Investing Unscripted

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Business Brew. I am your host, Bill Brewster. As always, thank you for your time and attention. Much appreciated. Much love to all y'all. This episode features Jason and Jeff of the Investing Unscripted podcast. You are about to listen to three people that were completely unscripted. Just hop on a mic and have a conversation. So do remember, everything is for entertainment purposes only. Nothing is to be taken

seriously. If we say anything that you find interesting, you should go to the source. Do your own work, do your own due diligence, consult your financial advisors before making investment decisions. And you know this isn't investment advice. Half of what we say we might change our mind on. You should know the drill. Either way, I hope it's worth your time. A number of laughs in this one, so I think it will be worth your time. All right, enjoy the show after the sponsor read.

Shout out to tritrada.com and fiscal.aitritrada.com/brew fiscal dot AI forward slash brew. Help me, help you help me. OK, thanks. Bye. This episode is sponsored by Trata TRATA. You can try Trata at Try trata.com, TRYTRA, ta.com/brew for a free trial. Trata is a transcript library analyst to analyst. You are going to hear conversations between two informed individuals or you were going to read. You can listen, but there are it's informed conversations

between two analysts. I happen to like that because I think it gets some of the fluff out of some of the more traditional transcript libraries and you get to the point. So I find it, I find it to be useful. I've been using it a lot and I, I think that they highlight some

very interesting things. I also one thing that I enjoy very much about it is you can read clearly we are interested in this company, but we do not do not own it because of XYZ or, you know, whatever comes up. But I do think that it helps frame what some of the discussion in the stock is doing. So I find that particularly interesting. Anyway, Tritrada forward slash tritrada.com/brew for a free trial.

Check it out. This episode is also sponsored by Fiscal dot AI. Fiscal dot AI forward slash brew will get you 15% off any paid plan automatically. It will be applied at checkout. You should check out the episode with Braden that gives the long pitch the sort of prosumer level, for lack of a better term. Fantastic data, super quick uploads. They just got Canadian filings in there, so if you hate messing with Cdr, that's a great use case for you.

The pitch I'm going to make today is if you are an enterprise and you need data, Braden and his team think that they can save you a bunch of money if you're using a provider like FactSet or something of similar quality. Braden and the teams, the data is high quality, It is completely auditable. You can get it much cheaper than you can elsewhere. Check it out and use fiscal dot AI forward slash brood to get 15% off while you save your business money. The use of AI in in his process.

That was a good episode. Yep, yeah, it was.

We had started doing the same stuff, a lot of the same stuff on our own, and we knew he was into it. Plus he's so fucking thirsty. Hopes that I say that out loud. He's very good at the the attention capture game in a positive way. I'm not saying that in a negative light. I think he his his message is one that's worthy of promotion, but he's quite good at it. I agree with that. Yeah, no, I've known. I've known Brian for like 11-12 years. His heart is in the right place. It is.

That's. Right. He's got that, that like play the algorithm, do the thing, but I just can't bring it out of myself. So yeah, it's. OK, that you you are jealous. A little jealous. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, it happens, man. Jealousy is tough, you know, But it does run a lot of the world, so. Fairpoint. Fairpoint yeah. So, So what I mean, what's you want to tell people a little bit about your podcast to start and then and then we'll get into whatever discussion. This is a bit of investing

unscripted. So we'll see how it goes. We've already had Jason's already left. So that's how good this episode's going to be. Well, honestly, that's an upgrade. I'm. Done. Yeah. You think? Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of banter between the two of you, huh? Well, so all right, here's here's the that's a perfect segue into talking about what we try to accomplish. So the reason we started the podcast is we were constantly texting each other about stock

stuff and investing things. And I reached out to Jason. I was like, let's start a podcast because we both have a lot to say and I think it'd be a good conversation. We have a good rapport, we have a good vibe, and we wanted the show to sound like exactly what we're doing now. Right here's three guys speaking into microphones in front of the screen. But about stuff we're interested in, it's not really. Familiar with this format.

Yeah, it's not superscripted. Like maybe there's an outline we're going to talk about, but there's no preconceived thing we're bringing to the table. It it should sound like we all met up at a bar and just started talking about a thing we're interested in, which is investing. And we don't want to be gurus. We're not trying to have the answers. We're not trying to tell you buy

this stock, sell that stock. We're not trying to say we have this the correct 5 point way to invest in the market. We're not trying to sell a book. It really is just we're nerd to like this. Want to talk about it and be honest about what's hard about it, what we struggle with, the, the way we've evolved as investors, all that kind of

stuff and. Also. To the degree that it has resonated, I think that's why. Jason, let Jeff talk. Yeah, also. I have the perfect answers. OK. All right. There you go, Jeff. Shut up. Thank you. Did you just interrupt me for the hell of a Jason? Yeah, that's right. I'm like hanging. It's a cliffhanger for the perfect answers and then he's just waiting for dramatic effect. Oh yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Oh, that's why you're on the show, because you have the perfect answers.

Right. Interesting, I've never had that problem. I mean, it's a heavyweight to bear, but you know. Yeah, it's nice. So do you like when you read something on Gemini, do you correct it and say you're hallucinating? Because I'm omniscient, I know this. I'm the worst about that, Yeah, I'm the absolute worst. I we've got a house full of Alexa, the Amazon echoes and we switched because they they started actually feeding it with an LLM couple of months ago and it switched over to we switched

over to that. It's part of like the there is a beta test. It's pretty close to consumer Eddie when we switched over, but like it'll just randomly change stuff like WGBH is the local PBS station up here, radio station. And in the morning part of my routines, I go in the kitchen, I'm making my son's breakfast and kind of getting snacks and stuff together for the day and I walk in and I say Alexa, play WGBH. It works fine. It actually works better than it used to until like 3 days ago.

It thinks I'm telling it to turn on GBH, which is the PBSTV station. Like something randomly changed somewhere. It's. Probably your stupid accent. So stop it. Well, it understood the stupid accent earlier, so I don't know it. It did GBH play GBH. Yeah, there you go. You got to say it like that. But I told it, I said I'm not telling you to play the TV station, It's WGBH, the radio station. And it says, oh, I got my wires crossed, I'll remember that. But of course it forget the next day.

You almost need to sign into the Alexa, like whatever the home screen is and just type it in. I don't even know if that exists, but that's with Gemini. You know you can like create rules. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's supposed to. Amazon says it's supposed to learn. We'll, we'll see. I'm going to give it some time. There are other things it does that are a lot better, but yeah, I'm the absolute worst. I actually have a shirt my cousin got me that says I hike,

I drink beer, I know things. There you go. Yeah, it's not bad. That's a pretty decent life. Not bad, right? Yeah. Some of those things are true. I do drink beer. My kid and I were talking about I was trying to figure out he likes the youngest likes this math YouTube and I was trying to find him another one like a similar channel. So I said OK this might be like a good project for Gemini and I brought it up in the middle looked at me and he goes is that

ChatGPT? And I said, no, it's Gemini. And he goes, well, what's the difference between ChatGPT in Gemini? And I said, well, this one's owned by Google. And he's like, OK, so it's pretty much ChatGPT. I was like, yeah, I guess so. And that, you know, through the eyes of a 10 year old, everything's commoditized. Yeah, yeah.

