Will Danoff on Innovation and Investments (Podcast)

hundred three hundred basis points. Not only has he outperformed on an annual basis, if you put money into his fund versus the SMP five hundred he started, his fund is now worth two and a half times more than the index is. This is really a master class on how to think about active management, what you need to do to engage in stock picking, why it's so difficult, and why you need a powerful team of experts around

you to help you with this. He has worked with all of the greats at Fidelity and explains why Fidelity is such a key aspect of this. I could babble about the conversation forever. Rather than do that, let me just stop and say with no further ado. My conversation with the Fidelity Contra Funds Will Danoff. This is Masters in Business with Verry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Will Danoff. He has been

running Fidelities Contra funds for just about thirty years. The fund is the largest actively managed mutual fund run by one person. It's about a hundred and thirty billion dollars. And since September when he took over the funds, he has outperformed the benchmark SMP index by more than three hundred basis points annually. Will then off, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks Berry, It's great to be with you. So that track record is really quite astonishing. You you've returned on

average compounded annually. Your benchmark, the SMP five hundred is ten percent. The average large cap growth funds has returned about nine. So what is the secret of your success? Yeah, Berry, I think you know, sometimes you lose track of the percentages. But I think if you had invested ten thousand dollars in the SMP, and you should have your fact checkers

figure this out. But I think that after thirty years of being up whatever it is, ten percent a year you're at like two hundred thousand, and if you are invested in contrafund, you'd be closer to like four and eighty thousands. So really can make a difference. Compounding is an important concept for your listeners when it comes to investing, and to the extent you can find a fund or a company that can compound over time, it really does

make a difference over the decades. But i'd say Barry for For me, the north star has been the importance of analyzing companies, keeping an open mind, working really hard and staying flexible, having a great team, and then maybe just bringing it all back to the earnings per share of the underlying companies and trying to think about, you know, what the company could earn looking out five seven years,

you know, will this company be bigger and better? So I do believe that the growth discipline is a superior discipline. And then you know, once you've determined what you think the company might earn looking out to the extent you can look out and you have to be honest and say, you know, I really am not sure. You know. In the in the world of technology, you have to be

really careful about extrapolating growth rates. But then ideally you're trying to pay the the best price you can for you know, as well positioned growth company with you know, a good brand and great management and strong cash flow and stuff like that. But I'd say, you know, cast a wide net, be flexible, and then you know, continue to monitor what your your investments are doing and what your managements are doing. I'm much more of an advocate of the you know, sort of the poker game approach.

I think it's hard to say, you know, X y Z is going to be a buy and hold for ten years, but you know, and this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and therefore we're all in. Some investors can do that. I think over over thirty years, you you make a lot of mistakes, You accept your mistakes, you learn from your mistakes. But one idea I have is just to say, listen, I think you know, you're you know, we're playing poker. I have an ace, you're showing a three. I think this is starting out to

be a good hand for me. So I'm going to bet some and start to build a position, and then if I'm served another ace, meaning the company, you know, says it's going to expand into California, or expand in India, or you know, introduce the new product, and the results show that those efforts are going really well, then you bet more so again for me, it's a little more incremental and a little less Aha, the light bulb went off. You know, plastics are you know, we're all in on

plastical plastics without data. So I would say, you know, let's start with the facts. You know, Fidelity is just an unbelievable place to manage money. We've got an unbelievable research team, we have you know, experts and virtually every industry that matters. We have experts in virtually every region

of the world that matters. We have experts in all disciplines in the market value, growth, small, mid, large, all parts of the cap table, you know, investment grade, high yields, convertibles and so, you know, Fidelity sort of the big city hospital Barry. And you know, for your listeners, you know, do you want to have the brain surgery and you know, a small regional hospital in the middle of nowhere are

probably not. But if you go to a big city hospital where they're doing large numbers of these procedures, you're probably going to feel better. You know, everybody makes mistakes, but we see more companies, we attend more meetings, we interview more management teams, and through that process, hopefully we're going to be able to identify changes that are important in different industries and also just identify what we consider truly world class management teams that are doing things a

little better. And you know, you try to keep track and you do your best, and you know, I've just survived frankly in a very competitive industry, Barry. But you know the Fidelity Hall of Fame managers, I mean, Joel tilling Has, who's managing the Low Price Stock Fund, has done phenomenally well. Steve y Umer, who runs our Growth fund, is done phenomenally well. We've got a whole cast of other folks in our starting lineup who are doing exceptionally well.

And then, of course you know the long history going back to you know, George Vanderheyde and Peter Lynch, Bruce Johnstone, but even before that, you know Ned Johnson, Jerry Sigh. The idea of doing bottoms up fundamental company analysis is not going away. You mentioned the index, Barry, and you know the index is very hard to peak. Let's understand

that there is survivor bias in the index. The better companies like Microsoft and Google and Amazon grow and become a larger part of the index, and the weaker companies, you know, slow down and don't grow and therefore don't appreciate in value and therefore are smaller part of the index. So the index is hard to beat. And I agree with Warren buff that, you know, the S and P five hundred or even the Dow now is not the the Dow or the S and P of of seventy

or eighty years ago. You know, it's it's a much more cash generative, much more growth oriented. You know, globalization has been very positive for you know, corporate profits and I think very positive for society in the world. But we can get into that later. So you know, i'd say, work really hard, know yourself, know your companies. You know, continue to monitor your companies, try to upgrade on weakness, and you know, try to be patient and long term.

You know, you mentioned earlier the sort of so much noise now in the market, and people worried about every tick. You know, I think if you step back and say, what do I own you know, you know, can I imagine, you know, just look around you and say, gosh, you know, my kids can't live without their smartphones, and they they

love their smartphones. You know. In in Fideliti's case, we're able to talk to Luca my Street, who's the CFO of Apple, and you know, he shared with us recently that in the America's Apple's customer satisfaction with the iPhone is and you know, it's like, oh my god, that's unbelievable. And then you step back and say, well, gosh, you know, ten years ago, no one had you know, iPhones, everyone had blackberries. And now you know, I have two smartphones.

I have a MacBook Air, i have an iPad, and I've got EarPods, you know, and it's I'm really happy they all work. And you know, so you've got to be aware of what's happening in the world. And I think that's often where some Wall Street folks, particularly the the value discipline, can you know, get a little confused.

