You should not let degenerate speculative behavior distract you from the legitimate bull market — speculation never goes away, but right now the degenerate trades are being punished while the real market makes all-time highs, and that's exactly the healthy divergence you want to see.
Michael argues people use degenerate retail speculation as an excuse to dismiss the bull market, but that behavior is permanent and accelerating. The healthy sign here is that the degenerate side (leveraged semiconductors, meme stocks, the 'degenerate Dow') has been crushed while the legitimate bull market reaches new highs — a genuine separation between speculation and real fundamentals. ✦ AI generated
Michael Batnick · The Compound · 2026-08-05 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 33:22
one of the things that people use to dismiss the bull market or cast doubt is all of the degenerate behavior... I understand that impulse... we live in a world of 24/7 trading of hype everything happens with hypers speed... Do not let that behavior distract you because that is never going away... That sort of degenerate behavior is with us literally forever... I really love to see the fact that in this bull market a lot of that behavior is getting punished not just in the double lever semiconductor trade, but all of the meme stocks, all of the our degenerate Dow stocks... they got cut in half. So, while the legitimate bull market is reaching new all-time highs, the degenerate bull market is in shambles. How could you not love that to see that?
verbatim transcript · starts at 33:22
33:15forced seller. That's like it sounds so simple and it people just can't help themselves. Ben, one of the things that I've been saying over the last couple of years is um one of the things that people use to dismiss the bull market or cast doubt is all of the degenerate behavior. Oh, look at people buying stocks and leverage and they're buying quantum computing and whatever the next hot
33:42thing is. And they use that as a way to dismiss the validity of everything else that's happening in the market. And I understand that impulse, right? It makes sense. Like, oh, there's so much speculation. This is going to end badly and it's going to end soon. I get it. Um, and what I've said to that is, listen, we live in a world of 24/7 trading of of hype everything happens
34:04with hypers speed with the message boards and people able to colonize on stocks way quicker than they have in the past. Do not let that behavior distract you because that is never going away, >> right? >> That sort of degenerate behavior is with us literally forever unless there is a another great depression. People will continue to speculate. It's it's only accelerating. Robin had said that in the
34:25like it's only accelerating the speculation. Okay. So, I really love to see the fact that in this bull market a lot of that behavior is getting punished not just in the double lever semiconductor trade, but all of the meme stocks, all of the we have our our degenerate Dow stocks, which is basically a basket of meme stocks and they got cut in half. So, while the legitimate bull market
34:54is reaching new all-time highs, the degenerate bull market is in shambles. >> Yeah. >> How how could you not love to see that? >> Yeah. This is not like the meme stock stuff with GameStop back in the day. That was AMC and GameStop. That was so stupid, right? This is this is different now. People have kind of learned the retail crowd. It's different. All right. This This is interesting. Jeff Attack
35:18friend from Morning Star. Behavior gap is alive and well. So the the DRRAM ETF DRAM >> DRAM >> right so he's saying since inception in April it had 26 billion in net assets by the end of July this before the the fall I think the DRM fell 30% or something maybe 30 or 40%. He asked, "How did it get so big so fast?" He said it gathered 26 billion in