It might be just that might be the smart insight it probably. Is, I think it is the smart insight. I mean, look at to the extent that ChatGPT has become the verb we all use. I mean, they, they have it right. And it's the Kleenex, it's the Band-Aid of, of what, you know, whatever, it's the Zoom. But I, I think Zoom's a good example of, I thought that was actually going to be a thing that made that, that stock be a

better investment. You know, if you bought it during the 20/20/21, it did work for a bit, but it turns out that, you know, having every computer in the world already having Teams installed, it was just a, a hill to a hill you could not get over as, as the, the better product. I think Zoom's a better product. But yeah, we still say Zoom. Like I, I say people, hey, let's go on a Zoom. And it doesn't matter what the platform is. I say we're using Zoom. I hate when people send me a

teams invite. It's it is a garbage platform. It's. Awful. It's so bad. I kind of judge the people that send it. Yeah, especially if they don't work for like a big corporation. Yeah. Yeah, no one should say willingly. Use Teams. So it's kind of a that's yeah, you got some issues that you should probably go to shrink over. Yeah, I have to use it when I work with a, a government agency in here in my state. And it's not their fault, right? They that's just what they have

to use. And I so I can excuse it, whatever it's what you're told to do. But yeah, personal use of it, I just don't get. I just don't get. So we mentioned, we mentioned Zoom. I have to throw this out there because I always do this, Jeff, can confirm. Interesting little data points about Zoom, not something a lot of people would realize. The stock since the IPO, since the debut trading debut is up 20%. That was back in 2019. Yeah, mid 2019 free cash flow is

up almost 1700%. Well, there's minuscule then what's that tiny basis? How much is revenue up? I mean, revenue's up 700%. There we go. The stock's up 20%. Yeah, well, it turns out valuation does matter, you know, But the conversely, I mean, Once Upon a time I had a bet with Austin Lieberman about this thing, and I said the QVC was going to perform better. And I'm pretty sure the QVC is down 90% and Zoom is down like 85. So he won the war of attrition.

He won the toilet bowl. Yeah, it's and you know curate was like trading it. I don't, I forget now, but maybe three times cash flow and Zoom was trading at a bajillion times cash flow and they both imploded. So what's the lesson there? In the long run, everybody dies. That's the lesson. That's right, the the take away

is just index. Yeah, well, you know, The thing is I Zoom's a fast Zoom was a good learning experience for me because I, I, I forget if we talked about this when you were on our pod Bill, but you know, I've been an investor in the sense that I've had work retirement accounts for 25 years, but I only started buying individual stocks in 2020. And I bought Zoom before I kind of knew what I was doing. And I, I was convinced at that point that it's such a good

product. Like I was a user of it and I could see how well it was, how, how well it worked and, and how successful it navigated, you know, basically the whole world jumping on its platform in a week. And then I, I, I learned very quickly, like you can't get caught up in the story or how well the product works, right? The whole lesson of a good product doesn't always make a

good investment. But yeah, to Jason's point, some of the metrics when you look at them, if you, if you were blinded to the name of the company, you would certainly guess it was up more than 20% since it's IPO.

Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, that one was a wild one. I remember that one, the 1/4 that they reported and the I, I mean, just the growth in the free cash flow was unlike anyone that had ever seen. Now I guess what, according to the fiscal AI machine, it's trading at 12.7 times cash flow. So wouldn't that be interesting if it turns out to be a good stock? Yeah, that's the thing.

I mean, but I've been looking at it and trying to find the opportunity for it to be like the deep value, hey, this can be a compounder over the next four or five years, buy back some stock, grow cash flow, grow cash flow per share, but through those buybacks even faster, maybe pay a dividend at some point plus gets a multiple expansion. Like I've looked and looked and looked. But like I remember when they announced that big like the big stock buyback program, it was like $5 billion.

It's probably been over a year ago, year and a half or so ago and like in the first two quarters after they announced it, the share count went up. That's tough. That you're not doing it right. I mean, I, I get, I appreciate that their founder has been smart about not rushing out to buy growth, you know, and buying $0.90 of growth for a dollar. But they haven't bought any growth. Like they haven't delivered any value, right?

Sitting on the money, canceling out dilution, barely growing revenue against inflation, and clearly like losing enterprise customers to Microsoft. Well, that's the thing like this goes back to my best product argument. They don't, you don't need to do as well as Zoom does for 90% of what enterprises are using video conferencing for.

You know, it's can I, can I see and hear you like all the stuff they've added, like the annotating slides and the, and I, I just, I, I don't think the use case is that compelling. And by the way, you know, this, this is what I think really killed them during the pandemic. You know, I'm guessing Microsoft didn't put a whole lot of resources into Teams.

And I assume that because it's a trash product, but I'm sure Zoom becoming the place everyone went during the pandemic got them to put a little more attention and make Zooms at least passable. And then once it became a little better, I think if you're an enterprise, you're already paying for it. You just go like, we're going to use Teams. You know, I'm not going to, why would I pay for Zoom? And I, I don't think they're ever going to get over that.

I, I, I, I wouldn't be shocked if someone just acquires them. Not necessarily like Microsoft to become what Teams is, but I don't know some other big conglomerate type business just buys them. So they're just a feature within a different companies, you know, pro portfolio versus a standalone company. I just don't see how it

outperforms from here. Yeah. Well, to your point, what number of enterprise customers has decreased from 220,000 in January of 24 to 185,000, which is not the direction that you want to go? Stock buybacks don't usually offset that. In fairness, they did change how they calculate that number a little bit, OK. I believe partly was like legitimate. Yeah, it was companies that they had their sales team engaged with that really weren't big

enough. They should have been an online just going through their website to manage their account but probably also to wallpaper a little bit over. Yeah. I mean to your point customers greater than 100,000 in revenue is growing and actually reasonably substantially, but it is not a time.

Here's the thing, like I, I think we can look back like one of the lessons that I've learned with companies like this is it like history is like littered with examples of how this sort of thing has played out where just to your, like you were saying, Jeff, just because your product is better doesn't mean that there's value in paying more for it. And distribution always wins, I think is the big, the big lesson

that I've learned. And that's like the Microsoft case versus Zoom. And one of the earliest examples that I know of where distribution wins is I don't even know if you guys are really old enough to remember Betamax versus VHS. No, I'm not nearly as old as you so. Yeah, you are really old. Just like incredibly old. Incredibly old. I don't remember Betamax, but I do remember VHS. So of course videotapes for those that are. I remember laser discs. Yes.

Yeah, they were. Those did not win, and they were theoretically better. Yeah, well, they were all so gigantic. They were. Massive. And that's like a convenience factor thing playing in. So Betamax and VHS Betamax, these were both cassette tape, videotape formats. Betamax cassettes were smaller. They were about 1/3 smaller. They were higher resolution. They had better audio quality.

It was the better products. But VHS was backed by like 2/3 of the studios, including the two largest movie studios at the time. And that was, I mean, that was the nail in the coffin right there. That's why the better product died in the marketplace, because the the films that people wanted to watch, they wanted to rent from Blockbuster, they wanted to buy, they were on VHS. They weren't available on Betamax. So I mean, that's, that's just the reality. That's how these things play out.

And of course, Laserdisc. I mean, those things were like the size of a large pizza. Yeah, I do remember watching Top Gun on laserdisc at my buddy's house, and that was sweet. You remember having to flip it over to watch the second-half of the movie. I do. Yeah. It was sweet. I loved it. It was great. Yeah. You can hold. Now I'm getting nostalgic. 500 copies of Top Gun in higher quality on this little thing that I'm holding right here. Yeah, but that looks a lot nerdier.

Oh, totally, 100 percent, 100%. And anyone can do that now. You know, back then, not everybody had the access to laser disc, myself included. That's why it was such a treat

when I'd watch it at his house. Man, we were talking about something and then I got think of the Top Gun and now it's gone. It must have been super important. My, my big thought. No, I think it was about distribution. Oh, you guys have a thought on the liquor companies Speaking of distribution and winning and and maybe challenger brands getting attacked. This no is a fine answer.

You don't have to have thoughts. It is a. It's a I'm trying to figure out if this is just a cycle or if this is a durable trend of reduction in consumption. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Santori like that's then they cut a bunch of their bourbon production. Yeah, well, bourbon's way over over inventoried. There's too much of it. Way over. Inventoried. I'm doing my best to to try to resolve that, but. Out there production, yeah, you're doing, you're doing your part there.

I mean the beer. The beer industry's a mess. It's I, this is the same thing I'm struggling with. I 'cause you know, the part, part of me is like, we've been, we as a species have been drinking for what, thousands of years? Yeah. So I, I find it hard to believe that we'll stop, but I, maybe it is just going to be a lot less. Maybe it is a durable downward trend. But in that case, I, I think everything just sort of normalizes and we get back to

where we were. It's just the unknown of, of if it's, if it's going to keep decreasing or level off it at some point. I think what's a bigger, what's really interesting is when and if we get, because you know, the, the, the thing that is not slowing down or that is increasing is use of cannabis. So I'm curious when and if that becomes federally legal and the, you know, the doors are blown off that that's got to impact drinking, I would think.