It's like, you know, the classic value trap. It's a really you know, cheap stock, but it's not going in I mean, it's not going to get cheaper, right, you know, it's a capital intensive, cyclical business and you've got to make sure your assumptions are appropriately conservative. So let's stay

with with talking about Fidelity a little bit. You mentioned some of the the murderers row the twenty Yankees lineup, you guys, have you started it Fidelity in But if my research is correct, it wasn't as a fund manager, right, You came in as an analyst, Yes, Barry, an interesting footnote for your listeners. I applied for a summer job in and I was rejected, So Barry, one must always persevere. And you know, I think the decision was probably the

right one. I was a bit immature and not as experience, but luck really I was accepted and for the full time job as an analyst in And I think it's important when you think about companies as investments as employers, to understand the culture of the company. And you know, I'm so grateful and lucky that Fidelity was and still is a research oriented, you know, active manager and everyone you know that I mentioned earlier, all the great fund

managers all started as analysts at Fidelity. You know, does that include Peter Lynch? He started as an analyst. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Peter started as an analyst. George was an analyst. Bruce, of course, everyone came up from the ranks. Ned was an analyst. Abby Johnson, who is the curren CEO, was an analyst and then a fund manager. So when you have that common experience and common language, it's just so helpful.

So you would be between you and Lynch, right, So yeah, one um Jeff Finnick, of course, you know, an unbelievably talented analyst, UM and fund manager and investor started my year. But he started in the spring because he had taken a job in New York and then decided he wanted to work for Fidelity, so he started in the spring. But there were about seven of us, including Joel Tilling has to started a little later that year, and Frankly Berry, I was probably below average from my class. We you know,

we had a very strong class. But I was lucky that I was assigned the retail stocks. And the retails stocks were it was a large group of stores. You know, consumer spending is something like two thirds of the US economy, and they had all sorts of different stocks. You know, Kmart and Sears were stodgy potential turnarounds, and then you had the membership warehouse clubs were sort of the new shiny concept that you had to really think hard about,

you know, what's this industry going to look like? And then the department stores were sort of slower growers but generating free cash flow. And you know, the Walmart was the thorough bred, and you know it was really fun and great and it was relatively understandable. So I think I was exposed to many different types of stocks and managements. All were people sort of people people, so you didn't

have to try to understand technology or science. It was just you know, going into a store with a CEO or a CFO and you know, seeing how they interacted with the customer and looking at the prices and you know,

is this store appealing? So anyway, but you know, the beauty of fidelities were all in the trenches together, and you know, Peter and George and Bruce were in these meetings with me and many others, and you know, it was a really great sort of apprenticeship to watch, you know, these great investors analyze different companies and understand, you know, the idea of unit growth. If I think when I first met Bernie Marcus, the founder of the Home Depot.

He might have had like forty stores and now they have two thousand. But you know, the the thought was, if it's working in Atlanta, Georgia, it can work in Florida. And I remember when they first opened their stores and they acquired some stores to expand in exist which didn't

work out as well. But when they first opened the stores in California, you know, I mean it was literally there was another concept across the street, and you know, the Home Depot parking lot was near full and the other store was sort of going into a bowling alley. You know, it was virtually empty. So you know, part of it is being practical, you know, sort of what is actually happening. As I said earlier, Barry earnings per share becomes sort of the north star for a growth investor.

And you know, if Colone Deepot was opening new stores a year and they're old stores were generating let's say, you know, five or ten percent growth and the margins were going up and the r o I on the new stores was high, you know, you start projecting out growth and whatever that works out too, but you know, doubling of earnings and three years with you know, the potential for many, many more stores. So that was a great insight for me. That helped me, you know, and

again I over thirty years. All I can tell you is that I was there and I should have. You know, the one of the great lessons learned Berry is I should have bought more of these great growth stocks like the Home Depot or you know, I was there when Howard Schultz went public. I mean, you can't, you can't. I mean it was two but again I was a young fund manager. But picture this. You know, Schultz had a hundred I think a hundred and forty cafes when

he opened up. They were all in Seattle and Portland. I remember someone sitting next to me on the road show lunch saying, you know, it might work in the Pacific Northwest, but you know, they're tree huggers there and they like, you know, to sit around in a coffee shop. But it's not gonna work in New York, or it's

not gonna work in San Francisco. But the data showed, you know, I believe or In Smith, who was a CEF at the time, said they had opened a couple of stores in San fran and they were all exceeding their expectations, and you know the r O I s and the new units were through the roof. I think

they were arithmetic was because they were leased units. It costs two hundred fifty thousand dollars to open a Starbucks way back when the stores were doing six hundred fifty thousand of revenue and like year two and at twenty percent EVA DOC or cash on cash unit volumes, so they were you know, for two hundred fifty thousand, you were getting a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars of cash in like year two, which meant you could finance

rapid growth. And it was working. And you know, the camp store sales, you know, the comp cafe snails were double digit for the last three years. It was the perfect story. So here's the lesson to your listeners. Barry. The stock pops on day one or day two, and it was always very expensive for what it was. It was like thirty five thirty times the out ear estimate. But the company continued to grow and grow and it stayed expensive for like fifteen years. But it was a

great Yeah, it kept growing, it stayed expensive. So sometimes an expensive stock that executes really well can be a great story. You know, they added frappuccinos. They went out to the overseas and it worked in China, but it worked everywhere in the US, and you know, no one else was able to replicate. I remember Pets came in and this one and that one, and you know McDonald's was going to offer you know, cheaper coffee and try

to upgrade. But anyway, so sometimes you have to say, a truly outstanding franchise with a great management team and a great business model can be a great stock. I mean, the analogy in sports would be, you know, what do you pay Michael Jordan's or one of these truly exceptional athletes whatever, if they you know, hit the three pointers and win the championship, You're going to pay them a lot of money. So one of the lessons is that, you know, better businesses are going to trade at higher

pease and you just have to accept that. Now, of course, your listeners have to monitor. You know, a retail investor can go into the stores. They're out there comparing you know what Starbucks is doing, the quality of the coffee, the experience in the cafe. You know how is the mobile order and pay experience, you know how is the app, is it easy to use? Is it delighting me? You know, some of the great entrepreneurs in the last decade of talk to me about, you know, what would the world

look like without my company? And you know, during the COVID pandemic, I think a lot of people have said, you know, if I didn't have Amazon, my world would be significantly worse. And isn't that a great place to be if you're a partner with you know, Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team, or you know, there are other a handful of companies that are you know, Costco, I think is one of those special companies that have delighted

their members over many years. And you know, so many people said, my gosh, do you believe you know, when I just got a Costco it was such high quality and such a great price. That's the type of company that over thirty years, you know, used there to say, gosh, I wish I had owned more of those. And by the way, it's it's not it's a little easier than

you know. When I first started in the early nineties as a fund manager, I was trying to find companies that no one else had heard of, that no one else owned, and you know, there are a lot of tough businesses that are selling cheap, and I was running around saying cheap and getting better, Let's try to find a turnaround. And you know, turnarounds sometimes work. They can be really awesome stocks when they do work. But the degree of difficulty is higher than just saying, my gosh.

