Ben Carlson Says Skip the Luxury Car and House Hunt Smart. That’s Real Inflation Protection.
Key takeaways
- Ben Carlson Says Skip the Luxury Car and House Hunt Smart.
- The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and SPDR S&P 500 ETF wasn t one of them.
- If you obsess over coffee runs while overpaying on a car note and a mortgage, you have optimized the wrong line items.
Ben Carlson Says Skip the Luxury Car and House Hunt Smart. That’s Real Inflation Protection. Jeremy Phillips Sun, May 17, 2026 at 12:31 AM GMT+7 5 min read SPY Ben Carlson, portfolio manager at Ritholtz Wealth Management and the voice behind A Wealth of Common Sense, dropped a line on Morningstar s The Long View podcast that I keep coming back to. Co-host Jeff Ptak summarized Carlson s thinking as "it s not the latte, it s the Lexus," and Carlson agreed, adding "and it s the house too."
SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) declined roughly 20% in 2022 during peak inflation but has gained 78% over five years and 263% over ten years, demonstrating that equities outpace inflation over decades despite short-term volatility.
Households spending more than 50% of gross income on housing and transportation risk wealth erosion from sticky services inflation, and those locked into pre-2020 mortgages at 3% rates maintain a significant financial advantage over buyers entering the market at 7% rates today.