Will Thomson - Real Returns: Real Assets Are Even Hotter Right Now

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Business Brew. Nice to be recording again and releasing episodes. Thank you for your patience while you waited for my sweet, sweet voice. And by my sweet, sweet voice, I mean the insights of my guests and my ability to hopefully ask decent questions that keep a conversation going. Anyway, I digress. This episode features Will Thompson. He returns for the three of our conversations. I met will a long time ago.

I think it I don't know 2018-2019 at Emmanuel events idea liked him then still like him now you know kept in not frequent touch but in touch with Will and he's a great guy. So I'm happy to feature him nice to see him have some positive like results. One of the guys that can't comes on the show no matter what I'm I'm on the outside looking in cheering for him. So I hope that you all like this conversation. The last one I think I titled the real assets are so hot right now.

Turned out to be a pretty good pretty good timing of an episode. A little early, but that's that's kind of the MO around these parts. And I think you'll find some interesting thoughts on copper, gold, and oil, all of which are on top of mind right now. So anyway, I hope you enjoy the episode. I know I enjoyed talking to him and excited to release this one. All right, Oh, I almost forgot. Disclaimers. Let's see, what do they say? Everything in this episode is

for entertainment purposes only. Please consult your financial advisor before making investment decisions. Do your own due diligence and this episode is brought to you by Trata. You can find Trata at tritrata.com/brew. Trata is a transcript library that has interviews of analyst and analyst.

So you know, the difference is sometimes you'll get on the major transcript platforms and it'll be an analyst talking to an expert and maybe that platform is trying to fill some space and you get a lot of filler. I have found the transcripts on Trata to be a higher level of discussion. I was flipping through today a constellation transcript that dropped. It looks like it was recorded on the 23rd.

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yadda. So then you're reading and Analyst 2 says Constellation's market share, transaction share has grown since 2021. This is completely contrary to the consensus view, which is that competition has ramped up in the last 18 months. I think a number of copycats launched in the last 12 months is probably lower than in the 12 months before that. I think the number of copycats launched in the last 12 months is probably lower than the 12

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back from a brief hiatus with the one and only Will Thompson for V3, I think. Believe so, yeah. Last time I titled it I think Real assets are So Hot right Now and it turned out to be a pretty apropos time. So we'll see, I think. It was 2024, so you were you were slightly ahead of the curve. This is my problem. I'm just 12 months ahead of the curve. That's, you know, as far as I'm concerned, that's. Yeah, that's enough to get you fired. Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. Oh well, it's enough to get you fired in a pod shop or something in the in the rest of the world 12 months. I mean, that's, you know, directly on target. Well, that that worked out by happenstance, but you want to, you know, you just released your your year end letter and you had mentioned that you thought that there was some relevant things to come on the pod.

I did read it. I don't have any like formal, you know, outline here, so I don't know if you want to sort of talk about a little bit what you think is relevant and then we can kind of go through the letter and pick on some different themes. I I'll here's here's one that I think is kind of fun when you still when you talked about wicked problems. OK. You want to you want to just riff on that and then we can kind of talk about, you know, specific metals.

And, and I do think it's actually quite, you know, we've got old Davos thing going on right now and various different people speaking all, all of we seem to in some regards see that we've got a lot of difficult problems to solve. And there are some easy solutions.

And I think, I think the wicked problems concept, which I, I first ran into, I think in grad school and, and it's like a social science term like wicked problem, sort of this problem that it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily have a solution. It, it has a continuous evolution, right. So the example I always think of for some reason is, is something

like healthcare, right? Where, you know, the government thinks, OK, they're going to roll out a solution to healthcare and roll out the solution to healthcare. And yeah, it addresses some of the issues, but it creates its own new issues. And no, it doesn't solve the problem. It just, it just creates sort of new problems and solves previous problems. And so healthcare issues still exist, they're just different

than they were before. And yes, that's, that's sort of a, a rough overview of what it is. And, and I, I think we're, we're currently faced with a lot of these complex interwinding problems that every time we try and apply a solution, we, we create, you know, sort of a new set of problems. And one that I sort of talked about on the letter, I think as perhaps coming to an end.

And, and, you know, having laid the foundation for a series of problems we're now confronted with is, you know, central bank's management of interest rates over the past, you know, whatever since 2008, let's say, you know, it's created a weird misallocations of capital. One of the things it's done is, you know, it's, it's made it very difficult, very hard to build any sort of quote, UN quote real assets here in the United States with the cost of capital, things of that nature

and wow. How is that a how's that a central bank issue and not like more of a permitting issue? It's, I mean, it's absolutely a permitting issue also, but I think it's multifaceted. I mean, it's very, so take for example, I, I got asked to, or where my fund got asked to, to look into whether we could provide a cost overrun facility for a mine that's being built. And this cost overrun facility is basically the mines got their project financing squared away.

But the project financing guy said, you know, in case you guys run over on costs, we'd like you to go out and get, you know, this facility that'll be undrawn and then trigger if you run over cost. And so I'm, I say, OK, you know, that that's interesting, that's highly idiosyncratic, that's, you know, out of left field that that might work in my full, you know, and so I start looking into these things and, you know, the cost overrun facility, if it's drawn, I might be able to

get, you know, 1718%, you know. That's real money. Last I checked, that's almost credit card interest rates. Yeah. I mean, it's a it's that's unaffordable forever. I mean there's no one who can can handle that. And the project financing is quite expensive also. And then you look at, you know, what banks are willing to really lend to and mining projects, for example, are really hard to get financing for you just you just can't do it at a rate that then is cost effective.

And the rates don't necessarily represent the real risk either. So you know that permitting is absolutely an issue. It's absolutely a challenge, but it isn't the only challenge. Yeah, I would think the banks would be like, why don't you build the mine and once it's cash flowing will refi you out. Meanwhile, the person that wants to build the mines like, no, I actually need the capital to get the mine started. If I had the equity, I wouldn't have this issue. Yes. And maybe you go to private

credit or something, right. But yeah, absolutely expensive paper. And and I mean the mining industries come up with ways around it, you know, with streams and royalties and stuff like that, but that is very

expensive capital also. And so while, you know, someone like I don't catch EPT and you know, those guys can go out and borrow money and and get financed with a project that all the value is in some terminal component that we have no idea when it is, where it is, if it'll ever materialize, etcetera. But the you know, the the forecasted period, right, You know that that we can really talk about that's all of his losses. Those guys can go out and get money.