You know, Google is just unbelievable. You know, how did we live without Google? Or you know, how did we live, you know, without Amazon? For example, You're coming up on your thirtieth anniversary right by the time this broadcast, it will be September. You started at the contra funds in September? Did you ever and then imagine you would be running these same exact funds for thirty years? Honestly buried? No, I think you know, again, as I said, Fidelity is

a great place to manage money. There's some very very talented and and fun people, and we you know, continue to attract some really good people. But it's it's the kind of place where ordinary folks can do extraordinary things when they work together and they communicate. And you know, I'm sort of the Woody Allen of Fidelity. I just show up, and you know, I show up to more meetings, and you know, I remember one year I had an

odd seven am meeting, which is early. Usually our meeting start at eight am, but somebody wanted to see me or somebody was there, so we did a seven am meeting. So then the meeting ends at eight and I'm kind of hungry, and I see that somebody else is hosting an eight am meeting that hadn't started. So I go in to grab a muffin, and then the host and the management walk in. I think it was Joel hosting an Irish bank, so I was like, oh, hi, and

they thought I was there to see the meeting. What I really wanted a muffin, But anyway, I was like, yeah, sure, I'll listen to your story. You know, I had to fudge it, and so we listened, and it turned out that the Irish economy was coming back, and I don't know because it was Ireland. The stock was like an eight times earnings and there were only like three banks of any size in Ireland. And you know, it turned out there's a certain serendipity involved with the business that

again the fidelity, there's so many companies. Sometimes Joel and I are just like what do you you know, what's going on right now? Is there a call that could be of interest? There's there a company management coming in, you know every week, you know, on Fridays, I look at the schedule for the next week and it's just like, oh, these are two companies that are in at the same time.

We've got to move one of them, or wow, you know, I definitely have to see this company because you know, oil and gas is way out of favor, and you know, this management team has done a decent job surviving over time, and you know, the ability to stay current on lots of industries and lots of geographies, and and then there's sort of luck every once in a while you meet managements that help you. I mean again, over thirty years,

Verry one important. You know clearly that the you know, the oh one Internet bubble burst was you know, an important event. But what was most important, I think was the aftermath. In this sort of O three oh four period, most growth investors were still hiding under their desks, they were shelf stocked. In many cases, they were experiencing outflows.

And I remember again and just you know, seeing on our meeting schedule a company meeting for ask Jeeves a s kJ early early search engine exactly, and I believe it's now owned by Interactive Group. But you know, again, it's like what motivated me to say, I think I should go and hear the story. The stock had I think had gone from like five to a hundred and was back to like bottomed at two, and it was at eight. So I said, you know, a hundred to

eight means expectations are low. Maybe I'll learn something, you know, and again at Fidelity, you can you know, between you and me, I can go in in an half hour, learn something and then politely leave the You know, I guess I take my job very seriously. You know, I have pictures of my shareholders in my office, and I just decided, you know, if I'm going to do my job,

I'm in the I'm in the fashion industry. I've got to look and consider all possibilities of management has come I think, asked Jeeves was based in New York, not in California. But you know, if management has traveled all the way to Boston right to our offices to tell us what's going on, I should at least attend, and I should be ideally prepared. I've just told you two stories, Barry where I wasn't prepared, but you know, engage with management,

asked some intelligent questions. Try to understand and empathize with management, you know, sort of what has happened, Where are you going? What your goal is? So asked Jeeves had hired a new CEO, right young man, and he said, our niche is natural language search, which means in Google you would hype in, you know, population Morocco, and Google would figure

out what you wanted. But and asked Jeeves, you would type in what is the population of Morocco and that you know, they had like one, one or two percent market share and the goal was to go to five or six and that was going to sort of lead them to profitability and in a much bigger business. So at some point I forget we had a young search engine analysts. I guess I can't remember who was hosted in a meeting, maybe a small cap analyst or fund manager.

But I said, can we just step back and explain, you know, the lay of the land for search engines? So you know, he sort of flippantly said, well, you know, Google was crushing everybody. They have market share, plus they're doing the search for I think it was a o L so they had forty percent plus the fifteen or that was a o L related search, So they had market share and they were crushing everybody. And then I think Yahoo had bought overture and maybe Microsoft had some

skin in the game somewhere. But you know, it was like fifty five to sixty then player and then a several, you know, very smaller players. So again, you know, Barry, I don't know what happened, but I just you know, what's the key to my success? I just say why you know, or please elaborate. So I said, God, why is Google doing so well? And the answer was, you know, they have a better algorithm, they have a larger index because they have so much market share, they're seeing more searches,

and you know, they're just innovating faster. And I think, you know, as I said, you know the wout and I would have to check my notes, and if you want, Barry, I do have my notes from that meeting. You know, they are crushing everybody. There is no way we're going to catch Google. We do our our plan does not We don't need to beat Google at what they're doing.

We're going to play in this little niche. So again, by that point, Barry, I was already thirteen years into contrafund and I had developed this idea of the best of breed and I, you know, listen politely to the Asketeves story for another couple of minutes, and I excuse myself, and in my mind I was thinking I want to own Google. I don't you know, That's what I was

hearing between the lines. They competitive exactly. So again, you know, by attending meetings, by paying attention, you know, listen, your readers can listen to podcasts, they can listen to YouTube interviews, which I would highly recommend they do. They can read the papers, they can pay attention. They can watch what their kids are doing, they watch what their friends are doing. But you know, that was a data point by a well placed competitor that clearly showed that Google was doing

special things and was a special company. So, and I think at that time, maybe it was oh three, they were already perhaps a couple of articles about you know, Google hiring Eric Schmidt as a CEO, preparing to go public, whatever it was. There was some ground swell of articles about Google um and so I was very interested when Google announced that we're going to go public, and again the backdrop was the growth investor was struggling the mark.

