys always play this game like if you could build your dream car garage with three vehicles, what would it be or four vehicles, and I always have a singer in there, just because.
A singer a go Wing from the fifties, and I'd really have to think about what the third car would be.
But I I My point is I always picked that, and he said, yeah, you know, I think it's a dead man's car, like Jerry Seinfeld apparently said, that's the car that you buy from a guy who owned it until he died, and then you own it until you.
Die, right, That's that's exactly right.
So much, and I think, and that's why I'm always so I'm always so hopeful that one day I'll get like Mercedes, like from the seventies or eighties I love so well, or that. I mean, I would love.
Old sls, the two you want, the two eighty sl with the stick shift.
Yeah, I mean, but the idea that manufacturers at one point were not engineering obsolescence, right, They were saying, we want this to be you know, Steve McQueen's car until he eats it, and the Jerry's gonna own it until he eats it, and then you know, I think I.
Emailed both of you that backdated retro mode from a Brew Motors that was up for sale on one of the auction sites.
I don't remember that so a.
B a brew a b ru or what a b r e U. I think they're in Indianapolis or somewhere anyway. Sort of like a poor man singer for lack of a better word. This thing they repainted it in that sort of lambeau candy apple green. I don't mean, oh, yeah, you did you did show me this, right, didn't you take? I texted or did both. Usually when I send something to one of you, I send it to both of you. But this went for three point fifty. I was genuinely shocked, because very often what you're paying for when you're costom building a car is hey, I want this interior and this this is how I want, uh, this color and that that engine and blah blah blah.
So nice. It looks so nice. I'm on the website.
It's pretty spectacular there.
I want to go, well, we're we're dueling over this. I want to go back to you kind of started to say, are you are you buying cars in this climate? I want to go back to what you're asking, are you putting your money there?
I just wildly uh and completely because I'm not a kid anymore. Bought a new beach house, so then the cabrio is going to go out there. And and by the way, I have a battery kill switch on that and I could not touch that car for two months. Flick on the battery switch and it just fires right off. That that's the beauty of the nine to eleven. I'm trying to consolidate some cars. So I have an FJA forty I'm going to bring out to the beach and probably sell. And I have the Jeep Rubicon. I'm going to take the top off and leave out by the beach, and I'll probably end up keeping that unless I buy a Ford Bronco. Some of the Broncos, I thought you had one. No. I test drove one for a week and it was it was a lot of fun.
But you mean like a new Bronco Raptor or like an old Resto mod.
Either, just something as like a fun beach car. I've seen a buke.
You don't need the Raptor, by the way, I think, No, I don't know.
I don't like the trucks with a thousand horsepower. It doesn't make any sense. Eight hundred horse power. The handling isn't there. But you know, I certainly you know if the my big takeaway from the pandemic was vaccines, work and life is short. If you're If there's something that you think will float your boat, go get It doesn't matter if it's a trip to Italy or a jet ski or you know. Even I had a conversation with someone about, you know, a fifteen year old Mazda Miata with a stick shift, and why not for fifteen thousand dollars. I don't know how you have more fun on a back road on a sunny day than a perfectly tossable Miata. You don't need to spend six figures on a peak car or something like that. There are entry points, you know, And and I think that whole we kind of all get lost, Hannah, you must get lost in one hypercar after another. I'm concerned we all kind of forget completely the simple things in life. And that's a cheap fun top down.
Well, you know this car. The old cars really do keep me grounded to your point. Yeah, it's easy to get a really warped sense of reality, you know, when we are driving a lot of these new cars for press purposes. I only only own old cars, and it really is a wonderful counterpoint and counterbalance exactly what, Because I have as much fun, if not more fun.
In the old things, you know, but they're more beautiful, I guess, you know, they're sometimes better made and better now.
And then every now and then I'll fall in love with a particular combination of this car in this trim, in this color. So I know a lot of people don't love the Porta Finos or the car that came before that. The name is drawing the California, the California.
We don't love those.
There was a seventy fifth anniversary edition California in this sort of sky blue metallic with a light interior. It was just so spectacular, And I'm like, nobody likes California, and meanwhile likes the Californias. I think it was a California m And meanwhile, every person I've spoken with who owns a California says, this is just an endless amount of fun to drive. It's still a Ferrari. It's still a six hundred something horsepower engine, and it handles great. And while the snobs and the purists hate it, it's still a great mid engine you know, the engine is pushed so far back. It's sort of like the Mercedes GT are mid rear. Yeah, it's it's mid front, it's behind the front wheels. There you go that it handles great, and you know, and you could pick them up for relatively cheap. I've been seeing the five ninety nine s go for you know, seventy five one hundred HoTT right right?
Crazy?
Uh, not available with the stick. Yes, you can get them with the stit they're very rare, so they'll go over. The five seventy five I think was the last one that was plentiful. Okay, right, so the five nine to nine they did make a few, but only like a handsoke.
With just someone that came up on bring a trailer with a stick, and I have no idea what's going to go for. And I was watching one and I'm like genuinely only shocked and in it when they go for seventy five, there's always a little hair. That's a lot of car, Yeah, it's a lot of cars.
I love ugly twelve cylinder Ferraris.
I love not that ugly.
I love the six twelve.