But mining firms can you want to build a new aluminum smelter or something in the United States, good law. And so you've got these weird, these weird situations that crop up and addressing them will create a new series of problems.

And I think that we're at perhaps a turning point maybe with, with regards to some of these problems where we're taking the problems from the last 15 years, we're going to try and solve them now and, and, and those solutions will create their own set of problems, right?

And our problems started with, you know, whether it be permitting or central banks OR, you know, globalization, maybe, you know, those, those good things for some people created bad outcomes for others and a whole different series of problems, right? And so problems tend to be, you know, they never go away. It's just morph and change. It's like risk, right? You people talk about reducing their risk. Well, very rarely do you actually reduce risk, especially in the world finance, right?

It just gets shipped around to somebody else's. But there there's very little in the way of full risk reduction. It's just distribution that that changes. Yeah, yeah. It's my the story I tell myself. I don't know if it's true or not, but is in an effort to sort

of reduce pollution and whatnot. We offshored a lot of The Dirty stuff and then, you know, are not really willing for one reason or another to fund it. And I think that one reason or another is probably that all the all the sexy growing things have been outperforming for so long that people's money is like, well, why would I allocate to mine on on average? Yeah, yeah. Right.

And then, you know, you got the private mag 7 that you can allocate to and all you're going to do, all you're going to see is your statement go up until it doesn't.

But and and and the. Solution to client The solution to climate change is the perfect example of a a wicked problem. We applied a solution, created all kinds of other things. So what? Happened there for. For people. That don't follow this. Can you, can you bring us to where we are in the climate change sort of policy response and or what happened over the

last couple years? So I guess I so let's say 2010 to 2019, we had a slow ramp of increasing policies, whether they be in China, United States, Japan, Europe, etcetera, all pushing the energy system and the energy stack towards

increasing renewables on the grid. 2020 to you know, kind of like last year, the year before 2024-2025 that policy ramp really accelerated quite dramatic and there was significant growth in government sort of incentives, government money etcetera to push the entire energy stack further and further into renewables and away from hydrocarbons, away from coal, etcetera and in some places away from nuclear, which which is a very European story, although a little bit in Japan

as well. Donald Trump comes along last year and we've had a very hard sort of break where not only was there a bit of a building concern in the last few years, the Biden administration that that perhaps we were pushing this renewable sort of solution to the climate change problem a little too hard and too fast. But that perhaps it actually wasn't. You know, solar and wind perhaps weren't the, as I call it, sort of universal solution that they were originally sort of claim to be.

And when I say universal solution, I mean, sort of this idea that everything could just be run on solar, wind with batteries and that it was a universal solution that addressed all energy problems that, you know, a lot of us were skeptical of that from the beginning. From my perspective, wind and solar were always very similar to oil and natural gas in that you are harvesting a natural resource. When you're harvesting a natural resource where it is becomes critical to the return, right.

So you know, you can put solar up in Germany, for example, and they did and you can put solar in Nevada. But the effectiveness of both those things and the profitability are going to be completely different. And what what's happened over time and, and the break again came last year was that a lot of that misplaced, a lot of those misplaced assets became the poster trauma of, of what was

happening. And so with the Trump administration, you know, they've repealed a lot of the benefits, if you will, that the government had extended that had encouraged people to go into wind and solar and, and now, you know, made sort of a hard right turn and, and are trying to push oil and natural gas further. Europe has not made that sort of that turn, but there have been there has been definitely a recognition that perhaps they need a more comprehensive

solution. And so that's why you saw the Prime Minister of Germany say, I think a week ago or something talking about how I mean for. Lack of better term boneheaded it was to turn off their entire fleet of nuclear power plants. They did it like, I don't know, I think it took a decade, but but that's pretty quick in the grand scheme of things and especially when it's like the. Greenest energy? Yeah, well. Yeah, especially when it's like there is that. Too and and.

All that time and energy spent on building renewables while they turned off the news with power plant meant that, you know, in reality they just replaced clean with with other clean energy. And so, you know, where we stand

now is in my mind. You know, the pendulum in the United States is probably what swung too far the one side, the pendulum in Europe maybe hasn't swung away from renewables being universal solution enough yet, but it's probably approaching more of a middle ground over there that is here in the United States. Now that being said, there are areas in renewables that are still doing pretty well rooftop solar and some of the rooftop solar companies are still doing

pretty decently, you know, behind meter solar. So industrial or you know, not not quite industrial scale, but you know, maybe a facility of manufacturing facility that's got a big roof, for example, you know, that type of thing. Those guys are still doing OK. I think community scale solar, which you know, fits somewhere in between. There is suffering a great deal. Then offer wind and wind has obviously been on shore and offshore.

Donald Trump. Yeah. It's got a somewhat irrational dislike event in my mind. It's expensive, don't get me wrong. I, you know, but it, it has its benefits in a portfolio of energy sources. And then in China, though, you know, trying to views it, and I'm, I've been saying this for a while, they're pushed for EVs and they're pushed for renewables, has got nothing to do with the environment whatsoever. They could care less. It is all a geostrategic concern.

They have no oil. They've got a lot of coal, but they have no oil and they have very little in the way of natural gas. So anything that uses oil or natural gas, they want to be very specific and sort of deliberate about because they don't want to have to rely on, say, imports from the United States. So their push into EVs and into solar makes a ton of sense from a resource perspective. So they will continue to do it regardless of of the environmental sort of side.

So that's sort of where where it stands.

It's odd. To me that that that they don't have any oil just given the size of the country, but. Yeah, I don't, I haven't really thought about that. But they have one big field been in production since like the 60s or the 50s and 60s. But my understanding is it, it's petering out and I don't know, it never was all that great to begin with. Perhaps so, but they got a lot of other things. I mean the United States is remarkably luck in our resource endowment just in terms of the

spread. There are admittedly things that we don't have in necessarily the most economic concentrations or necessarily enough deposits of, but in probably frankly kind of almost have a little bit of everything. It's really quite unique. Not sure besides for Canada, which is kind of AI mean from a geological perspective, just a

continuation. I'm not really sure anyone else has, you know, quite as comprehensive a resource endowment as we do. I mean, Europe certainly doesn't, China certainly doesn't, India doesn't, Australia maybe actually not and Argentina being Brazil, possibly so, but but it's it's pretty unique. Yeah, it's. I don't know, it's I was talking to a buddy who works as a gas blender and we were just talking about how cheap gas is, but how strong the cracks are.