I can't remember exactly what was happening in the market, but they came public in August of O four. August. You know, here we are in August of you know, things quiet down a little bit, people are taking vacation. But I was there front and center. Sarah gey Brand and Eric Schmidt, you know, came on the road show and again, you know, do a little preparation opened the perspectus. And Google had doubled the revenue in O two, double the revenue and oh three, and doubled the revenue in

the first quarter of OH four. It was like, oh my gosh, they are doing something right. You know, by the way operating margins were like or even then they had a billion dollars of cash on the balance sheet before they went public. That's amazing. Yeah, aga, I'm gonna share. I'm gonna share a very quick Google story. And it

was that period. It was two thousand and two and I had been publishing for a few years on Yahoo Yahoo Geo Cities, and I get an invite to be a beta tester for one of the early versions of Google, and you just had to use it for ten minutes in Oh my god, this is so much better than anything. You could find whatever you want almost instantly. So I right back and say happy to be a beta tester. By the way, I'm in finance. Do you guys need any money? I'd love to make an investment day Right back,

We're good. Thanks. Anyway, I want to say that was on or O two, but um, it was so clearly, so clearly superior. So will let's talk a little bit about your process. How do you look at a company? Where do you begin? Not every Google falls into your lap through competitors, how do you start the process of deciding what you want to think about purchasing. Yeah, that's a great question, Barry, and I would just urge your listeners that if you want to invest, you know wisely

over the long term. You know you have to make a commitment. You know it's a very competitive world, but you know, know yourself, stay within your circle of competence. I mean, Warren Buffett is you know, the greatest investor of our generation, and you know he's out there on YouTube. Please listen to a couple of interviews with Warren Buffett.

He always talks about staying within his area of expertise, and you know, he knows the insurance industry really well, the financial industry knows consumer products very well and in a fascinating way. Barry, he always says, you know, when the Internet hit, you know, I was curious if the Internet was going to affect the people are gonna be drinking coca cola or chewing gum, and he decided not.

But you know, you have to monitor what's happening. But you know, I'm interested in companies that I think are going to be bigger and better in the next you know call of three to five, seven years. And I'm interested in companies that are doing well or getting better right now. That was one of the great you know insights you talking to Peter Lynch, working with Peter Lynch, watching Peter Lynch, you know, especially the small and MidCap companies.

I mean, you know, as we talked about with Google, I mean, if if you're a billion in revenues, you know, why shouldn't you be growing much faster than a company with a hundred billions of revenues? And you know, so if you really have something special, consumers should know it

and see it and you know, want it. So I am intrigued with the subset of companies that are growing quickly and usually, frankly Berry, it's easier to find, you know, to go from the specific company to the sort of neighborhood or the general theme that it is to start a priori and say, oh, gosh, the Internet. Therefore, you know, I'm going to find some internet companies for me. It's

you know, starting bottoms up. And you know, I think your listeners and you know, potential investors are well served by saying, Okay, what has this company done in the last five years? You know, have they grown their revenues, have they improved their margins? You know, have they expanded

into new markets? You know, and then try to understand what management wants to do in the next five years and try to decide, you know, what you think the likelihood of that management team to execute on their plan. And you know, so I'm a little concerned when you know, these special purpose acquisition companies are coming and you know,

they really don't have a track record. So you know, I always say, let's see what you buy and what you pay and try to assess the management team that's doing the buying, and you know, what have they done if they sort of good at you know, rolling up companies but not so good at integrating them. I'm not that interested. How much of this is art and how much of this is science? I was going to ask it is this a qualitative assessment? Is this a quantitative assessment?

But you strike me as someone who is pre naturally insightful at evaluating companies, managements, and products. It's not just here's the numbers. Anybody can look at the cage or anybody can look at the IBADA. Not everybody can consistently pick companies that beat the index. So so, how much of this is will dan Off magic and how much of this is something else? It's probably a lot of something else, Barry, because I don't have that much magic, and I certainly after thirty years, I'm not sure if

I have any magic left. But it's it's competitive and you have to play to your strengths. And you know, as I said, one of the advantages of of you know, a fidelity as the management teams are willing to talk to us and and you know, share some of the insights that they have and ideally, you know, you're in the business of asking good questions. I'm in the business of asking good questions. So I do try to empathize with management. And you'd be surprised, Barry, even the most

successful CEOs like to be recognized. They like to be thanked for their efforts. You know, they like to be treated as you know, sort of guests and as you know, special people. So when these managements come to Boston, you know, I like to be prepared. I like to offer them, you know, some water or coffee or a doughnut or whatever they want. And you know, sometimes we have lunches and it's just a matter of you know, what do you like for lunch? You know, I don't want you

to have a cheeseburger if you don't like cheeseburger. So anyway, you know, I do think that a little empathy as an investor goes a long way. And you know, I do think that if if you step back and try to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur and think about, you know, what is you know this CEO really thinking about, And you know that I think makes you a better investor as well, because so often, you know, they've had a big idea. They've had an insight, you know,

the Michael Dell let's go direct. You know, the PC business was it was a commodity business, but he figured out, you know, a better way to get closer to his customer. But you know, when you think back to you know someone I think he was in high school and he started to you know, take computers apart and put them back together and add certain features. You know, I think he was adding sloppy disk drives or hard disk drives.

I forget he you know, he he was able to soup up you know, a basic IBM PC and then other PCs to make them better. You know, it's just like this guy has a passion for what he's doing and try to tap into you know, where do you see the bigger opportunities, Why are you doing well? Where

do you think your vulnerabilities are? And if you have these discussions early on, you know, in your learning about a company, maybe later, you know, three or four years down the road, that becomes a really important issue that you know, these entrepreneurs often have a sixth sense of

you know, what they need to do. And and then of course hopefully they're planting seas and you know, strengthening their company, hiring new executives that can you know, prepare them for whatever competitive onslaught or the change in the market so that they can capitalize on it. But you know, you do you have to decide, you know, is the executive in it for the money or in it to build something really special. I mean we talked about, you know, am I trying to build a company where people are

going to say, my gosh, I can't. You know the world is a better place because of you know, Instagram or What's app or um you know whatever. You know, Microsoft, you know teams. You know, it's a different it's a it's a it's another way of looking at things. And you know, I think something like a new company like Shopify really is dedicated to making entrepreneurs, you know, more successful, helping merchants sell online in a very sort of easy way.

