QAV 729 – The Trump Bump

QAV 729 Club

[00:00:00] Cameron: Hello, QAVers. Welcome back to QAV. This is episode 729. Well, it’s been a quiet week on the news front, TK. Uh.

[00:00:11] Tony: gosh I was lying in bed on Sunday morning watching the news. It got interrupted! They broke into it. How dare they?

[00:00:17] Cameron: but they broke into the news with some news.

[00:00:20] Tony: couldn’t believe it.

[00:00:22] Cameron: Nothing going on. Yeah. I was watching the ABC and then they, they cut to insiders and I was like, what are they going to talk about on insiders when I switched over to CBS? Wow.

[00:00:34] Tony: I was watching the ABC as well and it came through live and that was probably the best thing because you saw the whole thing. They literally cut to the, because it was being televised, but The rally as people were moving out, then they rewound it back and replayed the whole thing through. After that, they were just showing edited highlights, but it was much more interesting to watch it go end to end.

[00:00:56] Cameron: I think, I mean, there was a lot of things that, that sort of shocked me, uh, when watching it sort of unfold live, but one was how the audience didn’t scatter. The audience sort of ducked for a second or two. And then they all stood back up, and pulled their phones out, and were videoing it, and there’s footage of the people right behind Trump on the bleachers, standing up during the whole thing, videoing it, oh look, Secret Service, uh, throwing Trump on the ground.

[00:01:25] Cameron: It’s like, what the? What are you doing? Why are you?

[00:01:29] Tony: love the guy. There’s a guy standing in the front row, sort of right of stage. He just stands there through the whole thing. Everyone’s Eventually starts to duck and cover and he’s just standing there looking around. Oh, this is interesting, isn’t it?

[00:01:43] Cameron: Yeah!

[00:01:43] Tony: I want to vote for, I want to vote for him for president.

[00:01:46] Tony: He was like the Iceman, didn’t care.

[00:01:50] Cameron: Yeah, well,

[00:01:51] Tony: Or, or either that or he, he was painting targets for the, for the shooter.

[00:01:58] Cameron: Maybe he had AirPods in and he was listening to music and, uh, didn’t know what was going on. You gotta hand it to Trump in terms of knowing how to get a good deal. photo taken,

[00:02:09] Tony: Oh yeah,

[00:02:10] Cameron: uh, his instincts for standing up and doing that. That’s, geez, man. I don’t know if I would have had that sort of, uh, uh, presence of mind to stand up and do that at that particular moment.

[00:02:25] Cameron: But also I’m like, like,

[00:02:28] Tony: who’d do that job? Who’d do that job? Look, that’s what, people are ragging on the S, on the uh, Secret Service at the moment, but like, they jumped in front of the bullets almost as soon as they were being fired. Mmm.

[00:02:41] Cameron: admittedly, everything I know about the Secret Service is from film and TV, but if this was the West Wing, like they wouldn’t be allowing Josh Bartlett to stand up and wave his fist in the air. They would be throwing him down and just bundling him into a car. There’s no opportunity to grab your shoes or wave to the audience if you’re getting shot at.

[00:03:03] Cameron: Their job is to get you to safety and that’s, as I understand it, the Secret Service protocol. is, doesn’t, you don’t do it, you don’t listen to the president at that moment, his authority stops when he’s being attacked and your job is to throw him into a black van and get him to a secure location. The fact that he was able to stand up and do all this, I’m like, what are you doing?

[00:03:24] Cameron: Why are you letting him do that? You don’t know there’s one shooter and the shooter’s down, there could be five shooters, I don’t know, I didn’t

[00:03:31] Tony: And there’s also, I also noticed two female secret service operators, which is nice to see, but they didn’t shield the president as well as the six foot guys did. I thought, no, there’s an opening.

[00:03:43] Cameron: yeah.

[00:03:43] Tony: Quick reload. Aid for the girls.

[00:03:49] Cameron: Oh, Tony. Wow. Anywho, uh, par from that. I know you told me not to check the market, and I’ve been trying very hard not to check the market for the last week, but I did notice in the financial review this morning, they said it hit an all time Record high, the Australian All Ordinaries,

[00:04:11] Tony: 8, 000.

[00:04:13] Cameron: well over 8, 008, 257 or something it went to.

[00:04:18] Cameron: Pulled back a bit today, but, um, yeah, record high. And that’s the, the Trump bump, I think they’re calling it in the

[00:04:25] Tony: Trump bump.

[00:04:27] Cameron: Hmm.

[00:04:29] Tony: But the renaissance, the Trump renaissance, he’s back. He’s 1. 35 in betting markets now. He was 1. 50 last week. Now he’s 1. 35. It doesn’t matter whether Biden stands against him or they replace him. Doesn’t matter now. They could put, they could put Jesus in the democratic, you know, position and he still wouldn’t beat Trump now.

[00:04:52] Cameron: Well, if you, uh, follow any of the conservative channels on Reddit, um, they all think Trump is Jesus. So, you know, he can’t run against himself.

[00:05:02] Tony: Well, he did thank God, thank God for saving him.

[00:05:05] Cameron: Of course he did. Yeah. Sure God’s a big, sure God’s a big fan. Rapist, fraud, criminal. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:16] Tony: forgiven. Christians forgive those kind of things.

[00:05:20] Cameron: Yeah, apparently. Uh, Portfolio Update, DP’s up 2. 6 in the last seven days, uh, slightly ahead of the market. All time 15. 8 versus 9 per annum, that is, CAGA for the ST, against the STW, so about 1. 8 times the, uh, benchmark over all time, five and, uh, Something years, five years coming up to I think.

[00:05:44] Cameron: Um, but lagging this year since April. Uh, we’re up three versus the SCW up eight since April. I went back through my, uh, spreadsheet and tried to figure out what happened in April that caused us to fall behind. Uh, there was quite a few sells in April and May. I’m not exactly sure. Why? What was going on?

[00:06:06] Cameron: Nothing in particular I could see. I thought, do you have any idea what happened in April? Did something happen in April that I missed

[00:06:13] Tony: Well, April, April, I don’t know, but April would have been company reporting season. So perhaps we traded a bit around then.

[00:06:22] Cameron: Yeah, I think there were a couple of, uh, shock hits that we took around then. And of course I’m still sitting on ASG, uh, even though it’s, you know, It was recovering a little bit, actually, uh, yesterday, I think it pulled back today, but I, it’ll get there, it’ll get back over it, it’s just a question of how long do I have to wait for it to get back above it’s three point satellite, eugh.

[00:06:44] Tony: And this is your theory that it drops a lot when it goes ex dividend and it will bounce back.

[00:06:49] Cameron: it’s not my theory, I have seen in it’s history that that’s what it does every time it pulls back. Has a dividend.

[00:06:56] Tony: so it’s your hypothesis that it will do it again this time.

[00:07:00] Cameron: Yes.

[00:07:01] Tony: Prediction. Okay.

[00:07:03] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:07:04] Tony: you’re doing the right thing. It’s worthwhile testing something every now and then like this. It’s good.

[00:07:09] Cameron: yeah, I like that. You say, Oh, this is your theory. I agree and think you’re doing the right thing, but this is your prediction.

[00:07:16] Tony: Oh, okay. It’s your theory and

[00:07:18] Cameron: I, you said, I’ve seen this movie before. You’re like, throw me under the bus and then say, but I agree. It was funny cause

[00:07:27] Tony: I wasn’t throwing you under the bus.

[00:07:30] Cameron: Oh, this is your theory.

[00:07:31] Tony: Throwing you under the

[00:07:32] Cameron: You agree?

[00:07:33] Cameron: I asked you and you agreed with me. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny. Cause

[00:07:39] Tony: I just, I always agree with you that I can, I just go yeah,

[00:07:41] Cameron: Oh, that’s right.

[00:07:42] Tony: Want to do a podcast? Yeah, sure.

[00:07:44] Cameron: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:45] Tony: Five years later? Yeah, sure.

[00:07:47] Cameron: Didn’t agree with me when I said SXE’s one year EPS forecast was the same as Stock Doctor’s

[00:07:53] Tony: Forecast

[00:07:54] Cameron: Let’s not get, let’s, let’s, you didn’t. Yeah. Yeah. Well be more specific. ABB Australian Aussie broadband fell 17%.

[00:08:06] Tony: Yeah, throwing, they were throwing, they got thrown under the bus. That’s the real bus.

[00:08:10] Cameron: they did. And, um, you know, we’ve, there’s been a lot of issues with ABB over the last few months, um, that we’ve talked about on the show. They, they had an announcement yesterday, Aussie Broadband launches new digital first challenger brand, leveraging automation and AI. I was like, wow. Digital First, like, how have you been marketing yourself now?

[00:08:31] Cameron: Like knocking on doors, like pushing a little red trolley around, like, like flyers in the mail? Uh, I don’t know. Aussie expects to invest approximately 10 million in FY25 to support marketing brand and set up slash one off related operating expenditure to support the buddy launch. That’s what they’re calling it.

[00:08:50] Cameron: Buddy. I think they deserve to 17%. hit just for calling it buddy. The group expects Buddy will provide positive eBitDark contribution from FY27 onwards. So yeah, they took a big hit and it looked ridiculous to me. Um, I had to I did sell it, though, and I had to tell the Light members that I was selling it, because we held it in the Light portfolio, and I said, Look, I think it’s going to bounce back from this, but that would be prediction, and we don’t predict, so I’m selling it.

[00:09:22] Cameron: ASG on the other hand, I haven’t sold yet, because I am predicting it’s going to come back. But that’s based on its history of doing this every time. But I look at the ABB today. It sort of did recover a bit yesterday. It dropped as low as, you know, it was sort of 3. 57 before this announcement day before, dropped down to 2.

[00:09:43] Cameron: 90, got up to 3. 05 yesterday, but it’s back down to 2. 95 today. I mean, what do you think? Does this, uh, am I missing something here? Is this just ridiculous?

[00:09:55] Tony: What’s ridiculous, is it dropped or it’s coming back?

[00:09:58] Cameron: Then it dropped like, you know, 17 percent drop because of what exactly? They said it was going to be a hit on their projections for this year, but they’re launching a new business. Like, so what?

[00:10:12] Tony: Oh no, I think it’s legitimate. I wasn’t surprised, they came out with a profit downgrade, essentially. So. Yeah, I think it is a hit. Um, is it justified? Look, 19 percent was a lot, so maybe it’s a bit overdone. Um, but if you remember, there’s been a lot of things going on with ABB and Superloop this year.

[00:10:34] Tony: There was takeover attempts that had to be halted, and Singapore government had to give approval and all that kind of stuff, and backdowns, and so it’s been a very volatile period for it.

[00:10:47] Cameron: They actually were doing a press conference about this decision yesterday morning at 11, which I found out about, about 1130, but I would have liked to have sat, I was gonna, I was gonna sit in on it and hear what they had to say. Um, but anyway, so yeah, we had to lose ABB yesterday. On the other hand, MLX, up 11 percent today, uh, Tin Miner, Metals X, Only announcement I could see on this one, on Stock Doctor, was from 5 days ago, the 11th of the 7th.

[00:11:19] Cameron: MetalsX announced the company is committed to purchase, on market, 60 million ordinary shares in the London Stock Exchange listed first tin, LSE colon 1SN, at a price of 4 pence per share. For a total investment of AU$ 4. 64 million, representing 23 percent of the current outstanding shares in First 10, completion will occur on a T plus 2 basis.