And I just kind of wonder for refiners the cracks. I just kind of wonder if, I mean, obviously Trump getting elected and drill baby drill has taken over the lexicon or the ethos or whatever, but some of it is like the prices that people are paying as a consequence of the policies. I think you know it reduces the. I don't fill. Up my car and feel that same pain and be like, oh man, you know, maybe an EV does make sense.

Which when gas was at $5 a gallon I was thinking, I kind of wonder if if this is an my tinfoil hat thing, Thinks maybe after the midterms we see oil prices go a little bit higher, but who knows. Yeah, I think that I'm skeptical of oil prices here where they are, or I should say, I don't know, 6060, four, $65 a barrel. Those aren't great prices for

adding new production. They're not impossible prices, but there's definitely, there's definitely a challenge at this price in keeping up with demand because demand growth, You know that, that, that was one of the other parts of say the, the climate change, right, was that oil demand would fall off the edge of a Cliff as we ramp renewables and specifically EVs. And, and that just hasn't proven to be the case. And in fact, no oil demand has accelerated in some regards.

I think I say it in my letter, I mean we need what is it 6.9 million barrels per day of new production every year just to keep up with the decline rate of existing fields plus the growth of about 1.4 million barrels per day that say they expect in 2026, you know, roaring, you know sort of economic situation that 1.4 might be 2.5 and at these prices you don't have a lot of. So someone like ExxonMobil who, you know, has done just a spectacular job of turning on

these giant oil and natural gas fields in Guyana, right? They don't have a pipeline of projects like that. You know, they're doing a couple 100,000 barrels per day right now. You know, they're going to turn on their last couple of Guyana fields this year.

And then the cupboards drop. And incentivizing them to go out and find more is, you know, it's not $6064 a barrel because first you have the exploration to do and then you have the development to do. And it's also like a 10 year process if it's a big field like that. The frackers those guys are, are now sort of going out into Argentina and out into the rest of the world looking for other opportunities to duplicate what they do in Texas.

But, you know, they they haven't necessarily found it yet. And Oh, yeah, by the way, the supply chains that enable them to so effectively crack wells in Texas don't exist in a, you know, a place like Argentina. And so I think, I think I read Harold Hamm, who was the CEO of, I don't remember which company he was CEO of, but Harold Hamm is one of the original sort of frackers. He says 50% more expensive to do in RGT. So you know what they produce at $50 a barrel here in the United States.

You know, this current price is not going to cut it down there for expanding the, the fracking fields they've got there, which is in the area called the Velocum where they're dead cow fool. So I, I think the incentive price is, is quite a bit higher. And, and I tend to echo your, your sort of thought that maybe after the midterms we see a rise

in the oil price. I think that'll be less to do with politics and more to do with the fact that the second-half of the year, you know, people are going to start positioning for 20272028 within oil markets. And 2027 and 2028 are years that are very much passed the the turning on of fields that were sanctioned immediately after COVID. And, and those big projects, they're just there are there isn't a pipeline.

Yeah. It's. Interesting. I like the reading your letter that you you tend to or have a bias maybe towards being skeptical of the current oil price.

You also seem a little bit skeptical of the current gold price. Neither one of those positions is particularly sexy at the moment, Right? Everybody likes gold and no one likes oil, I thought. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my, my so no one likes oil. It's absolutely true. My skepticism about gold, I don't know if it's it's an outright skepticism about the gold price more of AI have no idea how to value a gold company withhold moving the way it is so well then you. Just put it at 10,000 an ounce

and value it there. 10,000 an ounce, everything is a freaking awesome buy. We're going to 10,000 an ounce. But I, I don't, you know, when I invest in a gold miner, I don't I wanted to make money at spot less 25% or less 30% right, because come on, he's moved that one. I mean, we've just seen oh move. I mean, it moved up, but you know, it, it they can move dramatics. And so where, how do you, you know, what price do you put in

for a long term price? And obviously, you know, you want to use multiple premises, but, you know, right now, with the way it's moving, I don't know if 3500 should be the sort of average price I end up with or should it be 4000 or should it be 3000? I mean, we could see a reversal. Everyone's like, oh, well, it can't happen. But, you know, because the geopolitical set up, the debasement trade, everyone coming out in the dollar. OK, sure. It looks gold.

It looks perfect. I mean, I I don't see where the crack is, but if I don't see where the crack is, I'm I can't make the case or to go the other direction. I'm really concerned that it will go the other direction because it's just too perfect. That's how it felt after the GFC and then it it sort of it had a good run. I don't know if it was like till 2010 or 2011 or whatever it was, but. I remember everybody.

Talking about gold back there. And then I, I guess what's different this time is there's much more fiscal policy than there was then. Yeah. And I guess we're more. Decoupling than we were then yeah, the. The we were running in in the direction of coupling. Now we're definitely running in

the opposite direction. The central banks are definitely that whole sort of again, debasement feed, get out, get away from the US Diversifying the other places is definitely, you know, central bank buying of gold is definitely a tailwind that has how much of this move it's responsible for when it's responsible for a big, big piece of it and it's definitely responsible for the early innings of of this move.

So when you were, when you were buying gold miners what like 2 years ago or so, the idea was OK, look the price is pretty on demanding and a 25 to 30% lower than here. I'm still pretty comfortable with the with the return of the investment. But today, now that gold has gone up so much, is it, is it a matter of not knowing how far how to like, I don't want to say not knowing how to stress it, because that's not what I actually mean.

But is it just that the range of outcomes you perceive to be much wider to the downside than it was previously? Yes, yeah. It's the range of outcomes that. Yeah, it's very much the range of outcomes and the inability to comfortably sort of put probabilities on those outcomes. I mean, the idea that gold can pull back the 3500, it's just not like that's not a crazy idea. And so and I just don't know, I don't know how to go about putting odds on that at the moment.

But I'd also say is that all the gold miners have also run and so the price you're buying in at you need to be much more. I don't like to have to be precise about my commodity. I like to have to be roughly accurate. Gold is going to go up. That's about as accurate or or as as specific and precise in my gold outlook as I want to be.

Gold is going up right now. When I look at gold miners and, and valuations, you know, moving the needle 250 dollars, 300, $400.00 an ounce makes a, a big difference to the valuation and whether you know that price is a fair price to buy in. And so I find that with commodity prices, when they're very high relative to recent history, you have to be very precise in your outlook in order to make money.