And you know they're building you know what seems to be a very powerful business and you know it's taking off and Covid has been a huge tail wind for them. But again, when you listen to management and you know, you can go on Twitter and follow the founders there, or you know, go on YouTube and listen to some interviews and decide for yourself. Are these the sorts of

people I want to partner with? Quite interesting? So well, let's talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of running a fund more or less as a single manager. How does that affect your decision making versus so many funds that seem to be run by committees. That's a great question. Barry ned Johnson, who you know, I believe is the chairman emeritus the fidelity. Now, who built the firm? You know, from the mid seventies through let's say so

a great four the year run. Believed in accountability and I think, you know, in life, we all have to be accountable. So he really liked the idea of having single managers responsible for individual funds. I am responsible for the performance of the Contra fund. I have a great team of analysts that I work closely with, and in some cases I will buy a stock the recommendation of an analyst, but usually I work and say, you know, okay, what are you covering, what do you like? Why do

you like it? And if this is your very best idea and you think this company is doing something special and they're going to gain market share profitably, over time. Let's just call the company together. Let me know next time you're going to do an update call or a post quarterly earnings call, and I'll just hear the story myself. And you know, Peter Hinch used to joke and say, we're just asking for a picture after someone offers you a blind date. You know, we want to do some

basic work. And you know, Doltill and Half my great, you know, longtime colleague. Just as you know, if you would simply avoid unprofitable companies that you know would improve your performance significantly. Now the world has changed in thirty years, and the biotech industry has become bigger and better and leveraged all these great insights into the human genome so that you can go from losing a lot of money to FDA approval of a drug that turns into a

billion dollar blockbuster very quickly. But you know, for the most part, I think you know, there are certain lessons that we've learned. But you know, when do you sell a stock berry You sell a stock when you have a better idea or when the fundamentals deteriorates. So if you're casting a wide now at your you know, attending a lot of company meetings. You're listening to a lot of calls. You know, I don't know, I think over

thirty years, Barry, the numbers are. You know, Let's say, on average, I talked to five management teams a day. That's twenty five management teams a week, fifty weeks. You know, in a working year, companies a year over thirty years, you know, some crazy number of company meetings, you know, thirty thousand. You know interviews I've had said, you know, as I said the poker game. You know, this one sounds a little better, I'm going to buy this one. This one sounds a little worse. I'm going to sell

this one. It's sort of like tasting. I'm a chef making the master stew that everyone is going to hopefully love. And you know, but you've got to taste the stew all the time. It needs a little more pepper, is a little more solid, a little less of this. You know. That's sort of the date at a operation. But hopefully, you know, every year I can find you know, one name, you know, maybe one name a year that I can

make a large position. So I have so many questions about that exact thing, and I'll ask a short one and then a more nuts and bolts longer question. So you're doing, over the course of your career tens of thousands of company calls, how finely tuned is your BS detector? And let me let me phrase it a little more nicely.

When you're speaking to a manager, do you get a pretty immediate sense of Hey, this guy is telling a great story because there's a really something substantial underneath, Or hey, this guy's a salesman and he's selling me a line of stuff that I'm not I'm not biting, Like, how how do you read people in those calls? Yeah? No, Verry, you made a very good point earlier that you know,

your emotional quotation is very important in this business. But I would say sitting across the table and asking some very basic questions can give you a very good sense of management. You know, are they humble, are they honest? Are they willing to you know, be realistic? But you know you have to understand, as I said, Okay, you know this management has traveled halfway around the world to

talk to Fidelity. You know, yeah, maybe we are the largest shareholder, or maybe we could be the largest shareholder, but there's a reason why this management team is here. Why is it? You know? And often you know, there is a reason. You know, they want to do a secondary offering and raise money. They want to do an acquisition, and therefore they want to hire stock price so they have a richer currency to do the acquisition. But you know, I would say that the management teams that we talked

to are honest. And you know, once in a while, you know, different people do tell the stories more humbly or more arrogantly. But you want to see, as I said earlier, you know, management with passion. I would say, one way to reduce the risk of you know, the arrogant CEO is to watch how the entire management team interacts and ideally, you see, you know, more than just one great leader, but an entire team, you know, the CEO,

the CFO, the cso. You know, does the entire c suite sing the same you know song from the hymn book? You know, are they all on the same page? Do they work well together? Do they seem to you know? I remember, you know again it all goes back to you know, I was the retail analyst. I'm you know, at a dinner with the great Sam Walton. You know,

one of the you know, truly great you know, post war. Yeah, and you know, people are asking all sorts of questions and Sam was like, well, you know, Jack Schumacher, why don't you answer that one? Don Soder quest why don't you take that one? Paul Carter, why don't you take that one? David Glass, why don't you take that one? And you know, he was a very effective leader, and you know, you just realized that this was a very

powerful culture. You know, we're going to lower prices and you know sort of enable you know, middle class Americans and rural Americans, you know, deliver better life by you know, sort of being more efficient, you know, embracing you know, you think back and again I didn't appreciate it at the time, but Sam and his team were aware of salt prices New Price Club, which was the membership warehouse club.

They copied it or experimented themselves. You know, they were open to a new idea and they you know, started the Sam's Club business. And I think with Sam's then they sort of learned about the food business, which became very important, and started opening supercenters, you know, and they were aware of Carrefour in France and I don't know how it's pronounced m E I j E r S.