[00:11:45] Cameron: The company has also subscribed for AU$ 11. 5 million new First 10 shares at the same price of 4 pence per share via an accelerated book build announced to the LSE. Following the issuance of the new shares, which are subject to First Tin shareholder approval, the company’s holding will represent 23 percent of the enlarged issue share capital of First Tin.

[00:12:09] Cameron: Now Tin itself, I checked the commodity, it’s a buy, but it’s dropped over the last couple of days. I thought, oh, maybe Tin’s suddenly gone up. No, Tin’s been going up, but it’s been coming back. So I’m assuming it’s related to this, um, First Tin acquisition, TK? What do you think?

[00:12:26] Tony: I’ve got no idea. It’s, um, yeah, it’s not really transparent, is it? Uh, I had, I tried, I did the same thing you did. I had a look at their website and tried to find announcements, but, um, I, I agree. All it can be is this investment in, what’s it called? Tin? Uh, First Tin, thank you. But it’s, it’s surprising that, um, How the investor’s share price goes up, the Metalexa share price goes up, normally it’s the company that’s being invested in that goes up. So I, I really don’t know. just

[00:13:03] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:13:04] Tony: check on what First Tin does.

[00:13:07] Cameron: Yeah, it’s gone up since then. It was trading at uh, four something. I’m not sure what currency. Yahoo Finance has shown me this. It was at 4.25 on the 11th, and it’s now trading up at 4.9. So it’s jumped. What’s that? Uh, something? I don’t know.

[00:13:27] Tony: Haha, something, uh.

[00:13:30] Cameron: Yeah, it’s 10%, roughly.

[00:13:32] Tony: Yeah, yeah, it’s 10%, but um, no, I’m not picking up anything.

[00:13:36] Cameron: there you go.

[00:13:37] Tony: They’ve said nothing.

[00:13:37] Cameron: win.

[00:13:38] Tony: They’ve said nothing for a couple of weeks, I can see. Yeah,

[00:13:43] Cameron: stories from them on Yahoo Finance anyway.

[00:13:46] Tony: yeah, okay. Or on the website.

[00:13:50] Cameron: Ah, it’s weird. Anyway, not complaining. It’s nice. There you go. Uh, couple of survey results I’ve got. Tony, um, spoke to one member yesterday. Had to help him. Like, I’m not going to mention any names. But, uh, one of our club members had told me, he sent me an email saying he hadn’t been able to get his, uh, premium subscription working on his device for 18 months, and he’s been just listening to the free episode and whatever, and I was like, it’s like, dude, next time reach out.

[00:14:23] Cameron: I got a, I, I did a Zoom call and got him up and running in like five minutes. Um, So anyone else out there, I’m not trying to make fun of that particular gentleman. I’m just saying anyone else out there, if you have any, any technical issues, just email me. Um, I can probably help you. We’ll just set up a Zoom call.

[00:14:40] Cameron: Zoom’s good. Cause I was saying to him, hold up your phone, show me what you’re doing. And, uh, you know, I can, it’s nearly as good as being there to do it. So just give me a call. Happy to help. That’s what I’m here for. You just call me buddy. I’m here to help. I’m your tech buddy.

[00:14:55] Tony: Hey, buddy. I had the same problem for a long time. I couldn’t get the premium link to work to Aaron’s show. I just gave up.

[00:15:02] Cameron: yeah right,

[00:15:03] Tony: I did reach out to you. I did, eventually. Two or three times it just kept failing.

[00:15:10] Cameron: give me a call and I’ll be more than happy to help.

[00:15:13] Tony: The good, the good news was last time we had a Melbourne dinner, which is probably 18 months or so ago now, um, we were sitting around the table afterwards talking about this and then, and someone said they had troubles with the premium link and are happy to listen to the free episode. And then someone said, oh, so you haven’t heard After Hours?

[00:15:31] Tony: And he’s like, no, what’s that? He goes, oh, it’s fantastic. It’s the best part. It’s worth the premium, it’s worth the premium subscription to get After Hours. So there you go.

[00:15:40] Cameron: I know that person, I think I know who that is and he sends me emails all the time saying, you know, long live After Hours, so I’m glad somebody enjoys After Hours. Um, Anyway, the person I was speaking to yesterday said at the end, hey, so how’s your portfolio going? He said it’s up 20 percent uh, this year.

[00:15:57] Cameron: Not sure if he meant this calendar year or financial year, but he said, yeah, no, it’s going great. Um, so the survey results that have come in just a few more in the last week range from one person just said 35%, so I don’t know, no more information, like over, is that CAGR or over what period, but I was like, wow, 35%, that’s great.

[00:16:19] Cameron: To someone who said, uh, the final three weeks were good to me, 23, 24 performance was 7%. Overall is one point negative. 1.3% CAGR starting October 22, which was a terrible time to start. As we know, 22 was a terrible year. 23 was a much better. So all in all, as we’ve been saying for the last couple of weeks with the survey results, some people have had great years, some people have had average years, 7 percent I think is what my super portfolio did, so, uh, and yours too I think you said around about that, so not great, not, not negative.

[00:16:54] Cameron: Which is nice, but not great. So all over the place, even though we’re all supposedly doing the same thing. Um, so just, it’s, it’s a long term, long term process, right?

[00:17:07] Tony: Yeah. No, it is. And that’s interesting in itself, isn’t it? That we can all be doing the same thing and have different results. It depends a lot on what you’re bringing to it, what you’re screening for, when you start. All those kinds of

[00:17:19] Cameron: In the short term, hopefully over the long term, we’ll all have similar results. Like over. Five years, 10 years.

[00:17:26] Tony: Yeah.

[00:17:27] Cameron: Um, but you know, I did think of something during the week, you know, when we started this, um, a lot of people close to us said, a few people said to us, but, um, you know, what happens when everyone’s using your system?

[00:17:43] Cameron: Isn’t that gonna like change the market if everyone’s following the system and everyone’s doing it? And what we’ve seen is in the last couple of years, like we’ve seen people do the system and then drop off. You know, just go, Oh, I can’t do this. You know, I get emails from people saying, look, I love it, but you know, I just can’t, um, keep an eye on my, my alerts.

[00:18:07] Cameron: I, I, I’m, I’m missing sales and I just can’t bring myself to trade that much or, you know, I can’t do this or I can’t do that. And these are people that have, you know, been members and followed it for a time and understand the thing and then just don’t have the, I don’t know, the personality for it or the, you know, it just doesn’t fit with what

[00:18:27] Tony: Oh, they’re

[00:18:27] Cameron: good.

[00:18:27] Cameron: I’m not having a go at them. Well, they’re busy, yeah, but I’m just, my point was that even if we taught this to everybody in the country, they’re not going to do it. It’s just, you know, it’s, uh, uh, just, uh, I don’t know. It’s a, it’s a personality thing, a discipline thing, time. Um, yeah, all sorts of, all sorts of things come into play.

[00:18:53] Cameron: Right.

[00:18:54] Tony: Yeah, I think you’re right. Discipline’s important. I remember at that same Melbourne dinner with people. They were saying, you know, what’s the number one thing you can tell us? And I said, well, the number one thing I can tell you is that if you wanna do this properly, you are doing it every day for the rest of your life.

[00:19:08] Tony: It’s, it’s not, I’m gonna do this for a few months and then flip over and try something else. It’s like, no, if you wanna make this work, you’ve gotta do it. It doesn’t take up much time, but you’ve gotta do a different day for the rest of your life. You can’t, you can’t just switch it off for a month and come back to it.

[00:19:23] Tony: You may have, you will have missed something for sure.

[00:19:26] Cameron: And, and for most of the time, like there have been periods of a lot of activity during the volatile, um, period that we had, particularly, you know, and the crash, the COVID crash and 22, 23 interest rates and wars and all that kind of stuff. But then we have long stretches of time where, you know, if I wasn’t, if we weren’t, you Doing the podcast and we weren’t like doing a buy list for people and all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:53] Cameron: This is like nothing to do. I haven’t sold anything in the dummy portfolio since May.

[00:19:57] Tony: right. I’m pretty much the same in mine.

[00:20:00] Cameron: And with your super, right? I haven’t had to do anything in my super for a long time. Um, it just, so there’s literally nothing to do for, apart from just keep an eye on the alerts for weeks at a time, you know, have a look at commodity prices.

[00:20:16] Cameron: You know, we have a look at that once a week, check my alerts once a week. That’s pretty much it. Nothing else to do. Like, And then there are times when there’s a lot to do, which are annoying, because you have to do a buy list every day sometimes, or, you

[00:20:32] Tony: Yeah. And we’re probably coming,

[00:20:34] Cameron: every day.

[00:20:35] Tony: we’re coming into reporting season in a month or two, or a few weeks, actually. It’s usually in August. Um, so we could be doing that every day as companies report as well. Be a lot more active then.

[00:20:49] Cameron: there are periods of activity, yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s a rare thing, and it reminds me, I think, I think Buffett said something along these lines, and I think Ben Graham did too, but value investing like this is less about intelligence and more about temperament.

[00:21:04] Tony: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they did. Temperament, discipline. Um, I think Buffett used words like optimism, but, but yeah, no, definitely. It’s about discipline and temperament, for sure.

[00:21:21] Cameron: Just taking a long term view.

[00:21:24] Tony: Well, if you have a good temperament, you’re screening out the noise, aren’t you? You’re not getting I think that’s what they’re saying. If you’re pretty even headed, you’re not being swayed by the latest fad, or what’s going on in the market, or what happened in Ukraine, or whatever. You’re just Applying your principles, applying the framework, and as I’ve said many times, that’s, I think, to me, that’s the most important thing about QAV and perhaps why people get different returns from doing the same thing.

[00:21:51] Tony: It’s, it’s not that we want people to slavishly follow the rules, we just want them to have a framework to invest and a way of investing that screens the noise out. You know, I don’t care if they buy what I buy or sell what I sell, it’s more about them understanding that there are some principles here.

[00:22:10] Tony: You screen out the noise, you have a framework, you’re trying to buy something for less than what it’s worth tomorrow. Um, and you’re trying to protect yourself from all those things in the financial services industry which are designed to tempt you. Into doing something wrong, including CEOs telling stories.

[00:22:30] Tony: Um, yeah. So you just ignore all that stuff and you’ve gotta have a framework. So that’s the most important thing.

[00:22:36] Cameron: Mm. Yeah, and the financial media pumping

[00:22:42] Tony: Mm

[00:22:43] Cameron: sector or that sector or the Mag7 or all of that kind of stuff and telling you about Joe Blow who’s made a gajillion dollars out of Bitcoin and all of these things. I mean, that’s their job is to write sensationalist stories that Get people to read and, you know, they’re, they’re getting advertising dollars from Bitcoin vendors and stockbrokers and platforms and whatever that, uh, you know, the more money they have from, you know, dumb money coming into the market to buy stuff, the more they spend on advertising and the financial media who has an incentive then to tell more stories, to get more people to invest.

[00:23:27] Cameron: So there’s more, you know, it’s this, um, uh, what do you call it? Uh, Positive spiral from their

[00:23:34] Tony: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:36] Cameron: of, you know, everyone with their hands up each other’s, uh, puppet hole and hole. You know what I mean? Like a

[00:23:45] Tony: I do. I

[00:23:47] Cameron: everyone’s got their hands in, not in their pockets, but they’re like the industry’s, uh, in cahoots, kind of not, not suggesting that they all sit around in smoky rooms

[00:23:57] Tony: Well, they have aligned incentives, they have aligned incentives.

[00:24:01] Cameron: yes, aligned incentives.