Because the price you buy in at with commodity producers in particular I think is absolutely the most critical barrier. Because you know, like, look, if, if you're buying a consumer goods company or something, you can buy it at a good, you know, you can buy a good company at a good price very rarely. And, and then you can hold it right.

And let time work for you and, and let them, you know, take advantage of pricing power or take advantage of, you know, TikTok mean that results in some too. Just, you know, being the, the, you know, the, the hottest thing in the market and stuff like that. You can't really do that with, with mining firms so much. We're natural resources producers.

You have to buy them really well and buying them really well because nothing that occurs after that buy is, you know, getting bailed out ends up either being giant macro story about the commodity price movement. And the last thing you want to be is in my opinion is tied to some giant macro story that you have no idea of the timeline of, you have no idea how far it will run, etcetera, etcetera. You know, so, so you can't buy cheap and discounted gold miners

right now. You can only buy gold miners that are, you know, a little expensive then that's not totally true. I looked at one yesterday that I thought seemed like a pretty reasonable case, but I think it's probably still trading at twice what I would have thought this company was valued at at the same stage in 20, 1-2 or

something, right. So it's still, you know, it's still more expensive in 2022. I'm not sure I would have looked at the company given its current market cap and where they are in their development now. I'll look at it and it's reasonable, but, you know, the spread of outcomes has widened.

Yeah. So it sounds to me like if the price of a commodity is close to the marginal cost of production, that could give some sort of confidence that it's the probability that it goes much lower and stays much lower is fairly low given a supply response. Can, you know, sort of offset some of that?

But in a scenario where the commodity is valued at some sort of political premium or whatever, the premium exists, the distribution gets wider at the same time that people probably like the stocks more than they liked it when the commodity wasn't liked. And that those kind of situations make you a little more nervous.

Is that fair? Yeah, no. Absolutely. That's that's very well said, yeah. Much makes sense because when I, when I saw you like getting out of gold and into oil, I was like, Ah, that's I kind of like that, you know, as but I like contrarian things by nature. So, you know, I hope I don't jinx you. No, no, I'm I'm sure. Yeah, I don't. I don't buy into that type of thing too much. But the hocus pocus.

Side of life. Yeah, I can't every once in a while I get or I mean, I guess I shouldn't say that I I was very hocus pocus very nervous about that last year. But like if I'm doing poorly, that's all on me. Yeah, if the funds doing OK and it's like 0 to plus 12%, you know that's a mix of me in the market. If it's doing really well, I'm like, oh boy, I don't know guys, this I'm very worried here. I don't I don't know if this is

a good scenario. My investors are thrilled and I'm like guys, this is very touch and go here. Well, you should. Probably be a little kinder to yourself in that scenario and take a little more credit, but I think that that that general disposition will probably serve you better in this profession than. Than the opposite one, yeah. Yeah, Well, I don't know. Being kind to oneself. I think if I, if I beat myself enough, I'll, I'll improve, you know, pressure.

Yeah. I. You know, I used to think that, too. Now I realize it's OK to say, you know, give yourself a little pat on the back, but not too much. Yeah, not. Too much, not too much, maybe 1. Or two kind words among the the lashings. Yeah. Yeah, I, I tried to do that. So I turned 40 last year. I tried to sort of be like, OK, been around the block a little bit here. Maybe I'm a little wiser. I can be a little you know, but it didn't last for anymore. Well, that's fair.

Whatever works. I was. So why? Why, given what we just talked about, does your outlook on copper seem fairly constructive? I mean, and and to frame it, what I hear you say is some of the tailwinds that were driving some of the adoption of EV or, or renewable technology have sort of dissipated and maybe even turned into headwinds. I was under the impression that that transition really was positive for copper. Now I assume AI is fairly positive for copper.

I don't know, but seems like copper wins in both those scenarios potentially. But then, you know, it is kind of, I don't think it's as hated as it once was. So that's kind of the, that's why I'm asking the question I'm asking. If we look at the demand side on copper, what I would say is any, you know, energy addition in basically any form to be perfectly frank, is a net positive for copper. AI is a net positive for demand, rearmament, defense, big net positive.

And then I think this one is slightly underappreciated. Any revamp or rebuilding of infrastructure sort of writ large refreshing your societal infrastructure is a net positive for copper. And I do think we we see some of that increase going on throughout the Western world.

I've long thought we have sort of rested a little too much on our our, our sort of greenly well built infrastructure sort of post World War 2. We've lived on that until it sort of it isn't quite fit for purpose anymore. And so we're getting a lot of rebuilding that type of thing.

So that's not positive. So on the demand side there, there's really only temporary issues and those temporary issues are say a recession, recession or depression, whatever, you know, that's not good for copper demand. But those are very much temporary on the supply side. And I think a couple of years ago, so let's say 2019, 2021, the copper story was very much a demand driven store it is now.

But there were those of us who would have told you at the time that supply was also going to be an issue, it just it was further out. Now that supply issue is very much, you know, if it's not here already, then it's next year or the year after you, you know, it's the supply issue is here and the supply issue, you know, copper today, where are we here $5.80 a pound. You know, that's sufficient to incentivize mine building, not sufficient to incentivize A rush

of mine building, though. It's that's sufficient to incentivize the building of, you know, sort of like fantastic year one projects, you know, like, you know, you were you've you've filed 1D mining a little bit and and it's only because of. You, man, but those that's, that's a cool family, yeah. You know, they've got projects that are tier one projects that will be producing copper for the

next 40 or 50 years. You know, this price will incentivize the building of those types of assets, but there aren't that many of those. And we need sort of like one year, to be perfectly frank, of that sort of scale, that size, if not more to keep up with demand plus attrition of the existing assets. And that, you know, again, in 2020-2021 that was a story for the second-half of the decade.

Well, you know, a we're, we're now in the second-half of the decade and a lot of the time in between, there wasn't, there was actually, you know, a shortfall in capital. And so rather than sort of coming into the second-half of the decade from a period of strength, we've allowed ourselves to come into the second-half of the decade, you

know, on the back foot. And so, you know, I remain positive on copper for sort of the exact opposite reasons or, or yeah, I guess the exact opposite reason is that I'm, I'm sort of negative on gold, right? Like never seen a gold mine that fired $4800 gold come online. See plenty of copper mines that

require $5 copper. So you know where where the price of copper is relative to the incentive cost to bring on new mines or where mines are profitable enough to continue to invest or where they're profitable enough to build the infrastructure to get out, etcetera. You know, this price here, it's not, it's not even a sweet spot. Sweet spots, probably more like 657 dollars.