I mean, the, the people that I know in in my life who used to drink a lot and now take gummies or smoke weed, they just, they hardly ever drink anymore because it's, it's, they prefer the other thing. And, and I don't know, maybe that's a generational shift. I mean that that is the thing that is very different about now versus the last thousand years in terms of like how easy it is to get get it and all that kind

of stuff. Yeah. Here's some other things that correlate with those trends that frankly concern me a little bit. The use of social media, of course, has spiked. Mental illness levels have have also continued to increase. Maybe some of that is the fact that we just diagnosed those sorts of things better than we did 20 or 30 years ago. But also like the the rates, the unmarried rates are higher. Men are going to college less, men are getting married less. Women have historically married

up like at at higher rates. That's not happening as much just because there's not as many well educated young men growing up in the world. And I just, I do think that there's maybe something too young people just aren't going out enough to bars, getting drunk and getting laid. Like, I know that's kind of a crass way to put it, but like, like that's the social lubrication and being proximate

with people. I, I'm concerned that we have a generational shift that's losing that and those other things that they're consuming more of instead are absolutely not filling that same place in like society's need. And like, that concerns me as a person and as a father, but that also concerns me as an investor and somebody that wants to see the economy continue to grow and businesses generate, you know, growing earnings over the long, long term.

So to here's my take on that. I, I agree those are trends that are heading in the wrong direction, but that feels to me like a pendulum that will swing back at some point. Like, I think we're already starting to see the very, very beginnings of a realization that both cell phone, you know, smartphones and social media were sort of societal tests or like experiments with no control, with no control group.

Like we just unleashed this crazy different new thing on the whole world and and just we're like, well, let's see what happens. Good. News is we're not doing it now with trillions of CapEx that could create a superhuman, I mean, at least we learned.

But that's what so like, you know, what has changed in 2026 versus even 2020, just in the past five and a half, six years, is you hear more and more people talking about the whole idea that maybe this was all not the best thing to have done, right? So I don't think it's overnight, but I could see a world in in, in where 20 years from now we we look back at, you know, the social media and smartphone time and say, like, well, that was

kind of like smoking, right? Like, you realize now not good for us. And in that world, you know, we get back to going out, being on screens, less social, lubrication and everything you just talked about, Jason. So maybe that saves the booze industry. But I wouldn't be surprised if it never comes back to the levels of consumption that we've seen historically, just because

there's other options out there. But yeah, it's not a space I've ever invested in. So I, I, this is just my, my looking at the whole world kind of assessment on it.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't have any like really good thoughts on it. I I do know if I had to buy or if I could buy any of them, it'd be Sazerac's brands, but those are private, so that doesn't really help me. Yeah, I don't know. I look at, I'm very uninspired by some of the big brands. It reminds me of big big Big

beer and like we see a lot. Of that same consolidation, you know, we saw ABN Bev and some of the others swallow up the whole market over the previous 25 years and we've seen some of the same thing happened in liquors over the past decade. Yeah. And you can, you know, I mean, the other thing that's different and this is not a unique thought. I mean, it's going on in shoes, it's going on and everything. But to the extent the distribution used to be the only, the only way to get liquor

was going to a liquor store. I mean, people can release a tequila brand reasonably easily these days. I don't know how easily they used to be able to do it, but I know that the the ability to get attention appears to be easier. Maybe it's more expensive. I mean maybe the the CAC doesn't make sense, but at the end of the day people are spending it. So it's still dollars fighting for share of your liver I guess.

It's, I mean, but it's the emergence of contract, it's the emergency of contract, the emergence of contract manufacturing. It's, it's done the same thing in the booze industry because every new brand they're using some contract provider along the value chain for multiple things and they're really not doing a lot besides maybe some aging and some blending for the finished products. So. Yeah, coupled with like the

influencer economy, right? Well, but that's the distribution model that's changed. That's, that's, that's the thing that's changed. You know, we used to have, when I was very young, we had three, three choices of ways to consume content. And one of them required you to make your brother go outside and turn the antenna to, to get the different ones. And the grocery stores owned the shelves and the big brands paid to have the eye level spots on the shelf.

Amazon has disrupted that model. And of course, they're making tons of money from advertising the brands that are buying the eye level on the shelf, right? They're buying the ad space above the 3rd when you do a search, So. Go ahead. This is why I was just going to say this is just to take it kind of big picture about investing.

Generally an irony I have found in in how I think about the market and investing is I often say businesses like liquor companies, beer companies, fast casual restaurants, anything in retail. I just, I put on my 2 hard pile as an investor immediately, which is ironic because from a understanding how the business works standpoint, they are some of the simplest businesses to like wrap your head around, right? So if you're like, if you're like, and, and, and you know them.

So like, if you're a new investor, you're someone who's just gotten interested in buying individual stocks, you're going to be drawn to Chipotle because you like to eat there, Target because that's where you shop, Lululemon because your wife likes their pants. And you look at your life in their pants. OK, fair. A liquor store or a beer company, right, because they're products you use and they're easy to understand. They make the product, they sell the product.

Yeah. You know, you learn about distribution, you learn about marketing, all those things. But from a picking the winning one perspective, I think it's infinitely harder now than it was 10 or 15 years ago, for all the reasons we just talked about. Peter Lynch's process doesn't work the same way it did when he. And I think it's going to keep getting harder. Like, will there be winners in there? Like, sure.

Like I would never have thought Kroger would have been like a random grocery store would have been a big winner. But it has been. I just, I stay away from all of that 'cause I just, it feels like you're chasing fads constantly. And like, to your point, Bill, about the liquor companies, like, sure, maybe this, this tequila that this celebrity makes gets hot, it that gets bought by one of these big publicly traded companies, their stock goes up for a little bit until that celebrity is no

longer hot. And now their liquor is not hot. And now it's someone else's liquor, you know, so it's just, I don't know. I, I, I've, I've just stayed away from those stocks, mostly because I just, I can't, I don't feel any, I have any confidence in knowing who's going to win and for how long. Yeah. The thing that makes me nervous though, is the more businesses I'll know, the more I know I don't want to invest in. And then I'm like, so the ones that I invest in, is it because

I don't know them? Yeah. Like am I? Do I just not see the warts yet and I got to learn them? Probably.

Well, This is why I like another thing that I've another sort of trope in investing that I don't know that I agree with is like, invest in what? You know, like you said, Jason, like the whole, the whole Peter Lynch thing, like, I don't know, I don't really understand how cybersecurity works, but I'm glad I bought Crowdstrike, Crowdstrike shares five years ago. That's worked out well for me,

right? Like I understand the business on a, on a investing level, but I can't tell you that their specific thing that they do is much better than Z scaler or Sentinel one. I, I'm not in that industry. It's not my expertise, but I'm much more comfortable rolling the dice on a company in a cyber, in the cybersecurity space for reasons that I that are the opposite of what I just talked about. Like I don't think that's a fad. I think it's an ever growing Tam.

I think it's going to grow forever. So like I find myself more comfortable buying companies in place in sectors and and parts of the investing world that I don't really understand from like a professional standpoint than McDonald's, which I understand very easily from a how it works standpoint. Well, there's probably two thoughts there. One is, if you understand it really well, everybody else probably like especially consumer products I mean. Unless you have.

What's your edge? You have no edge? Yeah. Yeah, in your in your industry and it is a specialized industry, there is a very good chance exactly what you just said is absolutely the case. And then Sean Standard Stockton from used to used to be of ensemble, but he wrote a, a piece Once Upon a time about like I'd, I'm probably going to misremember it, but it was somewhere in that 33 to 5% revenue growth range.

Like when you go from that to 1:00 to 3:00, you can get some really ugly results in the stocks. Yeah. Well, all of all of your expenses start to outrun your ability to grow through them and generating, you know, to get any sort of operating leverage, right. I mean, everything goes backwards at that point. Got to cut your way to prosperity. Yeah, that doesn't work. That's always worked. And buy back shares while you do it. It's a winning formula.