[00:24:04] Cameron: And they probably do go out to lunch, the CEOs of these companies, and pat each other on the back and say, you know, isn’t it a great, aren’t we having a great year? But yeah, they have aligned incentives, that’s, that’s beautifully put, yeah,

[00:24:15] Tony: Yeah, I mean, I remember once out playing golf with the CEO of a major bank, and then one of his competitor CEOs rings up and they have a chat on the phone, and I’m like, wow, I didn’t think I’d ever see that. Surely, you know, the regulators would have something to say, oh no, no, he’s a mate, we just talk every now and then.

[00:24:32] Tony: It’s all good. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,

[00:24:36] Cameron: sure, nothing to see here,

[00:24:38] Tony: No, and stockbrokers are, you know, their incentive is to get you to trade, to buy and sell. So, you know, they, they’re always having lunches, lunch with CEOs and then ringing me up and saying, Oh, I’ve just heard this about that.

[00:24:49] Tony: And, uh, you know, I think you should buy some.

[00:24:53] Cameron: yeah, alright, that’s all I’ve got on my list of talking points, TK, what have you got today,

[00:25:01] Tony: I had, I had, uh, I have a pulled pork, which I found very interesting this time. Um, I, I found one article in the Fin Review, which caught my eye during the week. And that was, um, about a shipping crisis. The heading is the Shipping Crisis, a Spanner in the Works for Inflation War, and I only raise it because, uh, I thought, you know, you mentioned that the U.

[00:25:25] Tony: S. stockopedia buy list had lots of these shipping companies on it, and you couldn’t work out why, but this article talks about the fact that even though Inflation is coming down. Shipping costs are still up. So, uh, the article goes, Australian consumers and businesses will pay more for everything, from chocolate and sofas to mining equipment, a shipping crisis, and the Red Sea in Asia fuel the worst freight delays since the pandemic and threaten to stoke local inflation.

[00:25:56] Tony: And it goes on to talk about, because of the, um, The Houthi militants in Yemen stopping ships or making it dangerous for ships to go through the Suez Canal, they’re now going around Africa, and that’s adding to time and cost, and so I did think that maybe that was a reason why the shipping companies, which may be a normally value buys because they’re, you know, steady income type companies, um, are having a bit of a run at the moment and probably more of Profitable than usual because they’re passing on the cost to their customers as well.

[00:26:34] Cameron: It also said, adding to the massive bottleneck in Singapore is a rush of exports from China to the United States as companies try to get ahead of the prospect of new tariffs being imposed by a re elected Donald Trump, shipping experts say.

[00:26:48] Tony: the Trump. Yeah,

[00:26:51] Cameron: Another Trump bump. Average ocean freight rates for 40 foot shipping containers are up nearly 300 percent in the past year, including a 10 percent jump in one week this month.

[00:27:03] Cameron: Wow. Wow. It’s funny, I was talking, not funny, but I was talking, um, a week or so ago, last week, to my mate Tony Ashwin, who I’ve talked about before on the show, um, went to primary school with him, and he’s a property developer down on the Gold Coast now, and, um, you’d love this, he actually called me up to ask me a question about, um, Um, the, uh, block, the, the block theory of space time and how it is that all points in time co exist simultaneously, the past, present, and future.

[00:27:43] Cameron: So I had to take him through the block theory, the cosmological block theory. Um, so anyway, we, we talked about that for a while, and then I said, so how’s business? And he was, he was

[00:27:54] Tony: before you tell me that, so he’s, when he got up in the morning and thought, I should really, I don’t really know enough about the block theory of time. Who do I, who do I know who can help me with that? Forget ChatGPT, I’ll call CAV.

[00:28:09] Cameron: Well, actually, he had called me a week earlier and said, tell me about AI and where it’s at and where it’s going. And so we talked about that. And, um, and I, I said, have you used ChatGPT? He goes, no. I said, all right, soon as you get off this call, download ChatGPT on your phone, use it in voice mode, talk to it and see what you think.

[00:28:32] Cameron: And then download Super Whisper. which is the speech to text recognition app that I use on all my devices to write all my notes and do all that kind of stuff which is like near perfect accuracy of anything I want to talk to it about. I can talk for 15 minutes about ancient Rome or the cold war or the renaissance and it What are you laughing for?

[00:28:57] Cameron: What’s funny about

[00:28:58] Tony: You could talk for a lot more than 15 minutes on all of those things.

[00:29:02] Cameron: Yeah. And that’s my party trick. When I want to clear a room. I was at Kung Fu today. I was at Kung Fu doing a thing and my Sifu came up to me and he said, I was a bull in a China shop. And I said, people have been saying that about me since I was five years old. And he said, I’m not surprised. Um, He, uh, I said, go down like that. So he was calling me back and he said, yeah, man, like I, he goes, it’s, it’s here, like he said, I use those things at wow.

[00:29:30] Cameron: Like, cause I was talking to him about how AI might impact the real estate business, uh, you know, those sorts of things, marketing, you know, how do you market real estate in a world where everyone has an AI agent that can do comparative pricing and can read through contracts and can forecast the market and all of that kind of stuff for you.

[00:29:51] Cameron: But anyway, the point being, when he called me back and we were talking about where the market’s at, he was like, you know, a couple of years ago, I could get 600, 000. Properties built a year. Now I’m flat out getting half of that built. Cause there’s just not enough builders. He was the guy who told me like sort of just after COVID, that builders was going broke and they were going to continue to go broke.

[00:30:13] Cameron: And I said, how’s it going? He goes, yeah, man, it’s dropping like flies because they’ve, you know, as we know, we’ve talked about this on the show, they’ve locked into contracts. And as we just said, shipping rates have gone up 300%. Which is being passed on. And we were talking about the, you know, there’s obviously this, this real estate crisis in Australia where people can’t afford to buy houses unless you’re rich because the property prices have gone up.

[00:30:36] Cameron: And he said, the thing is we need to put prices up further for builders to be able to build stuff. So it’s this conundrum where, you know, unless the government steps in and just says we’re going to build a million properties and the government’s going to pay for it or subsidize it, um, builders can’t afford to build and people can’t afford to buy what they’re building and it’s uh, it’s a conundrum.

[00:31:03] Tony: Yeah. A couple of things to unpack there. Your point about shipping going up 300 percent and that’s driving inflation is spot on. So tell me how raising interest rates solves that problem, stops the Houthi rebels in Yemen from blockading the Suez Canal. It’s, yeah, anyway, that’s, that’s, that’s wrong, I think.

[00:31:26] Tony: It’s fundamentally wrong. Um, but anyway, back to the builders. The Yeah, I read in the Fin Review recently the record high insolvencies for builders at the moment, so that is just getting worse. Um, yeah, and your builder mate’s right, they’ve got to put the price up, and that makes it harder for people to get into the market.

[00:31:47] Tony: But the market should correct under that situation, shouldn’t it? And the price come back. If, if builders are, if builders can only build something and then put their margin on it and sell it for a million dollars but people can only afford to pay 800, 000, then something’s got to give. And the government could fund the other 200, 000 or pay the builder or whatever.

[00:32:11] Tony: But I just find that, I mean I understand what you’re saying, but there’s still a missing piece of the puzzle in my mind. The housing market is a market and it’s still open and it’s still trading, so are things. Difficult to sell or difficult to buy.

[00:32:28] Cameron: Well, isn’t the issue that there is a certain segment of the population that are snapping up these properties. They can afford to buy them, but there’s a huge segment of the population that is excluded from that market. So prices are still getting sold and bought, but it’s by a relatively small segment of the population, the wealthy population of the market.

[00:32:50] Cameron: The rest of the people, new home buyers, that kind of stuff, can’t afford to get in.

[00:32:54] Tony: Yeah, look, I understand, understand what you’re saying. I’m not sure it’s just the wealthy part of the population that’s buying houses. They still are first home buyers. But, um, I guess what I’m trying to say is, yes, the government could step in and try and impose a solution, but I think the market will work it out for itself.

[00:33:10] Tony: Um, if there’s an unmet demand, Um, yeah, and it’s going to come out of their field, whether it’s fractional ownership of houses or putting people together to buy properties or turning containers into properties or whatever. And potentially it could be turning office buildings which aren’t being fully utilised into accommodation as well.

[00:33:30] Tony: There’ll be a solution.

[00:33:32] Cameron: Well, Steve Sammartino’s got a business, a startup that does 3D printing of properties. Um, yeah, unfortunately, it’s not that much cheaper right now to do that than the traditional method, but, um, you know, they’re hoping that over time it will scale up and be more cost effective.

[00:33:51] Tony: yeah, but that’s a good point too, isn’t it? Perhaps the big companies are doing well, I’m going to say, but we’ve been building houses essentially the same way for a long time. There’s been improvements, you know, they’ve, there’s, you know, what do they call it? Formwork concrete and things like that. Bring the cost down and steal frames, etc.

[00:34:11] Tony: But they’re almost like, perhaps the way the government should be expending money is to go back, hire a bunch of engineers and, you know, put them in a factory and say, okay, let’s build a house from scratch in a new way of doing it, whether it’s 3D printing or whatever. Let’s just find, your mission is to do something at 10 percent of the current cost build a house.

[00:34:30] Cameron: Well, Bucky, Bucky Fuller tried that in the 50s and 60s with his, um, whatever he called it. Um, what’d he call his pre built?

[00:34:42] Tony: Geodesic domes.

[00:34:44] Cameron: yeah, yeah, yeah. He sort of envisioned pre built geodesic domes that could be just dropped anywhere and slotted together and homes would be cheap. I think he originally designed it for like disaster where there’d been a flood or a fire or something like that and his vision was yeah, we’d build a dome.

[00:35:07] Cameron: Governments, you know, emergency services, those sorts of things could just quickly drop down, you know, a thousand homes for people to live in. May not be the flashest home, but it’s a home, you

[00:35:20] Tony: yeah, and the other solution which is staring us in the face is regional areas. I mean, you can pick up houses much cheaper in Toowoomba, Rockhampton, um, Wagga Wagga than you can in Sydney or Melbourne. We’ve got to find a way of making it palatable for people to go and live in those areas. that’s a role the government could be playing. know, Ruddy and I have often talked about this. Why isn’t every Federal or state government department required to put a, um, you know, part of the tax office or part of, you know, whatever, um, out in rural areas, and that, you know, you don’t force those employees to go out there, but you make it attractive for them, because the accommodation is cheaper, they can work closer to where they live, closer to where they work, all that kind of stuff, and you start to grow those areas.

[00:36:11] Tony: Um, and make them attractive and then much, much cheaper to buy housing. So that’s another solution, but there are plenty of solutions. It’s just, we’re kind of stuck in one lane at the moment that everyone wants to buy a nice, nice terrace house in the city, in the big cities. It’s not gonna work.

[00:36:27] Cameron: for prime minister. I’m going to start the campaign now.

[00:36:31] Tony: Can I work one day a week? And can I have, can you double the Secret Service guards? Oh,

[00:36:41] Cameron: Jeez man. Again, not a professional, uh, sniper, despite the rumors that go around, but you would think the top of the closest roof to the stage would probably be an area that a sniper would be keeping an eye on. Particularly when the cops already knew, did you hear, like there’s this, it’s come out in the last day or so, that one of the people near the snipe, the shooter, who saw the guy on the roof and told the cops, a cop, supposedly, went up on top of the roof, Had a look at the shooter.

[00:37:18] Cameron: The shooter pointed the gun at him. The cop went back down the ladder and did nothing. And then the

[00:37:24] Tony: I hadn’t heard that.

[00:37:25] Cameron: a second later.