I think the former CEO of Freeport Mac brand, and this is dated now a guy by the name of Richard Atkins, she's probably 2020. But at the time he said something along the lines of I couldn't bring a copper mine online at $8 copper in 10 years. I think at the time he was speaking at a conference, he was being a bit, you know, dramatic. But that sentiment is is, you know, directionally sort of

accurate and appropriate. So what what he was trying to say is if copper were $8, I would want to build a mine, but it would take me 10 years to get it done. Yeah. And, and I would need that $8 cup. Yeah. Now, again, I I think he was being a big glib and you know, he's speaking at a conference media, blah, blah, blah. But you know, again, I think the general thrust of that comment is accurate. You know, the, the Lund beans and if copper was at 2:50 A1 Dean or $3, let's say 350, how

was it 351? Dean's would not be trying to build the Kuna way, just not sufficient. The, the, there's also this, and some people will have heard me say this before, but there's this sort of spectrum, if you will, with, with mining firms where there's geological complication on one scale and then there's infrastructure need to get the material out on another stick, right?

And so lot of infrastructure, but little geological complication over here, lot of geological complication, little infrastructure needed to get product. So think about something like diamonds, right? The mines are really complicated, but you can put the product on a helicopter and fly out. You can build the mine anywhere. You don't need anything to get

the product. Iron ore mine in Australia, just scraping dirt off the surface, not geologically complicated, but they have to build a railroad. They just carry the iron ore to the port that they've got to build a deep water port that they've got to build, right? So the infrastructure need is huge, right? And then? Ship it to somebody else that needs all the same stuff. Yes, exactly copper used.

To kind of sit in the middle where it was hard because it was geologically difficult and the infrastructure was reasonably significant. Now what's happened is it's gone like this where the geological complication has gotten really hot and the infrastructure has gotten really big, which makes it very hard to accomplish, very hard to execute, very costly to

execute. And I kind of expect that, you know, as demand for copper increases and as the easy deposits get mined, that spread will actually increase, making, you know, the demand on the copper price go higher, even

more significant. So we had some, some issues with copper mines last year. And, and this is just sort of provide a sort of characterization of how complicated copper mining can be. You know, people often think a mine is just a hole you dig out, you move on, right. But you know, a lot of copper mining these days, you, you get these assets where they say, well, we think we've got to produce it via a block cave mom.

And, and I tell people this story just because it sort of blows their mind with, with what these guys have to do to get the copper out. And So what is a block cave mom? So envision a a a giant upper deposit. It looks like this. It's it's like a round ball, let's say just for simplicity purposes. And it is 500 meters below ground to a block cave mine. They will dig 750 meters down. They will build a giant cavern below the deposit. Then they will drill holes up

into the deposit from below. They will pack those holes with explosive and they will clear everyone out of the mine and they will blow the roof. They will hope that they have built this thing just run such that when they fracture a column of 750 meters of rock above them that they then funnel. They then the rock that's been cracked under the weight of gravity in these explosives will then filter down through these funnels they've built in the roof of the Tavern that they've

made. If this goes wrong, it's one directional bat, meaning once they press that that that sort of go button. If this all doesn't occur perfectly, they can't send people back underneath it to fix it because oh, you got to like. Re dig the whole thing. No, no, there's no RE. Digging of the whole thing. Oh, really? You ruin it, You're done. Wow. Because you have fractured all of the rock above you and it can all just collapse on top.

And, you know, look and these things that process billions of dollars to build and takes years. And, and Shreveport Mcmoran had a problem this last year at the Grasberg mine, which is, is their largest copper mine and one of the world's largest, most important copper mines, where a lot of water got into that column and into all those fractures. And they are aware of that and they monitor that and they keep, you know, they keep a close eye

on that. But of course, you can only see so much, right, with radar and stuff like that. And what ended up happening was one of these little shoots, or this is roughly what ended up happening. One of these little shoots like it got a rock sucking right and up above, you know, filled with a lot of water. And then when the guy comes by with his, his bucket loader, he knocked the rock and you had a flood of thousands of tons of liquidy mud that basically just turned to cement in the, you

know, in the, the mine. And, and so they've got to try and monitor all these things. Now, not all mines are blocking since they're not very common, but, you know, we're getting to the point where they, you know, those types of activities, those types of engineering efforts are what is needed. That dude make it or no? No, but a couple of guys died. That's sad, you know. Maybe it happened so quick you didn't really feel it. Yeah, no doubt I. Don't. Yeah.

I have no idea how quick that you know. I don't know. I don't. I don't think it's like those ocean gate guys, you know, went down to the Titanic. Yeah. They don't think it's that quick. I think I don't. Mean to laugh at those guys, but also you don't need to go down to the Titanic. No, and I don't think you do, man. Come on. It's come on. We all have weird, weird things we want to do. That's true. None of I don't think any of mine want to are going to kill me.

But hang on, can I go get a soda real quick?

Yeah, go. For it, go for. It hang on one SEC. This episode is brought to you by Trata. You can find Trata at tritrata.com/brew. Trata is a transcript library that has interviews of analyst and analyst. So, you know, the difference is sometimes you'll get on the major transcript platforms and it'll be an analyst talking to an expert and maybe that platform is trying to fill some space and you get a lot of filler.

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That is what they do. I have found the there's value in these transcripts. So if this is something that your process involves, try Trata. This episode is also brought to you by the OG sponsor Fiscal dot AI. You already. Know the pitch. If you don't, you should listen to the episode with Brayden Dennis, in part because it's a great episode of, you know, like one, he's a good guy to interview 2. He's a good guy, period 3.

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ideas right now. Do you know anything about

caustic soda? Not really, man. I. Wish I knew Olin better. I'd like. I just wish I knew it. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I look at it. I'm like, this is so. And I know some of the people that own it. Just looks cheap. Oh well, yeah. No, I I've looked at it before, but not in a long time. I don't. Yeah, I don't really know much about caustic soda. Yeah. I'd Mike, I gather a lot of it is somewhat tied to building construction.

So it's wild how much stuff is I mean, you know, like the EV discussion, obviously EV adoption has slowed. I have not looked at the share of new autos. I there's no way that reducing the tax incentive like helps, right? But overall, I kind of wonder how much of the, the slowing down is mostly an interest rate

story. Some of it's the early adopters have adopted and and that, but I don't know, I, I. Think a lot of it actually just has to do with the fact that the at least in the United States, the selection, yeah, I've driven a couple of Chinese EVs, I hear they're. Nuts. They're really slick. Yeah, I I think that. Well, thank you for. Supporting our our mortal enemies, Sir. Yeah, well. I didn't. I didn't buy one. I didn't say I bought 1.