It works, still it doesn't. Yeah. Well, the thing about the buybacks, you know, I mean, I don't know, I I follow cable and now that now a debate that's going on is should they pay dividends or should they, you know, to keep buying back shares? I mean, the problem is buybacks only really add value if you're buying below intrinsic value. Right.

And they almost never do. Yeah, nobody ever like I shouldn't say nobody ever does, but the I I'd be interested, I should read an updated study on the management teams that actually create value via buy buybacks. I mean it's the list is short. Yeah, you've read The Outsiders, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, You just don't get. I mean, there's a reason why there's only a handful of companies that were described in that book is because there's tons of businesses that generate

excess cash flows. The problem is that there is a tiny pool of talented capital allocators that also have the chops to run a business, right? There's plenty of people that can run a business, but not very many of them are actually very good at allocating capital. Like they do the other things well enough. And the businesses are good enough to wallpaper over the fact that most of them just aren't really good at deciding how much money they should spend to buy whatever they need to buy.

Or is it? Is it time to to buy a small distributor instead of investing and building at your own distribution? Like most, They're just not, you know, they have other people telling them what makes the most sense. They don't. They're not wired to really know how to make those decisions best and a lot of them are listening to consultants that are advising them what to do. Right, well, and the incentives, the incentives are the incentives are screwy too.

Look how many times you see a stock pop because they announce a buy back plan, not that they've actually bought any shares back, but so and so company has it, you know, announced a $6 billion stock buy back plan, right? Doesn't mean they're going to do it, doesn't mean they're going to do it smartly. There's a, there's a, there's companies that I, you know, I look at their quarterly results

every every three months. And one of the bullet points, it's like always in there because you know, the format doesn't typically change is, you know, we bought back X billion dollars worth of shares this quarter, every quarter. And I'm like, but your stock was really overvalued this last quarter. Like I, but that's, so there's not a brag in my book. Like I'd rather see our stock was overvalued last quarter. We bought back no shares, you know, or are we? Or it was undervalued.

We bought back more than we usually do. Like that's what you want to see. But people hear stock buybacks and the stock goes up. It's. Yeah. I'm so I'm sort of sympathetic to the idea that management should just return excess cash all the time. I, I just my, my gut, I, I need to know what the gate, what the

data actually says. I have a sense of what it says, but I'd like to actually see it. But you know, it's just that like one company that I'm thinking of, I've been noodling on and mentioned it a couple times on this, but is Olin, they, they are basically a commodity company. They have a, an ammunitions unit that's not as commodity, but they had a, a huge run up in like 2022. And I, I mean, the bowl pitch is, oh, they, you know, they're buying back shares, yadda, yadda.

It's like, yeah, but they bought all the shares when they were really high. And the shares were high because the company had a huge cyclical boom and was on business breakdowns. And then it became a cyclical again. And now they don't have the cash to buy back the shares. And they're talking about we're going to pay the dividend. And it's like, why don't you just kind of have a variable dividend and just let the shares

be? I like the I I don't know if I've heard you say this before or or like. Who gives a shit, right? Just tell people you're going to make 3 1/2 percent, we're going to protect that. Everything else we're just going to pay out. It's not the most tax advantage thing, but it's probably going to work out better in the long term. Yeah, I'd like to see practice be here's here's a, here's the set dividend, right? Like you said, here's your

guaranteed X percent. And then the excess cash flow we have after that, we're going to make, we're going to make one of three decisions. We're going to keep it. We're going to buy back shares if they're cheap or we're going to just issue special dividends when we have the cash and the stock's too expensive, right. Like I'd, I'd, I would sign up for that, give me my monthly, but then every once a year, every other year, you give me like a big $15 per share.

You know, here's the excess cash. We we couldn't find anything better to do with it and the stock was overvalued like. I don't know that they can tell you if the stock's overvalued though. All right, but that would be the reason. Like I, I don't think it's like a goldfish in a fishbowl, like just no. You're saying they don't have the ability to, not that they can't. Yeah, Like, I don't, I don't think that I, I, they're not hedge fund managers, right? They're just like CF OS.

And when things are going well, they're going to get comp tables and everything's going to be elevated and they're going to be like, oh, are stocks reasonable? And I don't really want them holding cash waiting for a downturn because then all of a sudden their market timers like I, I don't know, I realized that the counter to this and the academic answer is, well, you

can just sell into the buyback. I don't think many people do that. No. Well, and it's not, you know, the here's the thing, the buyback authorizations come from the board. The board is fiduciaries, right? So they have a legal obligation and how they think about doing buybacks. So that's that's that's I mean. I mean, you're not wrong, but I

don't know that. You're right, either you're not, you're not going to see a lot of congressional inquiries that that actually move to like civil charges against board members, right? That's not, that's not accountability and responsibility are two different things. So that's I think is the point. But I'll say this, Jeff, so you were talking about like the idea

of variable dividends. There is an industry that over the past probably decade now has has adopted that the idea of variable dividends and the way they do share buybacks to some degree of success and that's independent oil and gas producers. The pukey is to pukey, absolutely. Absolutely. Gross. How dare you, even it is gross, say that someone could invest in such nonsense. I didn't say anybody should invest in that shit. That's good. Just.

So we're on the same page. Devon Energy, EOG Resources, Diamondback, they, they did this because you go back to like the salad days, you know, the early 20 teens, oil was over 100 and $120.00 a barrel for two years straight, 2013 starting 2012 and then mid 2014 that summer oil started a price to fall and a year later it was in the 20s. I mean, it was insane. But all of these companies like they were paying this dividend and growing it every year and growing it every year.

And that doesn't work in an industry. Yeah. No, it doesn't. That's not that's that volatile. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It doesn't work. So they've adopted that and you you look overseas, you see a lot more variable dividends, you see a lot more twice a year dividends because the expectation is very different than it is in capital markets in the US where it's about growth and it's grow that payout raise the dividend.

You know constantly that the idea of being able to constantly do that and it's dis aligned with, you know the realities of the market. One thing I like about the idea of forcing management's to return capital, like you were talking about the vast majority of capital on a regular basis, keep them on the edge of their chair, right?

All of a sudden, that $2 billion that you've got sitting there in the bank, all of a sudden it's $200 million and you basically, you basically have a year's worth of working capital. You're going to behave, right? You're going to. The problem is those sort of things are this goes. So against everyone's incentives. Well, that's the thing, man, the God incentives matter so much. Yeah, look at the comp plan. Reading the proxy statements more important than reading the annual report.

Yeah, that's not wrong. It's not always right, but it's

not not wrong. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, nothing's always right. Not even you All right, close. close. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's really interesting. I the you know, the the longer I I follow investing and invest, the the less I know for sure, which probably means I'm starting to get smarter. Funny about that. Yeah, yeah. So when did you guys like you, when did you start investing? You want me to go first? Jeff? You. Want to go ahead?

So the the I'll give this short version of of my story. Since you're so old, like you lived through 2000 and 2008, right? It's crazy. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did too. That shit's scarring. So The funny thing about 2000 for me was I was at a period in my life where I was as unplugged from the idea of investing or even just responsible financial management. Is anybody you could possibly imagine. Jeff, how many times have I told the the golf trip story? Oh, you should tell it now.

It's pretty good, but try to keep it short. So like down to like 35 minutes. Yeah I can tell this in like 5 minutes. I actually, I had a rollover from a company and had a buddy and he had a couple of friends that I didn't really like him very much, but he's like, hey, let's go play golf at this thing tomorrow. I'm like, all right, I'll blow off work, go play golf. I don't have any money. Had a credit card. I knew my wife would kick my ass if there was a balance on the

credit card. I logged into that rollover. I cashed it out. Oh man. To go play. Golf, this is good priorities. I like it. Yeah, yeah, like, no, this really this really happened. I I I you know, I caso reminder for those taking notes at home. I took a long term asset and I pissed it away on a short term thing. I. Paid Did you avoid the crash? Please say that you avoided the crash because of this and it turned out to be a good. This was in 2004.