Which was a hypermarket up and the Upper Midwest. So you know, again you want to see managements that are open to new ideas, open to adjacent markets, willing to experiment. You know. I like the management that you know, we're going to try a few things. They may not work, they may not You know, I did really well early

on with George Sherman at dana Her. You know, and George used to always talk about, you know, one business reviews and the dana Her business system, and you know, he had studied the great plants, you know, the manufacturing techniques in Japan, the Toyota business system. Dr oh no, and then he went to Korea. But you know, I was like, George, you know, tell me about this, and you know, chucka chucka, which was I think the either the Japanese or Korean term for justin time inventory and

the idea of reducing waste. Garry, this is like, you know, waste his time, it's waste his inventory. Waste is like if you have to move from you know, one part of the kitchen to the other part of the kitchen, you know, you just sort of say, this guy can go deep and you know, so, yes, there is some arrogance for a successful executive and you want to be careful about that. But again, when you know, what I've what I've loved during this COVID period is to be

able to zoom with management teams. And there are a law proportion, frankly of American management teams that have emphasized and prioritize the health and safety of their colleagues. And it's been you know, very inspiring to hear. You know, these these great executives understand that they have to be on the front line. They have to make sure their

people are are safe. And a lot of the companies have invested a lot of money, you know, in protective gear and you know, thinking hard about the return to work and you know, so anyway, yes it is a concern. And again I would urge your listeners YouTube these executives decide if you like their arc. You know, how did you come to this company? And you know what was

the great insight? And I mean, let's let's remember, you know, Bernie Marcus was fired by Handy Dan and you know he started the home depot in his forties, so You don't have to be a college dropout at you know, twenty years old to start the latest tech company. You experience matters, and if you are dedicated and you know, have the right skill set, you can you know, be a great success later in life. I do like smart, motivated,

passionate folks who have done it before. As I said, you know, what have you done for me in the last five years? What are you going to do in the future. I mean, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg came out on the I P O road Show and you know, you know, what's the right question for a twenty seven year old who I think at the time had three quarters of a billion, seven hundred and fifty million daily

active users. You know, it's just like what you have accomplished is remarkable, you know, and then try to learn from these folks and anyway, and you want to try to go ahead? Yeah, no, no, no, I mean it was I remember Mark showed up in a T shirt and a hoodie and I was like, that's great, that's what we want. We want somebody to be who they are.

But I will tell you that I projected my Facebook account, which had like thirty friends onto you know, the conference room wall, just to try to make him feel a little more comfortable. It was just like, we're engaged with our product. And when Evan's eagle from Snapchat came public, the analysts made a Snapchat story when he came in and we showed it to Evan and he loved it.

You know, you gotta kind of try to connect with these executives at their level, you know, like when I was the stores analysts and even now as a fund manager, when these companies come around, it's just like, we should go shopping together. Let's go to your store together. You don't want to be in a conference room. I don't want to be necessarily be in a conference room. Let's go out there. And Jason Weiner was one of my

close colleagues. He's done a great job with some of the Fidelity funds and growth funds, and you know, for a while there, every time management was coming in early and sort of the early days of the internet, he was going onto their website and it's like, you know, you talk about you know, what management says and what they're doing is like this all sounds great, but I don't see any of those initiatives on the front page. Of your website, and it was just like, oh, you know,

why not a good question? Yeah, so anyway, but the other point, Barry and your listeners have to keep in mind that whatever management says, there is accountability. You know, every quarter. You know, Warren Buffett doesn't like quarterly earnings. You know, Jamie Diamond doesn't like quarterly earnings. But the reality is every quarter you have more fundamental data by which to at least analyze what has happened. And every industry is cyclical. Every industry is affected by COVID, the

global financial crisis, or the Internet bubble. But it should make sense. Oh god, you know, Argentina, oil prices spiked in the last quarter. Therefore our raw material costs went through the roof. Our gross margins were down. But guess what, it's a two quarter phenomenon, and we're going to be back to more normal level. You know. The airline, Oh god, oil prices, you know, jet fuel went way up. Our margins were down, but that's going to affect everybody in

our industry. So we're gonna be relatively okay. We're still expanding. We still have you know, a low cost operation because we only use the same bowing seven three seven's and the other guys are going to struggle blah blah blah. So it makes sense. I remember meeting the great Herb caliher and I think one of my questions one, you know again, Fidelity is a great place to man of money.

For whatever reason, Herb came in and everybody was at a tech conference or everybody was at a healthcare conference. I think there were two other investors and me in the meeting, and I was like Herb, the gray Warren Buffett says, you know he got you know, he lost a lot of money in US air How can you make money in the airline industry? He said, Warren better than the wrong airline. But we talked a little bit about the idea of flexibility and you know what his

managements supposed to be doing. Management has to pay attention. And he gave some example that when Midway Airlines was opening up or there were some new gates, they called and said, hey, someone canceled on us. We've got six gates. You know, it was like a Thursday afternoon. But do you want them? You gotta let us know A S A P. And Herb and his team like pulled an all nighter and by Friday afternoon they said, we want them, and here are the terms that we want, and they negotiated.

But you know, that's sort of what an active manager should be doing. We you know, you have to pay attention and hopefully you bet big when you see a big opportunity. Quite fascinating. So well, You've mentioned so many fascinating stories about so many companies Walmart and Starbucks and Costco and Amazon and Southwest and Home Depot. I gotta ask how many of these companies are you still long or more generally, when you find a company like a Home Depot or a Starbucks, how long do you stay

with them? And how can you tell when something is just a temporary wobble or a more significant threat to the business model. That's a great question, Barry. And again, we're always learning, we're always trying to improve, and I've made so many mistakes over the years. But I'd say maybe in the last fifteen years I realized that lowering my turnover would change my process to think longer term and therefore sort of raise the bar of the companies

that I was buying. To say, hey, if you think about it, Verry, if I am going to own the stock for the next ten years, it better be a really high quality company, and I better have a high degree of conviction that the company is going to be bigger and better in the next five years. So maybe I want to do another couple of months of research to make sure I really understand the company's competitive advantages.

I really know the management team and the entire you know, culture of the company and why they're going to do so well, and better understand their product roadmap and the innovation and the competitive sets. So that's helped me a lot. And so you know, I've I've tried to stay in

companies and not be faked out. And sort of again, what is sort of market noise, you know, worried about some tweet or you know, some concern about inflation or you know, the dollar moving this way or that way, which is sort of irrelevant in most cases to the strength and long term profitability of a company. I would say, and I'd urge your listeners, and I'd urge you to think about this idea of when in doubt, check the fundamentals.