I just said I've driven them. I've I. Drive an old used Chevy Cruze that I insist on driving until it falls apart. It's like my. Volvo, yeah, 90,000 miles on it. Looking for 90 more? Yeah. Yeah, that I'm, I'm of that mindset. But yeah, I mean I, I think. You know, like that Ford. Lightning, that was really cool, but they don't even make it anymore now. Yeah, You know, And then what? What do you got? You got Tesla, I don't think. When was the last? Time, Tesla, Scalia. It's got one.

Your selection is. It's really limited, very poor. Ribbian. Ribbian was I That's a real conduct. They sell a. Lot man. So I'm in Charlotte, NC Gosh, those guys are doing well down here. I don't know if you know, I think they lose they lose money. They lose quite a bit of money per car my understanding, but make it up some. Scale, baby. Yeah, maybe. Maybe there's a lot of them down here, everyone, every housewife driving to the Country Club and whatnot. It's got a Rivia SUV, not a bad.

Whip I, I would drive it for sure, but I, I, I justify my to the extent that I have an environmental bone in my body, which I do, But I, I just say, well, I think holding on to my current car is less environmentally harmful than trading in cars all the time. Now, maybe that's a flawed way to think and I'm definitely open to that, but I don't know. I don't know. I, I just drive so my office is like 5 miles away from work from from home.

So I drive, you know, cops 10 miles a day type of thing. The end. Otherwise if I'm going someplace it's with my wife and kids in the FTV and she needs a big car, kids and all crap and whatnot. Well, I'm aware of this. Story. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I just don't see any reason to change my car for 5 miles a day. I, I figure figure I can make the thing last another 15 years as long as I don't, you know, get forced to get rid of it.

Yeah. Well, the real story with mine is the Kelley Blue Yes. Yeah, that's, that's probably true of mine as well because I, I. Know it, right? It's like I know the warts. There aren't many. There's no way it's worth what they think it's worth, so I'll just hold it until I don't. Whatever this this is. What people came on the podcast to hear about was our cars. Yeah, well, it is it.

Is interesting to think about. I mean, like you had zero interest rates or near 0 plus the stimulus and all the incentives to buy the EVs. It's just I how many, how many bull whips are we still working through from like a combo of COVID and policy? I think we're almost done with them, but I still think that there's some.

Yeah, that stimulus that lasts a long time, I think you're probably right. I think we probably got to be at the end of it at this point. But boy, did that that was surprising Juice in terms of its longevity. Yeah, I, you know, I, I hope we don't learn the wrong lesson from that. I'm sure we did or, or, or at least I sure we did for a little while. Right. And actually, this is something

I, I talked about in my letter. Like, I'm not certain that, you know, like if the economy falls over under Trump, I'm sure that he will try to juice it in any way he can. But I don't think the wherewithal to continue doing that is is going to be there much longer. And I don't, I mean the the fiscal capability is probably not going to be there much long. Yeah.

So, you know, did this pattern that we've gotten into where everyone is very comfortable buying the dip because policy is going to be there to, you know, put a floor underneath that one of these days very soon, that trend has got to come to an end. I mean, this is kind of why people are buying gold, right? Yeah. I think so, you know, at least at. Least you know what your monetary value is and Oz right, Maybe not dollars, but you have an idea. I know it's why people aren't

buying. Well, I think it's why people aren't buying bonds. So I don't know it's it's a very I mean, I guess every every time is interesting. I do feel like, you know, I always felt like the Peter shifts of the world. Well, I'll just say Peter Schiff since there's only one Peter Schiff of the world. But I always felt like he was kind of like knocking on the wrong door until the stimulus which I missed. I, I did not see it. But now I get what I missed.

You know, that was like a real change and a smarter me would have seen it. But who knows, maybe there will be another one that I do see. Experience. Is what you get when you don't get what you want. I haven't heard that before. I like that. Oh, yeah, man, Where's that from? I don't know. But I got plenty of experience so I've heard it a couple times. Yeah.

Well, experience is important. Yeah, you can, you can learn from other people's experience as much as you want, but it doesn't doesn't hit like your own experience. Yeah. I think it's not margins. That's my experience. I mean, it's like, you know, there's only so much reading. For me at least, the emotions of, of owning things and going through things is a lot different than what you read about.

Yeah. Well, it's one of the reasons why I like if I'm getting serious about something, even if I'm not necessarily all that serious about it, even if I'm just getting started, I got to put on a position to really care. Care. What'd you say to like care? Care. Yeah. To like, care, yeah. There's caring and then there's caring, caring there's. Caring and, and, and there's also, you know, sort of, you know, research, research can drag on for a long time.

You got to give yourself sort of a boost to like pursue the research with urgency. His position's on. There's a there's a bit of urgency because there could be money lost. Yeah, that's right. Well, Chris Meyer. Wrote that book. How do you know? You know, it's somewhere on my on my shelf, but that I, I find that hard, you know, like I, I don't know, I, I mean, read that. Book. What did he say?

I would need to reread it to to tell you, but I know he wrote it and people should check it out to help him out. But I I don't know the answer to When you know, you know I I do know that. I do know that. Owning something is different than researching something, Yes. Without without question and I know. That I've thought that I've known things and then I've owned them and I've been like, I don't know this. But. I don't know I've I've been spending. I've been.

Spending more time trying to find interesting management teams and that's been a a fun use of time. I don't know that it's the the best way to outperform, but I it's been a. It's been. Time that I've enjoyed spending. So to the extent that some of this is for a life reward, it's helpful in that way, yeah. But I think it's, I mean, they're very, you know, we always talk about sort of Warren Buffett's little aphorisms and, you know, he wants a business that even an idiot can run.

I challenge that concept not because he's wrong. Are there any? Well, that's that's. Where I'm going, I I'd love to find a business an idiot can run. I'm not sure I've ever seen one. Yeah. And that's, that's a lot of what I spend my time. When you you know, you talk about them. My companies. I, I think of them all as project, right?

They they all got a big project or maybe they have multiple big projects and you think about or read about or experience, you know what makes a project successful. It is absolute managed, you know, getting a project off the ground you need. I had someone say it to me, recent management team tell me about they're saying we're firefighters every day, you know, they're building, you know they're spending a billion dollars to build something.