[00:37:26] Tony: I hadn’t heard that. I heard that the people were calling it out, and that the Secret Service snipers had the guy on the sites. and didn’t fire before he fired.

[00:37:35] Cameron: Well, I think that might be wise because there was a cop who got up there, who was standing there, and then the cop turned around the sniper’s like, what’s going on? And then the shooter started shooting. So anyway,

[00:37:47] Tony: yeah, look, who knows? I mean,

[00:37:48] Cameron: makes very little sense.

[00:37:50] Tony: oh, that’s probably just as right. That’s just probably the solution, isn’t it? I mean, there’s all these conspiracy theories, the Secret Service didn’t take a shot because they were under orders, and like this guy was being bundled by Blackrock, and this shooter was being, was part of Blackrock, and all this crap.

[00:38:05] Tony: It’s more, it’s more, unfortunately, it’s more likely that, yeah, there’s this, You know, series of mishaps that got to where they were. The guy, the guy was a loner and his father had a gun and he snapped one day.

[00:38:19] Cameron: I’d be very surprised if there’s a very complicated chain of command that a sniper needs to go through before he takes a shot when a person. At a presidential campaign rally, I would think it’s pretty much, you know, you see somebody pointing a gun at the president and he’s not on your, uh, he’s not wearing a secret service badge, you take him out, that kind of thing.

[00:38:38] Cameron: But anyway, again, what do I know?

[00:38:41] Tony: Ha ha. But again, there’s conspiracy saying that the Secret Service snipers were waiting for a confirmation that they could kill.

[00:38:48] Cameron: Yeah, I, I don’t believe that. And yeah, I saw something going around that I think Taylor sent me that, a post that one of the snipers went on social media to say that he wasn’t allowed to shoot because he was waiting for the order. And I’m like, Pretty sure your Secret Service snipers don’t have permission to go on social media and, uh, tell their side of the story.

[00:39:11] Cameron: Pretty sure that’s a no no.

[00:39:13] Tony: Mmm.

[00:39:14] Cameron: Anywho, uh, you gotta pull pork

[00:39:16] Tony: I do. Yeah, just not quite as interesting as a Trump rally, but I found it, um, I found it really good to go through this company. It’s one I’ve sort of, um, come into contact with a number of times. It’s been on the buy list and off the buy list over the years. The company is Elders.

[00:39:34] Tony: E L D is the code. Um, it’s a, uh, Basically now an agribusiness, but as you’ll see, as I go through its history, it’s, it’s pretty much been everything. It’s, um, it’s a really good snapshot for commercial history in Australia because this company is a hundred and nearly 90 years old. It was started in, uh, 1839, um, by a Mr Elder, Alexander Elder, who came across from, uh, Scotland, um, in his own family boat and brought some, uh, barrels of tar and slate tiles for roofs and agricultural equipment, plows, et cetera, uh, to Adelaide of all places, um, and set up a shop back in 1839.

[00:40:27] Tony: So that was the foundation of Elders. It’s been going on since then in one way or another. Um, the, the company today, well, they, they’re, All things to, um, farmers, I guess, in, in rural areas. People, if they’ve traveled to rural areas will have seen the brand. It’s, it’s pretty ubiquitous. Uh, they operate, um, something like, uh, over 250 affiliated stores.

[00:40:55] Tony: So one of the arms to this business is to be a co op buyer. So give, give, um, So the general stores and hardware stores in the country buying power to be able to offer decent prices in rural areas. So that’s, that’s one arm of it. also supply farmers with a lot of their needs. So that section is called Rural Services and they offer seeds and fertilizers and chemicals and animal health products.

[00:41:31] Tony: Uh, and. Advice. So they have a consultancy arm as well. Um, they employ 144 agronomists nationwide to help do that. They have a, what’s called an agency services business. So they provide, um, marketing channels and marketing options for livestock, wool and grain products. So they kind of act as the, the middleman for selling, uh, farm produce.

[00:41:57] Tony: They now run a real estate division. Uh, so they have company owned and franchised, uh, rural agencies selling homes and farms and other commercial property around the country. Uh, they have a financial services division, so they have a range of banking, funding and insurance products with, uh, I guess the focus on the rural areas.

[00:42:19] Tony: Um, and they have, uh, a live feed. Processing business. So they operate a feedlot in a place called Kalara and that’s near Tamworth in New South Wales. They export live cattle overseas. They have an integrated feedlot and abattoir in Indonesia and they distribute, uh, distribute meat there and also Um, into China, which is a decent market for them now.

[00:42:46] Tony: So pretty much anything you can think about that’s, um, required by farmers, these people have their, their finger in the pie, really interesting history. So, um, moving on from, uh, Alexander Elder, uh, by about the 1850s, the company was taken over by two brothers, still of the Elder family. And, um, They were, so Thomas and George Elder, they formed Elder Co and they became ship and wool brokers in Adelaide, became one of the dominant players in that business.

[00:43:21] Tony: By 1881, the wool business had taken off and they were trading something like 300, 000 bales of wool per annum. Uh, by 1917, they were in every state of Australia. Um, interestingly in World War II in 1939, the government shut the wool market, but the UK government bought the entire Australian wool clip and, uh, they paid the elders substantially for that in 41 and 42.

[00:43:50] Tony: Um, the. The source I looked at said that in equivalent terms that that was worth billions of dollars in today’s money to our elders back then. And then when the market reopened in 1946, wool went on the bull run. And, um, uh, for about five years, but in the first two years, the price of wool was up 29 percent and then 64%.

[00:44:11] Tony: So it just, um, it, it really boosted this business. Uh, then probably the next biggest milestone, uh, they, they got to the eighties and they were, uh, part of the kind of corporate radar scene in the eighties and, uh, And 90s, but in, um, just trying to find my, where are my notes? I’ve sent this, but anyway, basically, John Elliott, um, took over the company in the early 80s, merged it with, uh, another company called iXL, and the company combined and became Elders iXL, so that was a rural property, well, rural marketer, combining with a jam company, Uh, and, um, and then, you know, geared up and went on a buying spree, including, uh, one stage owning Carlton United Breweries.

[00:45:07] Tony: And Elliot went on to take Fosters to the world, which was good because no one drank it here. And, um, uh, I think they, they bought something like a dozen businesses at the time and bolted them all in. Uh, then the stock market crashed in 87. Uh, John Elliot came a bit of a cropper. There was lots of debt issues for the company then.

[00:45:30] Tony: Elders, at that stage, was just a division of Foster’s Brewing. But then, a little bit later, in the late 80s, it was spun out on its own, or early 90s, it was spun out on its own. Then it came into the sights of another sort of conglomerate corporate raider called Futuras Corporation. And, two years after listing Um, on the stock market again, uh, that was in 93.

[00:45:58] Tony: I’ve got the date here now, uh, they, and they had acquired a couple of things in those two years, like Australian Agricultural Company, um, but Futurist Corporation bought them in 95, uh, that That was another company which had a lot of debt and a lot of trading, and then they had a rocky time buying and selling companies, um, and they came across in the GFC, again because of debt, and then in, um, 2009, or about 2009, uh, after Futurist had almost collapsed during the GFC, they decided to buy Futurist.

[00:46:33] Tony: Get rid of most of the companies in the portfolio and focus on Elders and go back to being an agricultural business. And then by 2013, they’d sort of implemented their business plan of divestiture, and Elders again became a pure play focused on the agricultural industry. And in fact, in 2013, They sold off what was left of Futurist Corporation, uh, looked like it was a forestry business and an automotive division, and all they had left was their ag business.

[00:47:05] Tony: Um, on from that, it was still kind of struggling during those years, uh, In around that time, a guy called Mark Allison became involved in the company and put together his fairly famous eight point plan to restore profitability to elders. But it wasn’t until 2017 that they again paid their dividend, their first dividend in nearly 10 years.

[00:47:37] Tony: So they were getting back on their, their feet then, focusing on just being a, an agricultural business again. and paying down debt and looking to get into sort of associated other integrated areas, but also acquiring rural businesses along the way as well. As a side note, in November 22, Elders announced that Mark Allison would retire in late 2023, and that triggered a 23 percent plunge on the share price in one day, with another 30% Plus percent decline continuing after that.

[00:48:14] Tony: So the market recognizes that this fellow was the the reason why Elders had survived all these years, survived this near brush with death under Futurist Corporation ownership during the GFC and had been responsible for the turnaround for Elders. And then after six months, Elders backtracked and said that they wouldn’t be replacing Mark Allison, that he, they couldn’t find.

[00:48:41] Tony: Anyone as good as him after an international search and he would be staying on and he’s still there today and the share price at the end, at the bottom was around 6. 40 and today it’s 9. 00 so the market liked the fact that he was staying on and so yeah, it’s essentially been the same company. in the last sort of four or five years but it’s had its ups and downs and it’s now turning around and it’s come back on our buy list um just this week it’s at the very bottom of our buy list so it’s there’s a chance that if the price keeps improving it’ll go off the list but anyone who’s can have a look quickly at this company.

[00:49:23] Tony: I guess You know, to highlight an obvious risk, and that is that Mark Allison is 63 and had tried to retire once and will eventually retire. So, um, there could easily be another 30 percent decline in the share price when that happens, but you’d hope the board’s learned its lesson and they’re putting the right succession plans in place to prevent that.

[00:49:44] Tony: from happening again. Um, so that’s Elders. That’s its history. Uh, been around a long time, survived two lots of, two brushes with corporate raiders and, and heavy indebtedness, and market crashes, and now it’s back to its, um, its basics and sticking to its knitting, if I can mix my metaphors, uh, to the numbers.

[00:50:04] Tony: So, the ADT for this stock is over 3. 8 million dollars traded per day, so it’s, it’s a very liquid stock that will suit most investors. Uh, the share price I’m using is 8. 86, which was the share price, uh, before the market opened on Monday, and it’s now, last time I looked, around 9, so it’s gone up a little bit since then.

[00:50:26] Tony: But 8. 86, and I guess 9, is, is just below consensus target, so, um, we score it for that. Oh, one thing I should call out is this company has a March and September reporting calendar, so don’t be surprised if you get to reporting season and you’re not seeing numbers for this company. They’ll happen, um, three months later than that.

[00:50:47] Tony: Uh, the share price of 886 is actually pretty good. Way above IV1 and IV2, which is 31 respectively, and also above Net Equity Per Share and Net Equity Plus 30%, Book Plus 30. Net Equity Per Share is 5. 29 and, um, Book Plus 30 is 6. 88. So we’re not buying this stock, um, necessarily for its value, but it does have a good PropCaf, which is only 4.

[00:51:16] Tony: 4. 5 times. Interestingly enough, the PE is 19. 7 times. So all that cash is being used along the way because the PE ratios are much higher than that, than the 4. 5 times. And 19. 7 times for the PE is the highest in three years. So we give it a minus one for that. The company yields 4. 63%, which is solid, but it doesn’t score because it’s not above the average mortgage rate.

[00:51:46] Tony: Stock Doctor financial health for this company is strong and the trend is recovering, which is something I like to see, so it’s an improving business and we score it for that. Although forecast earnings per share growth is minus 1%, so we score it a negative 1 for that. Uh, as well as we don’t score. Score it for owner founder, which makes sense because these people died 100 years ago, but directors are only holding 1 percent of the stock, so we can’t give it a score for having anyone with big skin in the game that’s on the board.

[00:52:20] Tony: It’s a recent 3 point trendline update, so we score it for upturn, sorry, so we score it for that. Uh, Increasing equity, we don’t score it for. It wasn’t too bad, but it’s not consistently increasing, so we can’t score it for that. So all in all, this company has a relatively low quality score for us, 7 out of 16, or 44%, and the QAV score of 0.