When in doubt, listen to the latest quarterly webcast. When in doubt, look at the latest presentation to investors when in doubt. You know, if you were if you can call the company, that's really intriguing. And I have to ask you. Most people go out, they buy a thousand shares of stock. They can jump all in or all out very easily. You're obviously swinging around a lot more weight. How do you enter any given stock? Is it a position that you put a tone in the water and

build over time? Do you have a specific strategy? I know some people like to add to what's working and subtract to what's not. How do you own an Amazon or a home depot? Is it? Is it a slow

gradual process or what's the method behind that? Yeah? As I mentioned earlier, Barry, we all would love to have huge amount of conviction, you know, And I think about some of the great investors I know, you know, the Bill Miller's, the Henry ellen Bogan's, you know, I think they have more conviction than I do, or they get

it earlier. I'm trying to improve. And you know, often it can be a meeting where you just you know, meet someone who's running in an important division or a smaller division, and you're like, wow, I was out at Taypal and I met someone there who I thought was

really exceptional. And again, when you can visit with the management team and get beyond you know, the CFO or the treasurer or even the CEO, and meet some of the people who were in the field who you truly know the products set and the competitive set, you say, wow, you know this makes sense to me. So anyway, whatever it takes to get conviction. And you know, I've told the analysts if you don't understand something, tell the management you want to fly out to headquarters, and you know,

spend more time. It's okay, you know, no one the light bulb. Sometimes I'm spending a lot of time when I'm talking to management. They're like, well, why don't you guys own more stock? And I've got to say, you know, I made a mistake. But you know, one of the great lessons over thirty years, Barry, and this is important for all your listeners. If stock has doubled or even tripled, you have not missed it. And I don't like to give all my secrets, but if a stock has doubled

or tripled, you have not missed it. You have to say, you know, have the mental white out that Peter Rentroys talks about for the past and say what is going to happen in the future, Because let's step back Bill Gates, Michael Deal. They didn't sell after the first double, they didn't sell after the first triple. So yes, I do think it's an excellent idea to say I would like to own this stock for the next decade or two decades because I understand, you know, the niche that the

company is fulfilling. I think that they're in a big market. I think the management team is going to continue to innovate and continue to grow, make rational decisions about expanding and developing new products, and they understand their customer. They wanted to light their customer or blah blah blah. So the reality is, Barry that I was influenced by Warren Buffett. I was with Warren and he invited Fidelity to do an MBA day in Omaha, and you know, we were all.

I was given a chance to ask him a question. I said, Warren, I'm managing a hundred billion dollars, what advice would you give me? And he said, when you have a good idea that big and if you look back and you know we were influenced Joel and I were influenced by Peter Lynch, who had like a thousand stocks and in Magellan. And Joel still runs with a huge number of stocks and low price stock fund. You know, he's he's an exceptional intellect and can handle that. But

the number of stocks and counter fund fell. I literally looked at I think I might have had five hundred or six hundred stocks at the time, and I just said, let's look at the bottom three hundred and say up or out. And I looked at the top fifty. And Peter always talks about this. You know, the best stocks are probably ox you already own, you need to bet bigger. So I was more concentrated, you know, but you mentioned

earlier what you know, what's really happening right now? Technology has been a massive tidal way the Internet and software great market reason, you know said it best software is eating the world. It's it's more efficient, it makes less mistakes. It's enabling you know, people all over the world to connect with each other, and so the software of the sort. The short answer is the software industry is growing rapidly. It's highly profitable, and the you know, many parts of

the tech industry are not capital intensive. The great Apple. You know, Steve Jobs is a genius to convince HANNAHI Fox con to make the phones for him, so he earns a high margin and he doesn't have to spend a lot of money building factories. But you know, you think about what you know Amazon has done generating a lot of free cash flow. Apples generating a huge amount of free cash flow. Facebook is generating a huge amount of free cash flow. Microsoft is generating a huge amount

of free cash flow technology. The tech industry is knowledge based its hire margin and for the moment, you know, it's still growing because it's a global industry. Those are three of your biggest holdings you just ran through there, ye, Facebook and Microsoft. So someone I mentioned to a friend I was interviewing you, and I said, if you're going to ask, and he's a tech geek uh and runs a tech focused hedge fund. I said, if you're gonna ask will down Off a question about technology, what would

it be? And he surprised me with why the S and P five hundred as a benchmark? Aren't you really more of a nastac one hundred guy? And I thought that was kind of an interesting observation. You know, there's a lot of truth to that. I am much more of a growth investor. I am, in my opinion, a capital appreciation fund with a growth bias. So I do

have a go anywhere a large grow anywhere component. And it's just the technology has been such a powerful tidal wave that I've probably stayed in technology longer and bigger than you know, I would have expected. Benchmarks are important, and Fidelity, for legal reasons, does not want to change the benchmark. It's actually sort of time consuming and cumbersome to change benchmark. It probably makes hard enough to beat

as is. Yeah, you know, I mean there are some of my larger, more institutional investors who do look at you know, the Russell one thousand growth, you know, versus contra, and there I'm not as frankly, the performance has not been as good. And I don't know if if my bench was the Russell one thousand growth, if I would be even bigger in some of these names. But so interesting, you know, yeah, I mean, I it is what it is.

I do think benchmarks are important. I mean what what Larry Fink and you know, John Bogel did with passive investing has been really good for the individual investor. You know, you don't want to be in a situation when you know, oh my god, Dan off Reinholds has lost their fastball.

I'm gonna sell the beauty of the index. If you just buy an index is I'm gonna own the index and I'm gonna I'm gonna buy the index every year with my four oh one K contribution, and you know, when I retire, I'm hopefully're going to have a nice nest egg to retire with. As opposed to speaking with individual funds, you've gotta you know, you're worried, and you know human beings worry a lot. So I'm worrying a

lot for all of my investors. Berry trying my best, so so I bet they're worried about when you're going to retire. You've been there for thirty years. Do you have any plan on leaving any time soon? Or are you gonna run Contra for another thirty years? You know? The stock answer, Barry is that I feel I can add value, and as long as I feel I can add value, I'm going to continue to run Contra fund. As I said, Fidelity is a wonderful place to manage money.

We're hiring new analysts, young analysts all the time every year, and it's those young analysts that provide extra entergy g new insights, sort of an openness to new ideas. You know, what do I know from Tinder and match dot com? But you know, if I can ask the young analysts, you know, what phones they're using, what apps they're using, you know, tell me about this technology. You know, again, if you think Airbnb is going to go public, you and I if are we going to sleep on somebody

else's couch or in somebody else's apartment? Uber? Are you going to get into somebody's car? Often when you hear the story for the first time, you're like, no way. But you have to keep an open mind. And by working with my younger colleagues, they helped me stay open and you know, try to embrace change in the new ideas.