Every day there's a fire that we need to put out, we need to stay on schedule and you know, on budget, etcetera, etcetera. And so we need to be there, you know, putting out fires on a continuous basis until the project is done. You got to have a good management team to do that.

And you got to have the right management team for for the one of the that I've found, or one of my observations I've found really interesting that I think it took me a little while to learn was that, you know, we're in a company's life cycle. It is, yeah. Or it's very different management team. And I mean, you, you think about that with something like, right, Tim Cook, perfect management team or or CEO for that period of time after Steve Jobs, like

they've made the innovation. It's like when you look now and has innovative anything is on the same iPhone, Steve Jobs, but made a fortune with it because he was the right manager for, you know, supply chains, logistics, construction, you know, etcetera. Who knows if Steve Jobs would have been the right manager for that? Maybe they would have already moved on to some new something and then he had come up with syncing your management team,

your life cycle critical. What do you? Think makes the Lundin's capable of. Passing. On like intergenerational skills. I don't know. That's a really good question. I mean, I, I guess I get in trouble for saying this, but I, I think that if we go back and look at so Lucas Lundin was the second generation, Adam and Jack and got a third brother whose name is escaping you right now is a third generation think that the father the, the father of Lucas, his name was Adolf. Adolf had successes.

I think he had a couple of big wolves, but he wasn't quite the success that Lucas was. I think, you know, if there hadn't been a Lucas, we wouldn't know who the Lundeens were if they had just taken what Adolf had done. So, so Adolf had one skill set and and he was successful at and successful in a big way. But it it really was Lucas, the second generation that supercharged it. And now we're still at the early stages of the third generation,

right. So Jack Lundeen has taken over Lundeen Mining as CEO or Jack is like 36. This is the first mine that he's, he's going to be in charge of building a Vacuna, if you will. This is the first mine he's going to build, You know, So in some regards we are right now in the sort of the trial period, if you will, where, where this third generation is really going to have to have to prove themselves.

I do think that they didn't say this to me, but this is the type of people they are actually a different manager say this to me. The this management team said to me, you know, we're going to be here for this phase of it, but then we're going to have to find someone else, be the CEO in a couple of years because I can't do XY and Z. Think the one Deans have raised group of people up around them and built this team around them that has been very capable of

pointing out when they're over their skis and they have listened to them. And I don't think they've allowed themselves to get in many situations, no, but. That's good to have people around you that'll tell you and you have the ability to listen. That's good stuff. And. So I don't Yeah. And so I, I think that is critical. I don't know how you love to, you know, teach my daughters that skill set, right. Like I don't know how you teach that skill set. Takes a level of humility.

Well, yeah. And and so there's got to be some sort of activity. I think I, I don't understand people in in equity markets that are really arrogant because equity markets punish you so frequent on such a regular basis that I don't know how you can have like a ripped roaring ego if you like, are a trader or something in markets frequent.

Maybe there's something about, you know, the fact that they're in a business that that punishes people for errors that, you know, their lives at risk, etcetera. Bring down the ego a little bit. But I don't know, it's a good question. I mean, they all also, I don't think that, you know, there's a story that, that, that everyone was sort of sat down every generation then like, hey, you're the oil guy, you're the mining guy, you're, you know, the parents saying what you're going to do.

It's not clear to me that that actually is the case. Like the eldest brother, it's got nothing to do with. I mean, he, he's, he runs a hedge fund. He, he's got nothing to do. I mean, they invest in mining firms, you know, so there's relation there. In essence, he went off and did his own thing. So I'm also not sure if, you know, they were guided to it or they were forced into it or, or whatnot. But I, I think they come to their interest in these

businesses natural. But I think it's also probably critical. And I'm not sure with family businesses if that is, you know, as common as perhaps it should be. Yeah. I don't think so. I think a lot of family members feel an obligation to do it, yeah. I mean, I would certainly, you know, and let's say massive capital goes on to be a big success. I'd certainly love, you know, one of my daughter's to be able to rise up to the and I'd I'd probably try and push them in

that direction. It's probably the exact wrong thing. You want them to come to it, the interest natural. If they don't come to it naturally, then you're trying to force a square peg in a round hole and snack on work. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I think that's right. I think that's, that's probably a big piece of it, but that's surrounding yourself with good people. I can't, can't beat that. Yeah.

And being willing to listen. They all also started at the bottom, you know, they didn't, they didn't get a management position. They all, they all started, you know, out in the field and stuff like that gives you an. Appreciation for what? What the people that work for you go through, right? Yeah. But also gives you appreciation for, you know, how, how the omelet's actually made, right. So, you know, but they're good. They're they're great management team and got big things out of

them. Hopefully at least at least that's my bet. Yeah, well. I mean, I think that's AI don't know to your point on the business that an idiot can run. I mean, I, I just, I just, I think you need good jockeys. I don't and you know, I don't, I don't really know how you prospectively manage that or, or figure that out. I recently made an investment. We'll see if it's smart or not, right?

But it's like at the end of the day, I really like these people and like, it's more than like I want to hang out with them. Like these people strike me as people that are really good at making money. So we'll see, right? Well, with all the things that can go wrong in business, that seems like the most sensible thing to battle, if you will, in some regards, right? You know, inflation can rise and fall, pricing power can come and go.

But someone who's diligent, who's, you know, going to spend the time to understand problems, solve problems, you know that, that state and that's in their character, you know that that'll stick around, right. So you get that a lot of fixed things in, in in the world of business. But, but a person's character and, and what that means or how they approach their job, that doesn't change very much. It'll change, but it doesn't change very much.

Yeah. And I I. Think in the public markets, it's nice to hear somebody actually care about shareholders and be able to figure out if they mean it or not so. Yeah, it's very difficult. That's why I have a lot of trouble with, you know, say like tech companies and and stuff like that. I don't, I just don't know. It's really hard to tell. Like just what's the CEO of Microsoft's name?

Nipaella, you know, like he's a billionaire now and I don't know he he made that all by being the CEO of Microsoft as he you know, but he could liquidate a billion in Microsoft and freakonomic indifference to the stock so he can exit that the easy you know, does he care about you know what what does he care about right? It's it's gonna be hard to allies it.