[00:52:43] Tony: 1 is right at the bottom of our, of our buy list. So, It’s, it’s really getting a boost because of that good cash flow, operating cash flow it’s throwing off. And I’m, you know, I guess that makes sense to me because that’s probably what the corporate rate has found attractive because they like companies with good steady operating cash flow that can, they can gear up and then use that debt to acquire other businesses.

[00:53:05] Tony: So good strong cash flow here. Um, Stockopedia to compare it to our scores just to, just for comparison. Kix, uh, Stockopedia give it a quality score of 63. So that’s relatively low, just as we scored at 44 percent on our checklist. And, uh, they give it a score of 79 in their ranking system for value. Um, and it’s towards the bottom of our buy list and they have a total score of 89, which is up there, but not, um, not, um, at the top of their list either.

[00:53:35] Tony: So, uh, interesting. Um, yeah, so that’s Elders. I found it fascinating to read about their history. Um, In a few different sources, their website, Wikipedia, and some brokerage, some brokers, brokers that cover it. But, uh, yeah, look, have a look at some. It’s certainly a company in turn around, and it certainly seems to be doing a lot better than it was a couple of years ago.

[00:53:56] Cameron: In, um, I looked at Elders this morning as well, funnily enough, and when I saw it, it had just appeared on the buy list. And in Stock Doctor’s, um, sort of sector breakdown, it says they’re involved in tobacco. Which was interesting, but I searched their website, I couldn’t find anything about tobacco. Did you come across any tobacco interests?

[00:54:18] Cameron: Okay.

[00:54:19] Tony: I didn’t know. Unless they, Stock Doctor mean they’re supplying the tobacco industry, the tobacco farms up north, maybe? I don’t think this company, except for the feedlots for beef, I don’t think they actually own any farms themselves. I’d be surprised if they own tobacco farms. Perhaps they’re involved in the industry in some respect.

[00:54:40] Tony: I’m not sure. It wasn’t part of my research.

[00:54:43] Cameron: couple of interesting facts I’ve got about Elders. Tony, the CEO, Mark Allison, is a self taught guitarist and singer

[00:54:51] Tony: Mm

[00:54:52] Cameron: who has composed 144 original songs and has recorded 10 albums.

[00:54:57] Tony: mm

[00:54:58] Cameron: You don’t often, I mean, I know Elders has a history of characters being their CEO, but, uh, you don’t often find a corporate CEO who’s also got 10 albums to his name.

[00:55:10] Cameron: I thought that was interesting.

[00:55:12] Tony: Yeah. We should reach out and say, come on our podcast and play a few songs for us.

[00:55:16] Cameron: play a few songs. Yeah. I was going to find one on Spotify and play it. And then I thought I’d probably get pinged by APRA or something. Um, I’ve got a clip of, uh, John Elliott, who you mentioned here, that I couldn’t go past this without playing this. Good evening and welcome to Your Guess Is As Good As Mine.

[00:55:34] Cameron: Now have those buzzers ready, would you? And the first contestant tonight is PIG’S ASS! Wrong. No, I am sorry. The correct answer is John Elliott. Oh, come on, near enough! That was from Rubbery Figures, which was a rubber puppet series for the kids out there in the 80s. That was a big show and it always had John Elliott with a huge nose and a cigarette and a can of Fosters and his catchphrase was pig’s ass. Not exactly sure where that came from but he probably said it at some point.

[00:56:09] Cameron: I don’t know. Uh, he was a, he was a larger than life. Figure it wasn’t he died in 2021. And according to Wikipedia in 2005, he declared himself bankrupt. And when he died in 2021, his net worth was less than 12, 000.

[00:56:27] Tony: I remember that he, he was involved in a company, I think it was called Water Wheel. It was a, from memory, it was a, a rural business, I think a rice grower, and I think it was, I, I like. Gotta be careful I don’t say something wrong here, Bill. I think it was charged with trading insolvency. So it was trading while it was insolvent, he was a director, and I think that process may have bankrupted him, um, either defending it or perhaps in fines.

[00:56:54] Tony: I could have that Ask About, Pig’s Ask About, but, um, that’s what did him in, in the end. And then, you know, famously, he used to sell his, um, his autobiography in the markets to try and raise some money towards the end of his life.

[00:57:11] Cameron: Really? Oh, wow. I didn’t know about that.

[00:57:13] Tony: Had a few divorces which cleaned him out a couple of times too, I think, along the way.

[00:57:17] Cameron: Yeah. President of the Carlton Football Club for many, many years. Just a larger than life figure, like in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. He was always in front of the telly, uh, for one of those things. Um,

[00:57:35] Tony: Yeah, the face of corporate, corporate writing activity. I mean, he was involved with Holmes Accord. I think they actually may have tussled to buy all this at one stage. Um,

[00:57:45] Cameron: to buy BHP

[00:57:46] Tony: to buy BHP. Yeah.

[00:57:48] Cameron: of Court tried to take over BHP and Elders blocked him. Yeah,

[00:57:53] Tony: Okay.

[00:57:54] Cameron: um, or interesting

[00:58:00] Cameron: that he sort of had that, I don’t know, sort of fall from grace towards the end of his life. Um, and his son, Tom Elliot is, I think took over from Neil Mitchell in Melbourne,

[00:58:12] Tony: Ah, okay. Yeah, Tom, Tom Elliott. I knew he had a media career, but he was also He also ran a fund that, um, dealt with takeover opportunities. So, he was, he was good to listen to if there was a company being taken over and what he thought might happen.

[00:58:29] Cameron: Yeah. He was an investment banker. Um, from 97 to 2001, executive director of Flinder’s Capital from 2001 has been the managing director of MM. And e Capital and a director of Belu Ula Capital

[00:58:44] Tony: Bueller, Bueller, anybody? Mm

[00:58:47] Cameron: Tried to show Fox that on the weekend. I, we were looking for a movie, kids movie night? No, a family movie night.

[00:58:52] Cameron: And we tried to show him that and yeah, after about 10 minutes he was like, yeah, I’m bored with this. Let’s do something else. We’re like, oh,

[00:59:00] Tony: Ah, okay.

[00:59:01] Cameron: Very good. Well, thank you, Tony. Elders. Fascinating. Fascinating company with a fascinating history.

[00:59:10] Tony: ha. Yeah. Ha

[00:59:13] Cameron: I only got one question this week. This is from Dave.

[00:59:15] Cameron: Uh, it’s not really a question. It’s a suggestion. Referencing the couple of mentions from Tony recently on share buybacks, I’ve coincidentally just read chapter 12, Buyback Yield in O’Shaughnessy’s What Works on Wall Street. Great book. That’s me saying great book. O’Shaughnessy backtests top and bottom percentile buyback yield against his all stocks and large stocks reference data.

[00:59:41] Cameron: Tony’s pulling out his dictionary here for some reason. What are you pulling out there, Tony? Oh, he’s got a, he’s got a, he’s got a Bible sized edition of What Works on Wall Street. That’s like the mega edition. Wow. Top percentile significantly outperforms as measured by CAGR. Bottom percentile significantly underperforms.

[01:00:02] Cameron: O’Shaughnessy defines buyback yield as the annual difference in shares on issue as a percentage. Suggestions to incorporate buyback yield into the QAV checklist, one, similar to the PE checklist item, do a manual half year period for six periods look back of shares on issue, give a plus two score for lowest, zero for neither lowest or highest, minus one for highest, um, Two, similar to the Dividend Yield Checklist item, calculate the buyback yield and compare it to the mortgage rate, plus one for higher, zero for the same or lower.

[01:00:39] Cameron: I’d offer to test into the checklist myself, but I use the weekly published buy list and DMOR from there. Smiley face. Sure you do, Dave. We all believe

[01:00:48] Tony: ha ha.

[01:00:49] Cameron: A third option, he says, similar to consistently increasing equity, use consistently decreasing shares on issue. Um, I don’t know. Interesting. I had a look around Stock Doctor and tried to figure out if there was a way we could download any of these easily in the report.

[01:01:08] Cameron: I don’t think there is. I would need to figure out how to code something, I think, to get hold of that data. Um, but I thought, before I bother with that, I’d see what you think about

[01:01:21] Tony: Ha ha ha. I like it. I mean, I’d like to do some testing on it because, you know, I think O’Shaughnessy’s results were saying that, if I’ve read this correctly, the top decile of buyback companies over a, uh,

[01:01:35] Tony: don’t know what the period is, sorry, I can’t see it, was, um, anyway, it yielded 13. 69 percent compound, um, versus the bottom, which earned 10. 4%. So definitely suggests there’s something there, they’re not, um, sort of super sized, um, Results. But, um, yeah, let me have a look and go back and reread Chapter 12 in O’Shaughnessy and see if we can add to the checklist.

[01:02:00] Tony: But it’s a, it’s a good point, Dave. Thank you. And that’s a great solution. I think to try and somehow just simply take the current shares on issue versus the same in the last report and see if they’re less as a way of working out the buyback. I don’t know if we need to be as scientific as a buyback yield.

[01:02:20] Tony: Um, which is like, it seems to be the percentage of share reduction. I mean, that might be, that might be important. Again, I’d have to have a look further and test it. Um, in other words, if a company’s bought back a lot of shares, you’d think the price would go up because it was, the EPS has spread around between less, um, shareholders.

[01:02:40] Tony: But I need to research that a bit further. But I like it. I like the idea. You know, one thought I had Cam, in terms of how do we code this is, um, if it’s at all possible, I’m not, I can’t go back and have a look at our download, whether we have share, the shares on issue in there, but we could probably calculate it from the market cap divided by the share price, but we’ve got five years of data anyway, it might be just a case of writing something to crawl through our buy lists and pull together at least a database of what’s happened in the last five years for research purposes and then structure it going forward that way.

[01:03:18] Cameron: So, Tony’s official verdict is,

[01:03:21] Tony: I like it.

[01:03:22] Cameron: like it a lot.

[01:03:26] Tony: Yeah,

[01:03:28] Cameron: well, what’s going to happen if a company has a split or a consolidation?

[01:03:35] Tony: correct. I mean, all those things have to be factored into account. Yeah, I mean, the simplest solution is, if we can, is to do some kind of scroll buyback in their annual reports. But, um, yeah, that’s going to be hard.

[01:03:52] Cameron: I’ve tried to automate searching annual

[01:03:55] Tony: Yeah, I know.

[01:03:56] Cameron: qualified audits and it’s a nightmare of an exercise.

[01:04:00] Tony: Yep.

[01:04:01] Cameron: All right, but thank you Dave. Good thinking. Well, that’s puts us into after hours, Tony. Nothing’s going on this week. Um, nothing.

[01:04:12] Tony: Nah.

[01:04:12] Cameron: you the, uh, off air

[01:04:14] Tony: I’m going to be holding target practice courses though in, um, trying to improve the aim.

[01:04:22] Cameron: all jokes aside, people who went to school with him said that he wasn’t allowed on the, uh, shooting squad because he was a bad shot. And yet, you know, if Trump hadn’t have turned, uh, in the direction of the first shot, the second one, I think it was, would have, uh, gone straight through his, uh, Abdullah Oblongata.

[01:04:44] Cameron: Oh, was that a police album? I think it was a police

[01:04:47] Tony: No, that’s, that’s a very small target in Trump’s case though, isn’t it? Really? Aim for the stomach!

[01:04:55] Cameron: yes. Yeah. Yeah. But then they fall to the ground and he, you know, he survives. Anyway. Um, I watched Beverly Hills Cop 4.