Oh, OK, so no. No, no, So like worst time to be selling this asset sort of time. So remember you're take a 20% penalty, right, because I'm cashing it out. It now counts as income because originally this was pre tax contributions. So I take that double hit. I go play golf with a bunch of people. That you don't like, but you don't like I. Don't like to piss? Your wife off this is like real man shit. I like this. Like real man shit, right? So I do this, I do this.

So round figures, I haven't done the math on this in probably a year or two, but the way the market's been running, if I had of just left this and just follow Buffett's advice for all of us regular people and just index it, it probably would be $55,000 today. Yeah, round figures. Expensive round of golf. You're like the guy who bought a pizza. Would play well. What's that? What's that do? You play well. I don't even remember. Probably not. I probably played terribly.

You at least want to be flush in it if you're going to take that kind of. Risk, that's the thing. I mean, that's like. I hope you're enjoying this

conversation. I wanted to interrupt the program to give you a little sense of what Trata may have for you and I'm going to read you a a little excerpt of a transcript as a 1/21/26. The analyst says. I don't think of Duolingo as an education or an Ed tech in the traditional sense. I think of it as a habit forming consumer platform, something closer to Spotify or TikTok in terms of engagement, but with very different monetization

constraints. I don't think the Moat is content to me. The content could be commoditized. It could be built by somebody else, especially with generative AII think the Moat is admin brand and distribution. If you line up Duolingo against other consumer apps in terms of growth rates, user base, and engagement time, I don't know if it has a peer in those categories. Roblox is a really good example, but Roblox hasn't figured out how to make money. I'm not sure. I as a side, I'm not sure I

agree with that, but I digress. Duolingo has significant operating leverage and it's pretty clean cash flow to as you mentioned, if you break that habit loop, I think the entire model degrades very quickly. That's why I'm cautious around what they're doing. Again, these are the kind of insights that you can get in try at Tritrada, go to Tritrada forward slash brew for a free trial. And once again, the other sponsor of the show, Fiscal dot AI Brayden, has been a sponsor in the past.

He was one of the OG sponsors. He's a sponsor now. Fiscal dot AI forward slash brew gets you 15% off everything. They offer high quality data. It's they're super fast. If you run a business, they think that they can save you money if you need the data from them. So I highly encourage you to reach out to him and his team. I'm trying to help you save money. He's trying to help you save money. Help yourself save money fiscal dot AI forward slash brew.

There's a weekend in Vegas. And like, there were actually parts of the weekend in Vegas that were great stories that we'd be sharing over beers. That'd be one thing. But the great story is how stupid it was. Yeah, so. But that's like a microcosm of who I was, you know, 20, call it, you know, 2223 years ago. See, I had friends whose parents were day trading in 99. So like I I had a pretty close seat to what the implosion would do. That's like family destroying.

Yeah, it was not good. Yeah. And then you get to 2008 and it's like the world almost ends, right? So I don't know how to trust like, like the market. I just don't know how to. Do it well, All right, so I don't want to enter Jason's story, but but let me let me, I think this is this ties into what you just said, Bill. So I was not buying stocks, picking stocks or really paying close attention to the market.

I was just like a guy going to work every two weeks, paycheck money goes into my retirement account. I get the statement in the mail quarterly, right? That was me from age 22 to 40. Your opportunity cost was the other opportunity. Cost, yeah, but but this is what I want to get at as it pertains to the 2008 crash, because I was aware enough of the news, like I knew that it was happening and all the bad things and stuff, but I would get my statement

every quarter, right? So I was only getting an update really on. I don't even think I logged into the website at that point. I was just like, that's how checked out I was. And I remember like, you'd get it and it would be like, wow, that's a lot less money. And then three months later, that's still less. And then eventually three months later, oh, it's a little more. Three months later it's a little more.

And I only bring that up because what I learned from that, and I didn't have the fear because I wasn't like day trading or picking individual stocks, but what I learned from that is like, oh, if you just wait, it comes back. Yeah. Right, I know that's a simplistic, easy way to look at it, but that helped me immensely because when I bought my I bought my first stock in mid

February of 2020, right? So like as I was stepping into this new found obsession of mine in terms of paying really close attention to the markets and buying stocks and things like that, I was on, I was about to get on a pretty wild ride as it pertains to market volatility, right over the next five years. And I think what helped me not freak out as a brand new stock investor was the fact that I knew that if you wait long enough, the things come back right.

And so to me, like, that's the lesson of the 2008 crash, not not the fear. And again, that's because I wasn't paying close attention to it. I, I would have been in a totally different headspace if I was, you know, doing what you were doing or what Jason was

doing. But. Well, I would, man. I was in school at that time. But, you know, I mean, I was, I don't, I've, I've always paid attention. So yeah, I don't know. And I and I just remember, I remember people panicking around me in a big way. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway that I'll just since Jason left again again improved. Yeah, I know. He didn't mute himself when he left. I had to mute him. Yeah, this is I make a podcast with him weekly.

So I'm this I'm used to this. When he comes back, maybe I'll make him sit muted, I think, right, like in the penalty box. Honestly, it'll improve the show if we're being, if we're being honest. But to answer your question, so like, yeah, I, I started buying individual stocks in, in 2020. I just became obsessed with it. I don't know why. It was just like a thing I had time to pay attention to over the pandemic and became, it just became like the thing I thought

about pretty much all the time. So I got a late start in that aspect of it, but. Has this been a positive to your life? Yes, because I think I don't want to be like a nerdy educator here, but I think like anytime you find something you're passionate about learning about that's just good for you as a, as a human being, as a person.

And I don't think it's that often that in your 40s you come across a completely new thing and then dive complete, like dive head first into it and try to like learn as much as you can. You know, 'cause we're all guys who go to school, get a job, you do that career, and I still do that career, but then I have this whole other thing. I got to be really interested in learning about South from that

perspective, yes. And honestly, the obsession about learning about it made me realize that a lot of stupid things I had done earlier, like I was much more responsible with my money than Jason was, but my initial. Contract very, very low bar. True. My initial contribution to my retirement account when I first got out of college was like, I think literally $100 a paycheck, which is like what, $76 out of my pocket pre tax and everything. And I don't think.

Better than nothing. I don't, yeah, but I didn't increase it for like a decade 'cause I, I did a dollar amount, not a percentage, right. And so I, I've been doing a lot of catch up over the past five or six years trying. To well, you have, you have a pension too. I mean, that's. That's true. That's what saved my having a pension and being married to someone who's who who worked for a company, had a match and got that match from age 22 on really has helped.

Yeah. But yeah, I net positive in my life for sure for a bunch of different reasons.

Well, the good news is you'll know that the lessons to teach your children. Unless AI takes all our jobs, in which case hopefully we live in Elon's abundance reality. And he said it's better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and wrong. So I'm just going to have a utopian view of all this. There you go, utopian hellscape. Yeah. Getting a late start with it and and learning that you have to contribute more earlier has made me be a little bit more comfortable.

Like talking to younger people who I come across who are like getting out of college and just being like, listen, I'm not a financial advice guy, but start. Yeah. And yeah, I've, I, I told I have AI have two kids. The oldest is a senior in high school, so he's going off to college next year and he got his first job a couple years ago in the summers. And I said, and he's has no interest in any of this, doesn't like talk to me about it.

He makes fun of me. I said this is the only thing, the only lesson I want you to take away from what I've learned. I said if you just take 10% of everything you make ever, starting with his very first paycheck, put it in your Roth, and do nothing else, you'll have more money at my age than I do. Yeah. And and I was like, that's the only thing you have to do just that anything you do above and beyond that, God bless you.