Well, there's something beautiful about the commodity niche that you've chosen in that I don't think people are rushing to enter the market like they are tech. And you know, it's like there's no disillusion that you have massive franchise value to assign to these projects, right? You might have some what is it is a basis when you have a transportation advantage. Is that what they right basis,

right. You might have some logistics advantage and some geography or something that gives you some outsize returns, but it's not like I don't know. I I would think it's fairly, it lends itself well to rational analysis that looks at the capital cycle. Yeah, I think it does. But you raise an interesting

sort of point. All the industry's idea all have huge people in terms of a lack of people going into them. So I don't remember. I might get the numbers, I might get the numbers wrong but directionally correct. You know, if we used to graduate 1000 geologists a year in the United, again, these numbers are wrong. They're not don't nobody quote me on you. If we used to graduate 1000 geologists a year in the United States, pH DS or something, we only do 100.

You know, it's, it's that type of shrinkage. Like if I go to mine sites these days, it's it's a lot of Gray bearded geologists in their 50s and 60s and one or two young kids fresh out of, you know, Colorado school mines or something. But it's a very like that pipeline is, is incredibly thin. It's, it's far thinner, in fact, than the actual project pipeline. It's, you know, and we see that in the United States with other things like the, the processing of rare earth metals, right?

So we used to have in the United States, there used to be something like in the Fifties, 60s and 70s or something like 12 or 15 different places, different universities you could go to. We'd get a PhD in, you know, metallurgy and specialize in their understanding rare earth metal processing and stuff, you know, sort of stuff related to that. Now it's, it's, it's down to there's, there's a program at like the University of Virginia, all places. And that's, that's like it.

And so there is no, you know, you want to stand up or rare earth processing facility in the United States, you have got to go overseas and you have got to hire people away from someone else because there just aren't, you know, people with with knowledge and experience. You, you probably can hire some people with some theoretical, you know, textbook experience, but what practical experience, real world experience, you know, you got to hire them away from somebody else.

And that there really aren't that many firms to hire them away from. And you know, the expertise is in China. And those guys definitely are. They're not even allowed to leave the country if you work in rare earth metal processing in China. And I don't know where the level is. I'm sure they're different, you know, depending on whether. Yeah, once. You're sufficiently important, yeah, but once you're. You can't, you know that your passport is, is taken, you cannot leave the country.

But that sucks. Year or two years ago or something, they consider it a, you know, a national strategic, you know, the process knowledge, which is really what we've lost. We've lost a lot of process knowledge here in the United States across all kinds of different fields. One of the reasons why I say building all the infrastructure always takes forever in the United States, because the number of people we have with experience in megaprojects, it's

not very much. And, you know, these things require you to do them repeatedly. Stuff. Yeah, it's like what it's. Kind of like what's going on with trades with a higher barrier to entry. What do you mean? Well, I. Just I mean, like, I don't know man, when I when I built the house that we built, I think that there were three guys in town that could actually do. Now it's not like some huge city, so you know, bear with me, but that can actually do the tile.

Yeah, yeah, I got you trades. Yeah, you said trades and I I wasn't sure what you Yeah, so then so. So then I'm like bidding and and not only was I bidding, but everybody else is building when I'm building and the guys are just like, you don't want to pay, I don't care. Like I'm busy. Yeah. Now today it might be a different story, right? But I don't think so. Not be as different.

As as most people think it is. I yeah, I I think that's spot on. We in Charlotte, I, we've needed an electrician to do some things for us around the House of small things. They're not big. I can't do them. We had a couple, we had one electrician who was willing to come in and take a look and then he said, no thanks, I'm not interested in doing that. That's a waste of my time. And so we've had these projects

that just sit there undone. And because you can't find an electrician a lot to do. So I, I, no, I think that's spot on. And we're going to come to a point where, you know, I don't know what it is, but I don't know, you can't build a some sort of supply chain and some, some sort of manufacturing facility, you know, because of the people just aren't there. Well. If I recall correctly, it's some of the pitch for analog semis

too. Is that like the the people that run those companies are just older and they're they're just, it's not what people are entering. Yes, yeah. So. Like the memory chips and things of that nature. It still. Requires a ton of expertise to

build that, especially at scale. That's the thing that always blows my mind is, is that, you know, a lot of things can be done one off in a lab without a lot of experience, but the scaling of things creates a demand for experience that can't be superseded with theoretical knowledge. Yeah, well, like the. Mind that you're talking about, I mean, if, if people start to lose that expertise, you're talking about billions of dollars of mistakes, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, with no. Recovery value, right? Like it's not like you got some asset under you or, you know, covering your loan value or whatever the whatever it is, it's, it's, it's. A wild It's a wild business. Yeah, that's cool. Interesting.

Anything else you wanted to talk about while you're here that's. Good. Well, Congrats on. You know, a, a Goodyear I, I, I appreciate that you came on when the years were not as good, so it's nice to have you as a regular guest. I'm, I, I always enjoy it. We just sort of shoot shit and it's casual. It's, it's, that's the goal, man. Yeah, it's good. It's good.

Other times I feel like I got a, you know, I got a sort of, you know, be on my toes pitching something or or something like that with other shows you and like that with the money of mines guys, have you ever heard that podcast? No, I haven't. That is a great podcast. A couple of guys out of Australia. So they're, I find it funny because every once in a while they trot out some sort of Australianism and I'm like, what the hell does that mean? What is it the?

Money of mines are just money mines, money mines. Yeah, they I go on their podcast or like once a year and just sort of shoot the Shape with them and it's bomb. So that's a home. And natural resource investing right there. Yeah, very. Much so they understand it over there so. That's cool. All right, well, thank you very much for coming on, man. And I, I wish you all the best. May you find an electrician that doesn't totally, you know, destroy you on the cost. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll we'll say, we'll say and and you know, best of luck on on the coming up a a golf trout. Yeah, we'll. See, we'll see. So far so good. The game is crisp. I got to keep it there. Good. So. I think competing in amateur events is step one. Oh, wow, OK, well, I'll, I look forward to hearing about what that's like. It'll. Probably be like, I shot 82 and I'm all pissed off. But that's fine. I, you know, I like it, man. It's something that challenges

me so and it's never ending. It's 50 strokes better than I could do, yeah, but I. I just, I've dedicated a lot of time. My real goal, my real goal, I feel like my young self was not a scratch. I was like A1 or A2. And I want to beat that kid because I feel like that kid would have called me an old man and my old man self wants to kick my young self's ass. So that's the current motivation, yeah. OK, understood. Understood. Probably some. Some I need to do some work on

that. I'll call up the shrink. All right, man. Well, have a good one, Yeah. You too. We'll talk soon, talk to you later. All right, bye.