[01:05:04] Tony: Yeah, we did too.

[01:05:06] Cameron: What did you think?

[01:05:07] Tony: It was great nostalgia. I loved all the old characters coming back. The um, Judge Reingold and, Reinhold? Reinhold? Reingold? Judge Reinhold, um, Surge. Yeah. But I liked it. Pretty light, but I liked it.

[01:05:23] Cameron: I thought it was okay, but the boys saw it before me and they were like, oh yeah, really great, fantastic. I watched it, I was like, like to me it was about as good as the Top Gun film was, the last Top Gun film that he made. It was okay because it was sort of a throwback to the 80s, but as a film, wasn’t great.

[01:05:42] Cameron: I mean, and the

[01:05:44] Tony: Well, the first one wasn’t either. It’s not, wasn’t meant to be

[01:05:48] Cameron: Top Gun or Beverly Hills Cop?

[01:05:50] Tony: Beverly Hills Cop. I

[01:05:52] Cameron: Hills Cop 1 and 2 are classics, Tony. I’ve watched them in the last six months. I’ve re watched them. Um, they’re fantastic. They hold up really, really well. But, here’s the thing, when I heard about this re this, uh, sequel they were making, I was always like, Eddie Murphy was 22 when he made Beverly Hills Cop. And that, that character, That he, he was, he was 19 when he made Trading Places or 20 maybe when he made Trading Places. Um, 19 when he was on SNL. There’s a great New York Times interview with him a couple of weeks ago. They were talking about this. Like he was, I think it was 19 when he ended up on SNL and he saved SNL.

[01:06:31] Cameron: SNL was, you know, it was those years, it was the dark years and um, they were probably it was probably going to get taken off the air and he came on and just. You know, it exploded again. He was 19. Just with that level of confidence, and that, that, that personality. So you’re trading places, I think he meant, when he was like 20, Beverly Hills COP, when he was 22.

[01:06:54] Cameron: And that kind of youthful, sort of cockiness that he had, which is great. None of that obviously now that he’s. In his 60s. And the laugh, the laugh was gone. Like the, the thing I think about in those, the laugh’s gone. Now I know people’s laughs probably do. I don’t think I laughed the same now as I probably did when I was 22.

[01:07:15] Cameron: But I don’t know. Is that, I missed that. I was like, where’s, where’s the. You know, Axel Foley laugh, like, uh, kind of really missed that as one of the old characters coming back. And the rest of it, it was kind of okay, but there was, and my boys also said, Oh, there’s a huge cameo in it. There’s a huge, there’s a huge cameo from the nineties that, um, it’s like a, uh, uh, what do you call it?

[01:07:38] Cameron: Like a mix? Uh, no, what do you call it when you blend two franchises together? A, uh, uh, crossover, huge crossover. So I was thinking Stallone. Or Schwarzenegger was gonna have a cameo and it was, um, uh, Shooter McGee from,

[01:07:57] Tony: there was too, yeah.

[01:07:59] Cameron: Shooter McGee’s cameo from Happy Gilmore. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, really? That, that?

[01:08:04] Cameron: I watched this whole thing for Shooter McGee. Like, don’t get me wrong. I love Shooter McGee, but really?

[01:08:11] Tony: Shooter McGavin, isn’t it? Shooter McGavin I think.

[01:08:13] Cameron: Shooter McGavin. Thank you. Shooter McGavin.

[01:08:16] Tony: Apparently they’re making a sequel to Happy Gilmore now too. Mm.

[01:08:21] Cameron: yeah, yeah. Which will be similar to see if they can pull off that. Cause I don’t know how old he was, but, uh, you know, he must’ve been in his twenties, I think when he did that, maybe he was a bit older, I’m not sure.

[01:08:35] Tony: Yeah. Well he’s apparently he got the, He’s now the highest paid movie star in the world, Adam Sandler, because Netflix has, Netflix tied him up with some kind of, um, development deal, and, and paid him, I, I don’t know, I forget now the amount, but it was eye watering, like hundreds of millions of dollars, and, um, and he’s just turned out rubbish.

[01:08:57] Tony: Like, I, I tried to watch, ah, you got it, you got the, got the laugh.

[01:09:06] Cameron: Um,

[01:09:07] Tony: I tried to watch his latest movie about an astronaut, a Polish astronaut, um, who meets a giant spider on the, on the, and I’m like, really? This is like, what were they smoking when they made this?

[01:09:21] Cameron: well you see, but Uncut Gems was great, I don’t think that was

[01:09:23] Tony: This is, this is prior, this is after Uncut Gems. Yeah.

[01:09:27] Cameron: yeah, but that was a great film, like he can do dramatic stuff

[01:09:30] Tony: Oh yeah.

[01:09:31] Cameron: think, but, um, you know,

[01:09:35] Tony: Yeah. No, apparently Netflix went back through its database and said, well, what’s, you know, what’s our most. popular titles and they were Adam Sankster movies and so they offered him a heap of money. Yeah.

[01:09:45] Cameron: heh, um, You know, I, I, I, what I’ve always said about Sandler’s stuff is most, a lot of, he’s got some great films like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, Back From The Day, The Water Boy, but most of his films are crappy, um, but, he knows his market, he knows his audience, like, who are, you know, young men, I think, who would just watch those things, and they don’t, they’re not looking for Oscar or Academy Award winning stuff, they’re just looking for some stupid laughs, and he, he knows that really well.

[01:10:11] Tony: So, you know, Henry Winkler was out here recently, uh, promoting his book and I saw a clip,

[01:10:16] Cameron: yeah.

[01:10:17] Tony: he was in The Waterboy, played the coach, and I saw a clip saying how the movie was tanking until the new Star Wars trailer came out. People were buying tickets to the Water Boy to see the Star Wars trailer and then leaving after the previews.

[01:10:34] Tony: And that’s why the Water Boy has been the most successful of Adam sts movies At the box office.

[01:10:42] Cameron: Well, you take your wins where you can get them,

[01:10:44] Tony: Yeah, exactly.

[01:10:45] Cameron: Something else I did last week is, uh, I went into the Apple store on Friday, Saturday afternoon and got my Apple Vision Pro demo. They hit the country on Friday. I went in with the boys on Saturday. Hunter got one as well. I tell you, man, I went in there. Not expecting much. I just thought it was a really expensive wearable monitor.

[01:11:09] Cameron: I spent the whole 20 minute demo going, holy shit. No effing way. Oh my God. And Hunter did the same thing. Like I was, I was actually standing next to him videoing some of his response to it. Like it is, Taylor had one in LA like six months ago when they first came out, he happened to be there. I like, I gotta tell ya.

[01:11:34] Cameron: It is mind blowing technology and I, I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t had a demo, book one in at your local Apple store, go in and do the 20 minute demo. They walk you through it, they have a scripted demo where they show you all the, the features of it. And it starts off pretty mundane, you know, they show you how to look with your eyes to activate things and click things by pressing a button.

[01:11:58] Cameron: Pinching and all that kind of stuff in the sky. Um, but then they get into the immersive stuff, the spatial photographs and videos. So imagine a full field of view photograph. That is three dimensional, like it has depth, you can look around and it’s this new technology that’s in the iPhone 15 Pro and the Apple Vision, it’s called Spatial Photography and Spatial Video.

[01:12:23] Cameron: So you have, it’s just like three dimensional video where it has depth perception in the video that you’re watching. Which is, that is mind boggling, but then they get, and then they have the cinema experience where everything goes black and you just have this massive cinema screen in front of you. It feels like you’re sitting in a cinema by yourself and it’s playing through the speakers and the headset and it’s, it’s amazing.

[01:12:45] Cameron: The, the, like the version of a desktop wallpaper, if you want to block everything out, it’s like a mountain with a, a lake and the water’s rippling on the lake. As you’ve got your apps up, that’s what you’re looking at. But the fully immersive stuff. You’re sitting on the hoop at a basketball game, you’re sitting on the goals of a, uh, soccer match.

[01:13:08] Cameron: Um, you’re, uh, you’re sitting with elephants that are coming right up to you and it’s fully immersive. Like, All you can see, like 360 degrees, a woman on a tightrope, this is the video they start with, there’s a woman on a tightrope walking over a ravine and you feel like you’re a foot away from her watching her balancing.

[01:13:28] Cameron: And it’s all this depth perception. And, um, it’s, you feel like you want to reach out and grab her. I did. I said, I want to reach out and like put my arms around and go, no, don’t do it. Hunter said, I wonder what happened if I push her off? And I go, well, see, that’s, that’s the difference. Between us. Um, and they had to actually ask me before they do, do you suffer from a fear of heights?

[01:13:49] Cameron: And I was like, yeah, I do actually. And they said, well, if you, if you feel anxiety at any moment, look up and it’ll stop the video. Like if you just look up and I was fine, but it is. Absolutely insane, the experience. And it’s one of those things that you can’t, it’s like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

[01:14:09] Cameron: You can look at a million photos of the Grand Canyon, but until you stand on the edge of it, you don’t really know what an awe inspiring experience it is. I’m going to say it’s the same with the Apple Vision Pro, and I think their marketing has done it a disservice in the last six months. I don’t think they’re trying to.

[01:14:27] Cameron: I think it’s a developer preview is really where it’s at right now. They’re not trying to sell it. I mean, you know, who’s going to pay seven and a half thousand dollars for a headset, right?

[01:14:38] Tony: And they wouldn’t

[01:14:39] Cameron: other thing is,

[01:14:40] Tony: they wouldn’t have much content, I guess, developed yet either for it.

[01:14:43] Cameron: not that kind of stuff, no. So that’s why they’re putting it out there is for developers to start to think about it. But if this, um, if they continue with it, like, and there’s been a lot of Um, fits and starts with this sort of stuff, Google Glass and that kind of thing that didn’t really get off the ground and I remember interviewing Jeffrey Katzenberg on my podcast nearly 20 years ago where he was saying 3D, everything’s going to be 3D, television’s going to be 3D, and everything’s going to be 3D, and obviously that didn’t come to pass either, but If they pull this off, I can fully imagine sitting in the middle of the Godfather and being able to look around you as the scene is taking place.

[01:15:22] Cameron: Or as Taylor said, Fast and the Furious, and you’re sitting in the car in the Fast and the Furious, because that’s what it feels like. You are fully immersed, like in the, in the sporting events. That they have in the demo. It’s insane. Like it’s not, it’s not 3d, like a 3d movie, but it’s something else going on, but they have like a basketball player running up and dunking the ball right in front of your face.

[01:15:47] Cameron: And it feels like it’s right in front of your face. If this is the future of. The way that we, uh, interact with technology, it’s going to be astounding, uh, when the price point comes down and there’s more content for it and all of that kind of stuff. Heavy, hot. I had like sweat on my brow

[01:16:09] Tony: Oh really? Okay.

[01:16:10] Cameron: Yeah, it’s quite hot. And this is in an Apple store, which is in the middle of winter. So it was quite air conditioned and cool, but, um, Yeah, and a lot of the people that have bought them in the U. S. have said the same thing since day one, hot, heavy, you can’t wear it for more than an hour or two without your neck getting tired and that sort of thing.

[01:16:29] Cameron: You know, they’ve got a full computer the size of an iPhone built into this screen, right? So, it’s got a, it’s a computer. It’s a full Mac, um, that you can do everything on, um, and it’s built into the screen. Into, I said to her, where’s the CPU? She said, that’s it. It’s in the CPU. It’s attached to a battery pack, but that’s not the CPU.