But that's the minimum. And to his credit, every paycheck he got with his summer jobs, he he keeps track like 10% puts it aside couple months a year. I take it, I steal it. I stick it in his Roth for him and just put it in a in ASAP 500 ETF and he can do more with it later. But God, I think back like if I had done just that when I was 1516 years old, I'd be in a

completely different spots. But. You need to log on to his phone and then open YouTube and just like press investing videos so that the algo starts recommending it. I was recently, I was recently told to do that and I was like, that's a pretty good idea. That's awesome. Got incept thoughts into these children's brains? Well, it's like typical kids

stuff. He came when he was in like 8th grade, I think he came home one day and he's like, hey, my math teacher, they do this thing where like, I don't know, there's some period in the day where you, you go to, it's like extra learning that they do. So he went to this, he would went to the math teacher that day and the guy was talking about investing stuff. And he comes home all fired up about it. He's like, ah, he's talking about, you know, saving your money for the future and

investing. And I'm like, also, do you want to talk more about it? And he's like, no. Yeah, not to you. Not to you. I was like, all right. Well, I tried. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, at least it's getting in there somewhere. The seeds are getting planted. I mean, look, I would have been the same way when I was a teenager. Like I, I had no interest in any of that. If anyone tried to talk to me, I would have been like, stop, you know, I so he'll.

Figure the extent the extent of my parents financial education for me was when I was in 10th grade. I want a raffle like $200 raffle and I had this old pickup truck and I needed to replace some speakers in it. So I went to Walmart to get speakers. My dad took me to get speakers. I hadn't even turned 16 yet but I was going to be turning 16 in like 2 months and I wanted to have my truck ready to go. And my dad's like you should really be smart with this money. At least go buy some new

underwear too. There you go, that makes sense. That was it. That was the last conversation me and say. Dad, with these speakers, I'm not going to be wearing underwear when these ladies get in here. Yeah. Nice. Nice, I got different was. Clever enough to wasn't even clever enough to think about a witty response like that back then.

Yeah, well, now you are. There is no there is no more typical like what does a teenage boy who has a truck want to spend his money on than speakers for said truck like that? Is makes perfect sense. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how basic I will. I've, I've, I've always been. So now the irony is I, as my dad got older and retired and he had a little bit of, he got a little inheritance money and had a few things, he actually did start to come to me for advice about

investing in that kind of thing. And luckily. He didn't. He didn't follow any of your stock tips. No, actually one of those that was, it was in the spring of 2020. There you go. Talking about lucky timing. Dude, the the portfolio I suggested to my father-in-law right around that time. Yeah, he like, he thanks me all the time and I'm like, I just wish that I had done what I told you to do and never touched it. It'd have been great. Yep, Yep. The problem was I touched it.

Right, right. That's the thing, right? We meddle. We we meddle with with a good thing. Here's a great example of that. And it's even better than spring of 2020. So when I got interested in all this, my, my father, who's a little bit more of a gambler kind of guy than I am like likes to go to Atlantic City, likes to do the scratch offs, likes to play the lottery. Like that's, that's his thing. He he's like, how many picks? On so much. He's like, he's way cooler than me.

He's like, I got a little bit of money. Help me pick some stocks. We'll do a little portfolio. I was like, OK, so I gave him he he came to me with ideas and I was just like, sure, like I know a little bit that sounds good. He bought 15 or 20 stocks in November of 2021, like right at the peak of like that, that run up we saw after the bottom in in early 2020. And he brought like growthy, growthy stuff. Like he bought Zoom.

He bought like if it was hot and popular on like Fintwit in 2020 and 2021. Like that was this portfolio like work, the growthiest stocks overvalued and like the worst timing ever. And then neither of us logged in and looked, looked at it for years. But one of the stocks he bought was NVIDIA and that's. And so I logged back in again like. Sweet, sweet NVIDIA money. Like a year ago and the the whole portfolio was up like 80 or 90%, I don't know. What Gardner talks about. Right.

And his NVIDIA is was up like I don't know 900% or something and it's just so it's like. You just gotta be comfortable with the outcome of that, you know, You gotta be comfortable being so concentrated. Yeah, well, it actually it it wasn't, it wasn't equal weighted. So like the amount he put into the NVIDIA portion was a little bit smaller than some of the others. So even with that huge growth and he put some of it into just

an index fund. So it didn't do the funky thing where it became like a 90% of the portfolio, but it proved that whole it proved 2 points. So the whole like your winners can, you know, swallow the losses of all your losers, but also the whole idea of like buying at the worst time, buying the growthiest companies. If you just leave it, leave it the hell alone for three or four years. Like it's like if I, if I had been there trying to be a genius, I I would have destroyed all of that growth.

I probably would have, you know, lessened the performance significantly. But we just left it alone and it and it did well so. Yeah.

Jeff, I don't know when last time you looked at Nick's picks was. Oh, I haven't looked in a while actually. All right, I've got the latest numbers. So, Nick's picks, this is you, you explain. It So I won a raffle and it was a $500 thing and it was a raffle for a, a, a non profit that my dad's involved with. So he said you should buy. He's like, you should do a thing on your podcast where you buy stocks you would never buy with this money just to be funny.

And I was like, no, let's do something different. You pick five stocks based on what you've learned listening to our show, right. Oh. Nice. So he did. I put $100 in each. We called it Nick's Picks. We threw a spreadsheet up on on the website and I have not looked at it in a while. Jason, what is it doing? It's up 134.6%. And what's the? What's it compared to the S? And P's up 64, so it's it's more than double the S&P. Look at pops, he's a fucking savant. What were the five?

I read them, I forget what they are. Applied Materials. Nice. ASML. Nice. Tesla. Nice. I mean it worked as a stock no? Well, it's, it's, it's done about as well as the market and Old Dominion, which is actually down. It's the only one that's down. Company, yeah, it's. A great company, great company. And I can explain his thinking on all these, just without even asking it. But go ahead and. And NVIDIA. NVIDIA. So that we did that shortly after we had.

October of 2023. So we had Nick Rossellillo on our show. I don't know if you know Nick, he, he has a YouTube channel and a newsletter called Chip Stock Investor or Chip Stock Investing really knows the semiconductor and and that space really well. And he came on the the show and we talked a lot about those companies. I think that's where he learned about Applied Materials and that was the inspiration for, I think, most of those picks.

Old Dominion, I think it's just 'cause he really likes baseball and he sees the ads on Mets games. But hey, it worked out. He's crushing the market. Yeah, yeah. Let me. See, I think my kid, I'll see what he what he picked because he picked, he picked like 3 stocks, JP Morgan International Paper and like I think maybe it was Amazon. Wait, your kid picked JP Morgan International Paper? Yeah, he, he liked International Paper because of all the boxes

that come to our house. And I think maybe he liked Amazon because they delivered. Because of all the boxes. I might I might be misremembering on Amazon and JP Morgan he likes because I actually talk about JP Morgan all the time. I like Chase, makes me happy. I even go in the branches. My I think my. Mom Boomer at heart. I think my mom owns International Paper because she inherited some IP stock from her

father. My grandfather, I think, was like a International Paper stock investor in the 50s and 60s and. Yeah. So like International Paper hasn't done that. Well, when did he buy it? He bought it in April of 2023, but it's up 10% and he's got a couple dividends. JP Morgan Chase, but May 30th, 2023 up 123.75%. Nice. Yeah. So I don't know, I should just outsource my thinking to him. So we do. We do. But he's one like I bought. I bought him Transdime. Never looked at it.

March 17th, 2020. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, that's what I should have done for me. But why be successful? Then you have nothing to strive for. Well, all these little stories are go ahead, Jeff. All these stories are funny. Like we're, we have a yearly stock picking contest that we do with the web with our podcast. Just listeners send us the stocks they want. We put up a spreadsheet. It's how you did over the course of the year.

We give money to charities every quarter, whoever wins, right? It's just, it's fun to have just to have stocks talk about and to give money to charities. I was on a trip with some friends skiing over the Christmas break and a 7th grader and a fourth grader in the family that we were skiing with decided to put some stock picks into our contest. And it it's exactly if you knew these kids like they picked all the companies that make perfect sense.