And I said the four to fifty six is another one that was sort of passed by. It's a classic GT and that design. I mean, the five fifty is spectacular, but the four fifty six is design. It's very subtle. It's aged nicely.
But if you're talking about getting a car that's fun and not you know, six figure entry point and not new, I think like a C six Corvette.
Uh, those have become really inexpensive.
And if you what are you Hannahs laughing? Why are you laughing?
Why would you go for that era?
Because I'm just thinking like big muscle, Like very likes big muscle. Right, Yeah, it's a big V eight up front and they're uh, you know, easy to get with a stick And I guess if I want, if I want to go before that, but I wouldn't like I don't think I wouldn't necessarily want to drive like a C four or five.
So if I'm gonna go for big muscle with a V eight up front, it's hard to beat. My m sex. It's a convertible, it's a stick ship, it's about six hundred horse power. It's just a monster. And if you want to just go out for quiet drive, it can be tamed. But as soon as you you know, unleash it. It's a beast, and that really really is a thing. You know. The other thing that's kind of interesting is do you go for fewer but better cars. So obviously, if you want, if you want to spend fifty sixty thousand dollars, it's easy to find a well sorted out nine to eleven that's ten fifteen years old, and that's a tough car to beat for fifty to seventy five thousand dollars.
Well, if you you know, if you're around collectors and you're around these people who really have been buying and selling for many years, that is the evolution of somebody who's slowly learning the business. I mean, you're you're just you're simply describing the progress that people make as they get a little more savvy, a little more you know, a little more mature, a little wiser. Yeah, they go for fewer cars, the better examples. They don't go for the obvious stuff. They go for the more like this is this is this is called growing up.
You know, in this there's definitely some of that. The the other thing is, you know, there's a lot of personality involved in cars, and I don't know if I've told you guys the story. One day, I'm in the backyard with the dogs and I could look out over the street behind us, and in front of my backyard neighbor's house is a lime Green Hurricane Spider, And I ping my neighbor, Hey, did you finally go crazy and buy a Lambo? And he says, and I'm horrified about the answer. No, that's my son's friend's car. He's seventeen. He's a good kid, and I'm like, okay, And just personality wise, that like electric lime Green. I can't ever see rolling up somewhere in one of those.
An adolescent maleving that much.
I'd be dead, No, no doubt.
Get him in a Miata, get him in a little M three or something, right, But.
I wonder if that's Is that the same thing somebody said, you know, fifty years ago when you rolled up in a lime Green, you know Dodge charger.
No, because the charger never had that much horsepower and I don't remember them coming.
You would have to paint it like that. That's factory stock. Look at me. I mean, it depends on who you are and what how much.
Dodge definitely had those colors they had. I think two shades of like a neon green. They had green go and they had I mean they still make those, or they did for the for the Challenger, they had purple, they had orange. I like the.
Purple, the purple charge. It was great.
I love purple for a car. Like I'm playing that's my wife's Panamera configurator, and I'm like looking at.
The purple, like, you know, BMW is making a great purple these days. I just had Daytona violet metallic calling. I had it on the M five.
Actually, how'd you like the five?
I liked it. I really liked it. I really liked it. They they are only selling it as a hybrid now.
As a six thousand pound hybrid.
No stick, there's a plug. There's no stick. It's under six thousand pounds. It's like fifty three hundred or so, right, seven hundred and seventeen horse power. How much it's seven hundred and seventeen.
Wow, that's a lot of hor that's a lot.
Of it's a lot.
That's a lot of car.
And it's a big car completely. And the number one thing everyone was asking how heavy? How heavy is it heavy? It does not feel heavy at all. It's really a feed of engineering on that thing. It's yeah.
I always used to love that the early like the late nineties, early two thousand and M five's were wolf in sheep's clothing that it looked like a respectable business person's car, but dropped the hands for sure, just a you know, a Yahoo screaming down the Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think we have to wrap.
It's sad, but we do have to rap because you have to go unfortunately.
Uh yeah, I actually host a podcast. I have to go get my guests Masters Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
I was actually spreading the word this morning because some people who didn't know much about Tom Wagner were, Hey, I would I want to learn more about that guy, and I was like, the number one place to go is Masters and Business. Had you had such a great interview with him?
So interesting?
Yeah, and very I think your podcast is the number one Bloomberg podcast.
Uh, you know, Odd Lots gives me a run for my money, but they do two a week, so I think on a per capita basis, I think I'm still up there. It's what's kind of fun about the podcast, aside from the fact that I get people to speak to me for an hour and a half that normally would not give me the time of day. Is that over the past July will be eleven years of doing that. Wow, everybody is that how much Bloomberg has become podcastified And there are dozens of not just interview podcasts, but serial podcasts and shorter form and there's a handful of award winning podcasts. It's really become a fascinating way to reach a very specific audience. Whether you want to go wide and broad or narrow and deep, you can reach that audience. And Bloomberg has very much picked up the baton and run with it, which I'm proud to take two percent credit for starting the process.
Very cool. Well, congrats Agate on the book How Not To Invest I think it is being released on March eighteenth.
That is correct.
That's a big deal.
All right, Well that does it for us. I guess we can wrap it up here. I'm Matt Miller and
I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is Bloomberg.