[01:16:52] Cameron: Like the, it’s all built into, you think about like I was saying to the boys, like 20 years ago, the Windows 95 PC that I bought, was that 20 years ago? That was

[01:17:02] Tony: 90s. Yeah.

[01:17:04] Cameron: 30 years ago, Windows 95 PC I bought, you know, it was this massive big CRT thing. That cost me about 5, 000. Now, if you’d said to me I’d be wearing a computer on my eyes in 30 years time, I mean, I probably would have believed it because I believed in Moore’s Law, but still, it’s um, it’s, it’s really, I can’t hype it up enough, honestly.

[01:17:26] Cameron: It’s, I, I challenge everybody, even an old Cynical bastard like yourself, Tony, to go and do a demo of this and, uh, see what you think.

[01:17:37] Tony: Yeah, I probably won’t. I’ll wait until it gets cheaper and smaller. Okay, so how different is it to Oculus Rift? Because that was a thing a couple of years ago as well.

[01:17:46] Cameron: I haven’t played with Oculus Rift, so I can’t say, yeah. Um, I, I, I can’t compare it to that, but for me it was mind blowing. And they asked me when I was booking it in the booking form, they say, do you wear glasses? And I said, I do reading glasses. What level I told them is like a plus one. So when I went in there, they had inserts that they put in.

[01:18:05] Cameron: They’re like little, Things that they put into the glasses and when you, when you’re going through the setup process, which takes a minute or two, it’s asking you to focus on things and it’s adjusting itself to your field of vision and all that kind of stuff.

[01:18:19] Tony: Ha,

[01:18:20] Cameron: Yeah. But anyway, it’s, it was, I thought that was going to be my big news for the weekend was my Apple Vision Pro thing until the next morning.

[01:18:31] Cameron: It,

[01:18:32] Tony: Yeah, right.

[01:18:34] Cameron: what about yourself?

[01:18:35] Tony: Uh, a couple of horse races, so, um, no wins. Lamarjia had a poor run. Indubitably, I thought did okay, given it was her first Metro start. Um, second if you count the Gold Coast. But, uh, and so she’ll, she’ll probably have a couple of weeks off and then come back, um, better for it.

[01:18:54] Tony: Lamarjia, I’m not sure about. We might retire her to a country trainer and see how that goes. But, um, no decisions have been made there. Uh. Books, I finally got a copy of The Future is Near and started to read it. So I’ve only just started that. It’s, it’s such a good read. I mean, he goes, Basically through the history of the universe and the history of evolution of man and the brain.

[01:19:18] Tony: It’s so, it’s a book I like to take my time over and just think about all the implications of what he’s saying. And I know he did something similar in The Future is Near, but, um, Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t, Singularity isn’t here, sorry. Um, oh, sorry, the Singularity is nearer is the title. Um, it was, the funny thing was, I had it on pre order with Amazon and it just stuck in pre order.

[01:19:43] Tony: And then I saw you had a copy the other week. So I went back onto Amazon. It was still, it was available to buy, but it was still stuck on pre order. So I managed to buy a copy and get it sent. So that

[01:19:54] Cameron: singularity is nearer, but your copy of the book, not

[01:19:57] Tony: Here’s further, correct. Well, it’s nearer, it’s nearer, it’s getting nearer. I just didn’t get it.

[01:20:02] Tony: Ha ha.

[01:20:02] Cameron: Yeah, yeah,

[01:20:03] Tony: Yeah,

[01:20:04] Cameron: It’s still in the same place, which is not with you, you know, in a warehouse somewhere

[01:20:07] Tony: And it was strange because I, I don’t know what the book was worth, 30 bucks as a, as a paperback, but um, the one I had on pre order, the price had been reduced to like 17. So I couldn’t work out why. It’s almost like it was a bait and switch or it was, um, discontinued or something, like I’d ordered the wrong product, but it was still sitting there in my basket as the book.

[01:20:27] Tony: Anyway, didn’t come. Uh, what else? Still watching Better Call Saul, working my way through season three of that now,

[01:20:36] Cameron: enjoying it.

[01:20:37] Tony: I am, yeah. It’s, uh, I just kind of watched an episode tonight. It’s, um, I am enjoying it. I love Ermin Trout. I love that history of that character and what happens with him. That’s really good.

[01:20:48] Tony: Um, can’t stand Chuck, the brother of Saul, but that’s probably the way it’s meant to be.

[01:20:54] Cameron: But what a great performance

[01:20:56] Tony: Yeah.

[01:20:58] Cameron: from, you know, um, the GA guy I mostly knew from Spinal Tap and

[01:21:04] Tony: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

[01:21:06] Cameron: those other films with Christopher Guest, mostly I knew him from comedy, and of course, this stuff with Laverne and Shirley back in the day. As, uh, Ziggy or whatever his name is, Squiggy. But yeah, what a great, like he’s such a contemptible, arrogant bully of a character to, to Bob Odenkirk’s character.

[01:21:27] Cameron: It’s really great performance, you know, I thought.

[01:21:31] Tony: Yeah. No, I agree. So I’m enjoying it, but just working my way slightly through it. And there’s been plenty of golf on, so British Open starts this week, which I’ll spend the weekend watching. And the week before is always the Scottish Open, so I enjoyed watching that too.

[01:21:45] Cameron: Is Trump playing in any of those? He’s probably already won them.

[01:21:49] Tony: Yeah.

[01:21:49] Cameron: hasn’t told anybody yet. I wonder if he’s going to protest the results of them and say, actually, I won those. You know, like you weren’t even playing in it. Nah, it’s fake news. I was and I won and you’re just making it up. It’s a conspiracy.

[01:22:04] Tony: Great book out there called Commander in Cheat, which is written by a good golf writer about Trump and about how he cheats at golf and all the golf stories about.

[01:22:13] Cameron: Oh, really?

[01:22:13] Tony: It’s real. It’s really good. It’s really good. He walks into the pro shop at one of his courses in Miami or somewhere in the States and his local course that would be near Mar a Lago and uh, they’re, they’re, you know, the golf courses have the honor board where, you know, the club champion’s name gets put in every year.

[01:22:30] Tony: The pros up there, you know, Putting in the club champion’s name and Trump goes, what are you doing? I’ve beaten that guy before. Take his name down. I’m the club champion now.

[01:22:43] Cameron: Wow. It’s going to be an interesting few years with him back in the White House.

[01:22:50] Tony: Yeah. I’m going to order some popcorn now. It’s just, it’s, yeah. Oh, look, I, I, I don’t know if I’m being cynical or I’m over it, but, um, yeah, it’ll be interesting. Um, um, there was a lot of things in the first presidency I didn’t like. And a lot of things changed, but, you know, as you know, does it really amount to much?

[01:23:12] Tony: Who’s President of the US?

[01:23:15] Cameron: Well, you know, I think it does for some groups of people like, uh, there was no war in Ukraine when Trump was president. There was no genocide in Gaza when Trump was president.

[01:23:27] Tony: Mm hmm.

[01:23:28] Cameron: You know, there was no wars. I mean, I remember saying at the time, if Hillary was president, The US would probably be involved directly or indirectly in some, some war somewhere right now.

[01:23:39] Cameron: I mean, they were still involved in Afghanistan and, um, he didn’t really pull them out of that as Biden did, although he had plans in place to pull them out, which Biden Followed through on. He could have pulled them out faster, but he didn’t start it. He didn’t encourage it. Um, but it’s often the Democrats that lead them directly or indirectly into wars, which, you know, matters to the tens of thousands of people that are dead in Gaza and the tens of thousands of people dead in Ukraine and homeless in Ukraine.

[01:24:10] Cameron: Whether or not you, you know, you agree with whether or not The US should have supported the Ukrainians or should support Israel or not. Bottom line is 100, 000 people are dead as a result of those conflicts. And then plus the Russians, current estimates is something like six to 700, 000 Russian soldiers dead

[01:24:33] Tony: Seriously. 700, 000.

[01:24:38] Cameron: That’s estimates coming out of Western and Ukrainian military, which I take with a grain of because as you know, and Times of War, there’s propaganda that say all sorts of things, but I don’t, I don’t think the Russians are coming out with their own numbers. But yeah, the, I read something yesterday, somebody was saying that they’re having, the Russians have to recruit, I think it’s a thousand or fifteen hundred new men a week to keep their numbers up.

[01:25:06] Cameron: Um, and they’re really scraping the bottom of the

[01:25:09] Tony: Well, it’s Stalingrad again, isn’t it?

[01:25:11] Cameron: on the flip side. So yes, it

[01:25:13] Tony: we were Russian, we’d be sitting there going, oh, they’re recruiting 41 year olds, 42 year olds, 44 year olds.

[01:25:19] Cameron: Yeah.

[01:25:20] Tony: Yeah.

[01:25:21] Cameron: Um, and how do you feel about cannibalism? So it’s, it’s, it’s tough. You know, that was a Stalingrad reference. Lots of cannibalism at Stalingrad.

[01:25:31] Tony: Yeah.

[01:25:31] Cameron: looked bemused. Or were, or were you just thinking about cannibalism for a second? You’re like,

[01:25:36] Tony: I don’t normally hear about cannibalism on an investing podcast. That’s all.

[01:25:46] Cameron: Well, this is after hours where we, investing part of it’s gone. You know, if you stick around for after hours, you know, anything’s, anything’s game.

[01:25:58] Tony: Yeah, well, I take it back. It does matter, I suppose, um, who’s president of the US, but what I meant was in the, um, I’m not subscribing to the, it’s the end of civilization as we know it if Trump gets elected.

[01:26:11] Cameron: You know, I think the last time, my, my comments to Chrissy and my American friends the last time was, yeah, it was bad, but I don’t think Trump did anything last time that was much worse, in terms of policies, much worse than a Mitt Romney or any other Republican would have done in that period. Like he, what he was putting into place was pretty standard Republican stuff, you know, appoint some conservative Supreme Justices, you know, lower taxes.

[01:26:39] Cameron: You know, Law and Order, anti immigrant stuff, anti this, whatever, tariffs against China, bloody, bloody, blah. It was pretty straight up Republican fare. This time, you know, who knows? Will he just be another Republican president or will he go one step further and push them further and further towards a dictatorship?

[01:27:02] Cameron: Who knows?

[01:27:04] Tony: Yeah, well,

[01:27:04] Cameron: I find is interesting is pretty much nobody from his first administration is supporting him this time around. I mean, what does that tell you,

[01:27:14] Tony: he’s not supporting them either. I know, well, I saw, uh, it was a Bolton come out against Trump, I thought, ooh, that’s interesting.

[01:27:20] Cameron: When Bolton comes out against you, like Bolton is probably the most evil human alive on the planet today since Kissinger died, for Bolton to come out against you. Do you remember when he walked out when they were doing the whole Venezuela thing was going on and they were trying to implement Juan Guaido over Maduro and he went out for a press conference with a folder on his arm which said Venezuela, um, invasion or something.

[01:27:45] Cameron: And people were like,

[01:27:49] Tony: ha ha ha ha ha

[01:27:51] Cameron: it up and it was like Venezuela overthrow plan. Yeah, when Bolton comes out against you, and we’re not talking about Michael Bolton either, John Bolton, you know, you’re pretty far off the right wing when John Bolton even thinks you’re too crazy.

[01:28:09] Tony: Yeah, I mean, there’s two sides to Trump. There’s well, three sides. There’s the self interest side. So like, you’ll expect lower tax rates. There’s the sound and bluster side. So you’d expect him to try and, you know, say he’s going to build a wall and be tough on immigration. But of course not. There was no wall and there was more immigration under Trump than the previous guy.