Like the 4th grade boy, He's like, I want Volvo because his parents have a Volvo and he wants great car. The companies that make jet skis and boats because he loves jet skis and boats and he and he wanted. That's been a tough space. I know he wanted his grandfather's got an AR so he wanted so I who's that Stalantis, I think is so we we put that in, you know, and the, the 7th grade girl, you know, Lululemon, Chipotle, like the things that she knows. So it's only obviously what a

not even a month into the year. So, but I'm I'm very interested to see how these two kid portfolios do throughout the you know, and beyond we'll. Keep well, there's a wisdom in it. Yeah. You know, I think of you, I think of you somewhat have like some rational valuation overlay. I don't know how you define that term, but there is a wisdom that children have, right? I mean, like my kids saying Amazon's constantly coming to our house, how can I get exposure to that is a pretty

smart thought. Right. So we did it. We did an episode years ago called is being a lazy investor better? And it was basically, it was this premise that I had come up with, which is basically what you're talking about, Bill, which is if you just picked stocks based on the simplest, most obvious things that you think of, Amazon is always coming to my house. I'm just going to buy Amazon stock. My mom spends. My mom goes to Target for deodorant and comes home with

$250 worth of stuff, right? You know, when you go to Costco and the parking lot's always packed, you're going to end up landing on consumer brands because that's where you go and experience the world. But I wonder if you just did that and left it alone, if you could beat the market consistently? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, you are going to get on. You're you're not going to have enterprise software for sure. But I mean, you could find yourself in some techie things

by doing that. Right, if you had followed that for the past, all right, and, and to be fair, we've had an incredible bear market, I mean bull market for almost 20 years. But like, if you just did that over the past decade, you'd pick things like Amazon and Apple and Alphabet and, and you know, some consumer brands that have done well, Starbucks, Chipotle, Lululemon before recently, right?

Like I, I think you'd come up with a pretty good, you know, it's, it's all, it's a, it's a version of like the Peter Lynch thing, but. You know, yeah, And I. And I, you're going to buy Tesla 10 years ago, right? You're, if you're a young person, if you're a dude and you're a video gamer, Nvidia's on your radar, right? There's a lot of exposure that things you might not necessarily

think about. Yeah. I mean, then the hard part comes into how do you size things when you know like that kind of thing?

But. No, it's simple. You buy 100 bucks every month. I mean, you know, like. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people weighted or whatever. It's just simpler. It's just, it's just simpler. Yeah, and then you don't sell it to go play golf unless it's a really sick course. And it's cool ass people that you want to hang out with. If you ever played, if you ever played golf with Jason, you'd know that there's there's no amount of money worth spending to play golf like Jason does.

Well, as long as you enjoy it, that's the key. I do, I absolutely do. I got AI got a new putter for Christmas I was pretty excited about. That Did you come over to Team Lab? It's no, it's what's Callaway's putter brands. Odyssey, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Love it. Absolutely love it. Good friend of mine that I play golf with pretty regularly. He texted me, he replies. Sent a picture to him, He texted me.

He's like, dude, that is going to look so good in your bag when you're in the woods trying to find your drive. Is it a mallet? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, so it's like the jailbird or something. That's exactly it. Yeah, Yeah. That's a good putter. Yeah, I'm not a good putter, but I have a good putter. Well, you've got a step one is believing that you're a good putter, and Step 2 is practicing a little more. And that's why I'm not a good putter. Yeah, I mean, I got. 2 feet of snow on them.

Yes. See, Bill lives in a state where you can play golf year round a little harder here. Yes, yeah, it's true. It's true. I did move to make that my reality, but there you. Go. It's I don't know that that we'll see if that was a good thing or a long, you know, long term. It's I wish that there was more industry around here. It's kind of hard. You, like everyone where I live, is either an insurance salesperson in financial services or takes care of old people. Right.

Or as an old person. Right. It's funny. Yeah, that's it. Or as being taken care of. Waiting room. You know that's the way it goes. Yeah, so, so, but you know, I mean, so Speaking of this lazy thing, what watching my grandma pass away made me realize it's like, this is not a unique thought, but the amount of time and resources that is going to be required to help the boomer generation pass away in a decent manner is going to be insane. There is definitely a huge

investable theme there. It's kind of interesting that that that like healthcare isn't loved right now because it does seem like one of those 40 year runs and boomers last I checked have a decent amount of money to spend on dying gracefully. Have you ever have you ever looked at Care Trust REIT? Ctr. I will check it out, yeah. OK. Yeah. Talk about that, Jason. That's one that you you have a lot of conviction in. Yeah, I've, I've followed it

since it went public. It was spun out of Ensign, which they're they operate nursing homes and seniors care facilities. This is This is Tate, by the way. This is Tate, I hope you're OK being on YouTube sometime. Yeah, you're, you show up on my channel all the time, don't you, buddy? I cut myself. You cut yourself. Uh oh, you need to. Can't see it, but I can see that. Yeah, the people listening to it on There you go. Yeah, it looks bad. You might have to cut it off. You need a Band-Aid.

Yeah, no, I got it. You got it. OK, All right, Say bye. Bye. Have a good one. So nice to meet you, Tate. So Ensign is an operator of like skilled nursing and seniors housing facilities, that kind of stuff. And they had a big portfolio, not big couple 100 units that they owned and they spun it out as a read as care trust. And one of instance Co founders was the CEO when it was spun out. And the whole idea was we're going to just deal with good operators.

We're going to find more opportunities to buy like the two trends that were good for them are the aging right, the silver tsunami, I mean just some specific numbers around that from 2010 to 2040 or 2010 to 2030. We're going to, we're going to move from I think 40 million to 80 million Americans over 65, right? I mean, that's a massive shift. And the same period is going to double the number of Americans that are over 80. Like all of those trends are really big.

The funny thing is in that industry, the majority of the inventory of those seniors facilities are small businesses. Basically you've got, you know, a founder that owns the built one and owns it, or you might have three or they may have 10 in two states, right? So because Care Trust started from a small place with, I don't know, it might have been 100 to

150 when they were spun out. Those small deals can be, you know, needle moving for them where for like the big players, like the well towers, that kind of thing, there's little deals. They don't move the needle. Right, yeah, that makes sense. You can actually do a roll up and have it matter. Yeah, yeah. And they have been pretty disciplined capital allocators and they've also been really smart about managing their balance sheet because the way you grow a Reed is dead. And yeah.

Share issuance. Yeah. So they've been really, really smart about that. And they came through the pandemic, they were able to like keep their, they didn't have to cut their dividend. They paused growth for a year and a half. And then they've raised it a couple times since then. They're like, it's an ugly industry. It's a it's. Horrible. Yeah, the operators. Are sad. It really is. The operators are garbage. They make the the, the margins are thin.

They can't keep staff because they don't. So hard to find skilled labor that is capable of taking care of these people. There's going to be a massive shortage. Maybe the robots bail us out. Hopefully. I really think that's going to be part of the solution. But but care Trust is one of those like, you know, the the Amazon's founder, what's his

name? Bezos. Yeah, Bezos is, you know, your margins, my opportunity thing, it's that's not a space that anybody's interested in competing in. And that makes it a good space if you can find a really good disciplined operator and the timing is right when you buy them when they are small and there's an opportunity to roll up because nobody's coming in to get the kind of margins that they're going to that they're

going to have. So those are those are the stocks that I love to find. Yeah. Well, it's, it's nice to have a true secular tailwind, Yeah. And a reasonable valuation that that. You got to get through the cycles too, though, right? It's yeah, no doubt. Yeah, yeah. No doubt. Oh, that's the joy of of business and investing and not not puking when the cycle occurs and convincing yourself that it's secular and not cyclical and all these other things. Yeah, that's that's it.

I asked the question I'm trying to figure out for the Trade Desk. Yeah, well, I don't have, you're not coming to the right place for any insight on that. I just know that guy did a podcast and I was like, this is an incredible podcast. And then the stock absolutely ripped and now there's questions about whether or not the business is what people thought it was.

Yeah, yeah, I, I. I'm voyeuristic on Constellation. My freaking Twitter feed is just like full of constellation people I don't tend to interact with. I mean. I know so the software company, the Bran constellation. Branch no the software. Company, Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, you know, I'm friends with like Jerry Cap and and Willis and these people that like have talked about it in the past, but now I'm just like, it's just a tsunami of constellation debates in my Twitter feed.