And you know, when I think about the future, you know, whatever power artificial intelligence and machine learning, they're going to make this great software industry even more productive and even better. The intersection of software and healthcare. If you think about all the you know, hopefully the great advances that are going to be made and health and preventive medicine through

you know, leveraging big data and AI. It's just remarkable and you know, optimistic, and I think, you know, I think the US as a leader in the software industry and internet technology. You know, when you think about virtual reality and artificial reality and you know, ambient computing. I mean this whole idea of Alexa. You know Jeff Bezos, you know, it's a great experiment er. He's a great inventor and to you know, be able to walk into

a room and talk to the computer. And as I understand it, pretty soon you're going to be walking down you know, you're in New York. You're walking down Madison Avenue. Oh, Barry, we know you like frappuccinos. There's a Starbucks around the corner. You can get ten percent off. Right now, it sounds like i've scene out of the movie Minority Report. Yeah, yeah, you can imagine it's going to happen, you know. And then of course all the innovation around the green industry

and e vs and solar and wind. I think that it's going to be these US companies and and Silicon Valley and the entrepreneurs are going to find better ways to you know to do things and hopefully consumers are going to benefit, but sounds optimistic. As investors, you know, we have this great opportunity to partner with you know, Elon Musk or you know other truly exceptional Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Bennie Off. I mean these these are

truly exceptional people. And you know here we are, you know, John Q. Public can be a partner by a share I know I only have you another few minutes, another three minutes, so let me plow through my speed round questions and let's see if we can get through these quickly. What are you watching these days? Any favors on Netflix or Amazon Prime? Yeah, I don't have a lot of time, Barry, but I did really like Fata, which is uh yeah, I like the intensity, I guess. I guess I'm a

sucker for for thrillers. And you know I liked House the Cards, And you know, I'm a big shareholder in Netflix, and I think what Netflix has done is truly exceptional. And if I had to do I would I would just google the you know, Netflix top tent. I've enjoyed a lot of that stuff, but Father is my favorite of all time. Let's talk about books. What are you reading now and what are some of your favorites. Yeah, during COVID, I really enjoyed a book called City of Thieves,

which is about Leningrad during the war. A good friend recommended it. And now right now I'm reading this biography, the one volume biography of Churchill. I'm forgetting the author, but it was published and like two two or three years ago, and I mean it's just remarkable. His parents sort of ignored him, but he was an exceptional talent.

And again, Barry, one insight is if you find a CEO or an entrepreneur who's exceptionally smart, like Winston Churchill was exceptionally smart, you know they're gonna possibly do really exceptional things. And you know he made he made a lot of mistakes, but you know, when his time, yeah, you know, when the time came, he was the right guy.

So you know, one thing. Over thirty years, you try to collect executives and sometimes their sectors out of favor, but when they come into favor, the you know, the best of breed companies shine. What sort of advice would you give a recent college graduate who was interested in a career in asset management? I think you've gotta, you know, learn to swim by jumping in the water, so you know, start a paper portfolio and start investing. Ideally, you know,

gets your lawnmowing savings or whatever savings you've got. And even with you know, a thousand dollars, you can buy a couple of shares of of your favorite companies. You've got to get in there. But the access to information has changed so much, Barry in the last thirty years. When I started as a retailing hosts of Fidelity, my first job was like write letters to the companies, send me the investment packet, send me the last two annual reports, and you know, the last quarterly report it in the

ten queue. I mean, it took like two weeks to get started. And now you know, it takes two seconds to google, you know, IBM Investor Relations. You know you can YouTube the new CEO. You can do your work sort of instantaneously. So you know, you just gotta get in there and do some research. You know, listen to the webcast and you know, place your bets. So I I think, you know, you just got to get in there and do it. And you know, not everybody wants to,

but I was a sort of a mediocre analyst. And you know, over time, by doing I have learned what works for me. And the only way you're going to learn your style and you know what works for you is to actually do it. And you know you've got to be accepting. You know, mistakes are a big part of this business. Try to learn from your mistakes. You know the great George van der Huyden who was a great mentor of mine, and I learned a lot from George.

You know, he talked about keeping an investment diary on one little you know, on one little index card or you know whatever the the digital version of index card. Why am I buying the stock? You know, I'm gonna buy you know x y Z company at fifty dollars of share because they're expanding into India. India is a

huge opportunity. I think, you know, they're earning two dollars right now, but if they continue to grow outside of India by ten to fift in India ads you know, another you know million of revenue at a certain margin, I think they can go from two dollars of earnings to five dollars in earnings. Let me let me ask you our final question, now, what do you know about the world of investing today? You wish you knew when

you first joined thirty years ago, Barry. We've we've talked a lot about sort of best of breed great entrepreneurs. I guess I wish I had invested bigger with you know, these superior managers when they were younger, and you know, earlier on. You know, if I had met Sam Walton when he went public and I had that you know, insight to say, wow, this is an exceptional story. But what's so hard, Barry, is when you first meet the company, as I said earlier, with Airbnb or Uber, it's like

what are you talking about? You know? Or you know, there's always the skeptic and you have to try to anticipate and see around the corner. And it's not easy. But that's what I would I would encourage people to, you know, keep thinking about the future, keep thinking about trends, stay within your circle of competence, and stay flexible and continue to cast to wide net. You've really got to

look everywhere. I mean, if you think about what what's happened in China, you know, I think China has grown their GDP ten percent a year for the last thirty years. You know, it's going to overtake the US, you know, probably in the next decade. I mean, just it's remarkable what compounding can do. And you know you've just try to anticipate and project out into the future implications for you know, what you're hearing right now, and you know, just try to stay informed. But you know, there's a

lot of opportunity. Yeah, it's really great. Thanks Will for being so generous with your time. That was Will then off he runs Fidelities contra funds. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll be sure and check out any of the previous three or so we've had over the past six years. You can find that at iTunes, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, wherever you're finer podcasts are sold. We love your comments, feedback in suggestions right to us at M I B Podcasts

at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure to check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion, give us a review on Apple iTunes. Sign up for our daily reads at Ridholtz dot com. Follow me on Twitter at Ridholtz. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that helps us put these conversations together each week. Reggie Basil is our audio engineer, Atico val Bron is our project manager. Michael Batnick is my head of research. Our producer and booker is Michael Boyle. I'm Barry Ridholts.

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