Talk Your Book: The Bull Case for China With Brendan Ahern

Today's animal spirits talk your book is brought to you by Crane Shares. Go to craneshares.com to learn more about their whole suite of ETFs, including KWEB, the Crane Shares China Internet ETF, CLIP. That's a Crane Shares KWEB covered call strategy. And also check out China last night, which is your daily newsletter for all things China. Craneshares.comblanmore. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Brit Holt Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to animal spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, I think we both learned this past year that we don't really know a lot about China. Is that fair to say? It's it's the second largest economy in the world and yet it I think to a lot of Americans frankly, the country remains kind of a mystery. It's not exactly a destination people go to travel to for vacations. Right? So I I don't think a lot of people know and understand that much about society. And so we we read Dan Wong's new book, Breakneck, and felt like we understood a little bit more. But we have experts from crane shares we've talked to multiple times now. Brandon, most notably, who writes, China last night, who who travels there all the time. He invests in the companies, knows about others to know. But I I do think it is kind of a a blind spot for US investors. Is that fair to say? I was just gonna say that exact thing, Ben. It is a blind spot. I think we are fortunate to live in our bubble, a very beautiful bubble. It is. But we often don't think about what's going on outside of our borders. And China is arguably hard to argue that it's that there's anything else that's the second biggest economy in the world. Just as it's very important. Dan Wang spoke definitely opened my eyes. The stock market versus the economy. I think this is, like, one of the first post I wrote, how the stock market does not equal the economy. It's it's no place is it more true than in China. Think Vanguard had a study about this, like, in probably 2014. Right. The GDP growth versus the stock market growth. Yeah. Right. Since 1990, it hasn't really gone anywhere. And it's even it's widened ever since. Pretty pretty remarkable. What are these days on maybe? Well, they do have this huge tech sector now, and they they're they're fighting us for AI supremacy. Yeah. And it sounds like the the race is closer than most people would assume. And, obviously, …