It's that and copper and I'm like, I don't I I mean I don't know what I touched, but I touched something and I and now I'm just getting this. That's so. That's funny. Anyway, apparently according to Druckenmiller, copper is the tightest it's ever been. Now this video could be AI from two years ago or legit right now, but I do know a lot of people are citing it. Yeah, I mean metals, that's the thing. Isn't that what the South Korean day traders are all trading

right now? It's so hot right now, Yeah, it's like. Hansel, So you know what that means. That means we should leave it the hell alone. Correct. You don't think that it means that we should jump in, right, as all the companies are trading at like 3 times cash flow on current numbers and we know nothing about the cycle? You don't think that that's what that means? Oh, that always works out, doesn't it? Yeah, screens cheap, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take your four. Take your 4-O1K money.

Yeah, cash it out. That's right. Put it in a brokerage I. Learned that lesson the hard way. Although I do gather that if you, I I think statistically, if you were to buy something like that that's cheap, and then you had like a technical overlay that got you out, I think that that strategy could work. Yeah. It's not exactly how I'm trying to live my life. Well, but that's the thing.

You, I mean, you're talking about a strategy where you're going in with a specific return profile in mind. It's a finite investment. You're going to trade your way out. Yeah. And you're going to move on, right. That's that's not how most people want to live their lives. Yeah, I don't think so. Now, traders would say that investors are just traders on a different time horizon, right? But. Yeah, and it's true for the ones that suck. Oh, snap. Shots fired. Well, it's it's, it sucks

sometimes. I'm not going to. Lie. Yeah, yeah. For the bad for the bad for. The video two years ago. It's just it having like a plan like that is just hard because I think where people go wrong just generally as a species is like you go in with a plan and then you don't stick to it. Yeah. Right. Like, oh, I'm going to get out at this price that gets to that price and you go like, well, maybe I can get another 5% out of this, you know, and then you stick around too long.

And end up looking at the ones that you sold and being like, oh, I should have held them. Held holding some too long. I don't know. The human part of the whole thing is tough. Yeah, but it is.

It's what we all enjoy. Weird. That's why we're here, yeah. That's right. That's exactly it. Yeah, well, I'm, I'm, I'm a little talked out. I mean, I can continue to talk if you guys want to talk, but this is I feel like a good. Place to. If you guys are good with it, yeah, that's fine. Where can people find you? Anywhere you get podcasts is the primary place. Just search for investing unscripted. We also have a YouTube channel. Those are the two primary

things. And if you find our podcast or the YouTube channel, you can just look in any show note and you'll find a link to everything else that we have going on. But we're trying to grow the pod. So we appreciate you having us on. Bill, we're glad you came on our show. So if people liked this banter, had a good time listening, check out the podcast, listen to a couple episodes, share it with a friend, give a rating, give a review. That would be. That'd be awesome.

How's your YouTube stats do you guys? Do you do well on YouTube? I don't do very well on YouTube. It, it's, it's hard to say because we, we use it for two things. It's, it's a place we put all of our podcast episodes, but we also do short videos on stocks that are sponsored by The Motley Fool. We have a, a Jason has an affiliate agreement with them. So it's a it, it's hard to parse out what is a, a really good stock video that someone is excited about versus content for

the podcast. But if it leaves people to the podcast eventually, that's a win for us. Yeah, it's all on the channel. Yeah, it's, it's, it's it's worth doing and for especially for people that are looking for a little more for stock ideas, it's it's useful. And but I would say in terms of like how people use it in the real world that are looking for podcasts, it's probably 1015% of our podcast traffic. That's still pretty good. I think it's like 5% of mine or even lower.

Yeah. I just don't have many people that that engage. But I do have a couple, like rabid YouTube viewers. They comment. And I appreciate you all. Thank you for wanting to look at my beautiful face. I think that's the reason why we don't have a lot of volume on YouTube is because they don't want to see us. Speak for yourself, I am beautiful. Well, at least you have a lot of

self esteem there is that. I actually, I think people, I wish people watched the videos more because I what I've learned listening when we edit and stuff is we'll take shots at each other, as you noticed, and we're laughing and smiling, but sometimes like it's under the breath laugh just come through the mic because when we first started we would actually get

people. We, we've received a couple emails from, I'm just assuming older gentleman and it's always a gentleman, by the way, just statistically and this we, we got like admonished a little bit like you guys really, you guys should be nicer to each other, you know, and just they didn't get the they didn't get the joke, but you. Should be right back. You should write back. We would be nicer, but we hate each other, right?

Yeah. It's hard to be nice when you're across the screen from such an asshole. That's right. That's why we do a podcast, because we figured how can we introduce as much stress into our life as possible? And we said we could do this together. Yeah, No, that's. Exactly. Right now we have a lot of fun doing it. We do as as you can tell, we we really do enjoy it. It's fun. We we like each other despite the fact that we have to work together to make the Do you ever?

Do you ever get a little nervous like I, I don't know. I don't do my own stock pitches very often anymore. I didn't love, I didn't love the the feeling that people were hanging on it. And then I didn't like when things went wrong, people asking me whether or not they should sell. I said I told you not to listen to me in the first place. I wrote my first article in 2012, Bill. I'm so thick skinned about that.

At the at the end of the day, like I get it, especially for new people that just don't know and they're naive, but at the end of the day people have got to take some fucking personal responsibility for stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we're also pretty, I think we're pretty careful about stopping short of making it seem like it's something you should go do. Like we'll say what we think, we'll share our conviction, we'll say like I, I think this is a market beating stock over the next five years, but at

least. We're not over the top. Pound the table, Yeah. Yeah, and we've also done a decent amount of videos and talked a lot on the podcast about all the times we've been incredibly wrong. And I think part actually just going back to the whole like, yeah, mostly me, right. Yeah, as we've established. But even going back to the, you know, giving each other crap and making fun of each other, I think that just, I think that actually helps the whole like, look, we just like this.

We're not, we're not saying we're right. Like this is what we we talk about what we do in our own portfolios too. So there's a little bit of, you know, money where our mouth isn't in some sense. Like we'll talk about stocks when we bought them, how they did, if they didn't went down poorly. We talk about our losses all the time.

So, yeah, but I agree with Jason, like at some point, you know, if you're if you're buying a stock just because you heard anyone talk about it, you know, unless you're like paying for like a research service or something like that where they. Even then, you don't know when they're going to sell. True, but also even then, but like at least at that point, you're going into that knowing This is why I'm paying for this

thing. But if you're just finding a podcast, a YouTube channel and someone saying that they have high conviction in a stock, I mean. We're talking about incentives, right? That's, I mean, the, the bottom line is that it's an attention economy and the incentives for so many people making content is for more people to see it because that's the monetization engine, right Well. That's the other way. Well, that's the thing about YouTube.

I mean, we, I won't say what tickers, but we know if we do a video on certain stocks, it'll get thousands of views no doubt. And it's always the same couple and it's never usually ones we highly recommend. But we could talk about Care Trust REIT all day long and ain't no one clicking on that so. Well, there's probably some signal there. Yeah, that probably means it's good. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. All right, gentlemen. Well, thank you for stopping by. I hope that.

I hope people enjoyed the conversation. I did as I as did I the last one which is why I wanted to have another one with you. This was fun. Hopefully we make this a semi regular thing. I don't want to see you guys too much though, that would be upsetting. Oh yeah, I agree. I agree. No, I mean. Mostly Jason, Jeff, you're invited back anytime. I appreciate you. Jason gets up and leaves. That's I I got rude. In sometimes. 'S home these times. I got up and left.

It's absolutely true. Bill, he's old. He's got a small bladder. That's fair. OK, I will forgive it. That's. True, Bill, this was a lot of fun. And yeah, I just, I'm going to promote our podcast too. It was a lot of fun having you on folks come over and and and check out our conversation with Bill over there that it's great. I hope we do get to come back on more often and talk about more. You did not ruin future invites, despite your rudeness. Despite my best efforts. Yes, correct.

All right, guys. Have a good one. Thanks, Bill.