[01:28:29] Tony: Um, so there’s going to be a lot of bluff and bluster. Bye bye. The wild card is, you know, what happens. with democracy. Um, and it could just be that he appoints even more Supreme Court judges and he appoints his luckies to run the EPA and the other government departments and makes that a whole lot worse.

[01:28:48] Tony: Uh, in terms of, um, when I say worse, it’s, it’s better in terms of less red tape, but worse for, um, the environment and, uh, corporate regulation and things like that. Um, so, yeah, it’s, uh, who knows. Um,

[01:29:05] Cameron: And the

[01:29:06] Tony: said, I’m getting popcorn, just gonna sit back and watch.

[01:29:10] Cameron: had the pandemic on his watch, and there was like, what, a million Americans who died from the pandemic, who may have died anyway, but certainly he wasn’t encouraging them to do the responsible thing. This time, the next four years, what’s going to happen with AI? is going to be huge.

[01:29:29] Cameron: Huge. It’s going to be huge.

[01:29:33] Tony: But it’ll be like, but it’ll be like, um, you know, there was that business leaders round table for Trump and Tim from Apple turned up and, uh, other people turned up from Silicon Valley and then they all backed out and, and like Trump didn’t care, he was just like, you’re gonna, you’re gonna form a court and agree with what I say.

[01:29:54] Tony: Um, but he’ll change his opinion depending on who donates money to his cause. So,

[01:30:00] Cameron: of donating money to his cause, Elon is a big supporter. And another thing I’ve done in the last week, um, I don’t know if you heard about this, but they had the first successful, um, launch of Starship, which went into space. And Fox and I watched the whole thing. Uh, not live, but the recording of it on their YouTube channel, SpaceX’s YouTube channel.

[01:30:23] Cameron: And it’s a stunning thing to see as a space nerd, this massive ship went up into space with 36 Raptor burners running. Then it, it, um, the early stage burners, um, disengaged. Came back down and landed in the water perfectly. The other one went up into space, its other burners engaged, and then it came back down and landed and it was, it was fabulous.

[01:30:50] Cameron: It was very successful. Incredible to watch this. But then I watched a, like an hour long video of Elon doing a tour of the Starship factory. They call it the Star Factory, I think. And he’s explaining the intricacies of building the Raptor engines and what they’re doing with the next models and the next versions.

[01:31:09] Cameron: And then I watched him at the Khan Lion event, the Advertising Industries event in Khan, where he talked about Twitter. for half an hour and what they’re doing with Twitter. The, the guy who hosted the shows, the CEO of the agency WPP, his first question was, Elon, six months ago, you told our industry we could go fuck ourselves.

[01:31:28] Cameron: Uh, what was that all about? And then he explained, you know, why and the whole Twitter business model and what he’s doing with Twitter. Then two days ago, I watched him with a panel of neuroscientists give the latest Neuralink update. And talking about what the guy with the Neuralink implant is doing and how they’re getting ready for the next set of people they’re doing the implants on and all of the improvements that they’re making with Neuralink for the next iteration of it, what their goals are.

[01:31:55] Cameron: I’m like, listen, look, I don’t care what you think about Elon, but one day he’s running Twitter. The next day he’s sending rockets into space. The next day he’s talking about the latest versions of chip Brain implants, brain computer interfaces. I mean, how the guy fits all this into his day and into his brain and manages to juggle it all.

[01:32:21] Cameron: And then you’ve got, I don’t know what’s going on with the Boring Project and you know, the Tesla,

[01:32:27] Tony: Yeah, I was going to

[01:32:27] Cameron: Tesla. I haven’t seen any Tesla videos and the robots that they’re building and this and that and the other. It’s insane what he’s doing. He’s like five Steve Jobs’s rolled into one.

[01:32:38] Tony: okay, that’s one take on it. I just see Richard Branson saying, look at this, look at this, look at this. Cause you’ve answered that. You’ve answered my question, which was what’s happening with Tesla. Doesn’t talk about Tesla. Tesla’s shit. Like the, the stock’s down. They’re not delivering cars on time. No, one’s buying them in the numbers.

[01:32:56] Tony: They thought they’d be buying them in. Etc, etc. China’s cutting their lunch price wise. All the other manufacturers are putting it. Oh, in that case, let’s go to Khan. Let’s go. It’s the classic Richard Branson play. Let’s talk about Virgin Galactic when my credit card business is falling over.

[01:33:13] Cameron: Cynic. Just a synecdoche, that’s, uh, yeah.

[01:33:16] Tony: Yeah, look, you can’t I think he’s an evil genius. I think he’s the ultimate Bond villain. So, yes, he’s very smart, but, uh, he’s probably, he’s probably doing both things. He’s probably five times Steve Jobs and he’s distracting the shareholders of Tesla away from their, their cratering

[01:33:31] Cameron: should, they should just do a Bond movie and just get Elon. He’d be up for that, like Trump was in Home Alone 2. They should just say to Elon, Hey, you want to play yourself as the evil villain in a Bond movie? I’m sure he would be totally down for that.

[01:33:45] Tony: Like, uh, the Bond movie that, um, had, uh, a sort of, um, Rupert Murdoch, basically. A Rupert Murdoch

[01:33:52] Cameron: Jonathan, uh, was that the one with Jonathan Price, is it? Yeah, I vaguely recall. I don’t know which one it was, but they all blend into one another

[01:34:00] Tony: yeah, it was um, one of the Pearce Brosnan’s.

[01:34:02] Cameron: right. Yeah, you know, just, but this can, you just have Elon play Elon, like he would just do, you just do him, see, he wouldn’t have any issues with doing that.

[01:34:12] Cameron: He’d be like, yeah, as long as you can fit it in between

[01:34:14] Tony: yeah, it’s publicity.

[01:34:15] Cameron: 30 and 1. 45 on a Tuesday, I’ll be there.

[01:34:19] Tony: Want me to tweet about it? Yeah, I’ll tweet it. Oh, yeah, I’ll put it on next. I’ll promote, I’ll promote it for you. Sure. Do you need some

[01:34:24] Cameron: yeah, yeah,

[01:34:25] Tony: Yeah. Tesla will bankroll this film. Yeah. Oh, I saw a bunch of driver Tesla on Aston Martin. Yeah. Much better car.

[01:34:34] Cameron: Oh, that’s how they do it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the plot is Grock, his AI, um, and his, uh, Optimus robots are taking over the world in, while he’s getting ready to go to Mars in his starship. And it could just be a, he should buy the Bond franchise and like Tom Cruise did with Mission Impossible, just take over the franchise and just make every Bond film about.

[01:35:01] Cameron: a promotional tool for all of his businesses.

[01:35:04] Tony: yeah, well that’s, isn’t AI the center of the latest Tom Cruise movie, Mission Impossible Part 1, where uh,

[01:35:10] Cameron: one.

[01:35:11] Tony: yeah, where he’s um, Russians have an AI that’s been released into the world, um, it was, it was being tested on a nuclear submarine, but it crashed the submarine and got free, and uh, no, no,

[01:35:25] Cameron: So you’re saying the first Mission Impossible film or a

[01:35:27] Tony: it,

[01:35:30] Cameron: But you said it’s part one.

[01:35:32] Tony: it just stops and it says wait for Mission Impossible Part 2, coming out,

[01:35:36] Cameron: Oh, really?

[01:35:37] Tony: yeah, haha.

[01:35:39] Cameron: Wow. How does he keep churning those things out? I don’t know. I didn’t even see the last one. I haven’t seen the last four. I don’t know. Have

[01:35:46] Tony: yeah, well you haven’t missed much, same sort of thing, but I like them because I just look at it and go, that’s amazing, the guy can run as fast as he does and jump off things like he does and yeah, ride motorcycles off cliffs,

[01:36:00] Cameron: in our fitness class at Kung Fu is from time to time, the Sifu makes us do Tom Cruise

[01:36:05] Tony: he’s my

[01:36:05] Cameron: down the mats. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we have to do Tom Cruise running, which is, you know, that sort of. Crazy Sprint, yeah that guy, yeah that Sprint, up and down, yeah, yeah,

[01:36:18] Tony: like the Terminator,

[01:36:20] Cameron: yeah. Nah, you gotta hand it to Cruise, like I’m not a fan, I mean I think he’s made a few good films, but, you know, his stuff is mostly nonsense, but uh, you gotta hand it to the guy, like he, he knows how to do his thing. And, um, knows how to, knows how to make a movie and promote it and, you know, keep it going.

[01:36:40] Tony: have a wife for 9 years and 11 months before the 10 year divorce law cuts in, in California.

[01:36:47] Cameron: Oh, really? What’s that? What’s the 10 year divorce law?

[01:36:49] Tony: Uh, from memory, you lose half your assets in a divorce if you, if the wife’s been around for 10 years in one day. So Nicole Kidman was out in nine years. Who was one after her? The, uh, there’s another lady after her was out in nine years.

[01:37:05] Cameron: I think some of them didn’t last that long, did they?

[01:37:08] Tony: no, what’s the first one? Me? Katie Holmes. That’s what I was thinking of.

[01:37:11] Tony: She lasted nine years.

[01:37:13] Cameron: Right.

[01:37:14] Tony: lasted nine years. What’s the first one? Mimi, Mimi someone, I think, I don’t know how long she

[01:37:19] Cameron: Mimi Rogers.

[01:37:20] Tony: Rogers, he probably didn’t have

[01:37:21] Cameron: no, he married, he married Mimi Rogers in 1987. They divorced in 1990. Then he married Nicole Kidman in 1990. They divorced in 2001. It’s 11 years. In

[01:37:34] Tony: gets half.

[01:37:34] Cameron: and, in 2006, he married Katie Holmes. And, uh, I don’t know when that ended. Interestingly though, Tom Cruise’s marriage has all ended when his wife’s turned 33.

[01:37:51] Tony: Maybe that’s the law in California.

[01:37:54] Cameron: Mimi Rogers was 33, Nicole Kidman was 33, 34 by the time her divorce was finalised. Eh, Katie Holmes was 33 when she filed for divorce. Apparently a very big number in Scientology. The religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard in Arizona, which lies on the 33rd parallel, a circle of latitude that is 33 degrees north of the Earth’s equatorial plane.

[01:38:23] Cameron: In numerology, 33 is a master number or the master teacher. So, according to the official Scientology website, the ultimate goal of Scientology is true spiritual enlightenment and freedom for all. But they don’t say why. What it’s got to do with 33? I thought it was 42 was the

[01:38:41] Tony: Yeah, meaning of life.

[01:38:42] Cameron: for there.

[01:38:43] Tony: Didn’t Nikola Tesla have a lot to say about, um, I think they’re called universal numbers or something, but the numbers that spoke to him, that the universe was run on numbers and there were some magical numbers that, um, had strange magical powers.

[01:38:58] Cameron: I read his autobiography a few years ago. Um, great read. Like the guy was bonkers, but it’s a great read.

[01:39:05] Tony: Okay.

[01:39:07] Cameron: I like the fact he was denigrating all other scientists because they had to do experiments and build stuff, build stuff in the lab. He would say that everything that he built, he built it one time and it worked perfectly because he just figured it out.

[01:39:21] Cameron: He didn’t, he didn’t draw anything down, didn’t write any plans. He just figured it out in his brain and then he built it. First time, right time, do it once, do it right, all in his head. No, no blueprints, no working it out. That just Thought it through and did it. He also lined up his peas in perfect symmetrical lines before he could eat them.

[01:39:44] Cameron: But, uh, so I don’t know, man.

[01:39:48] Tony: Oh, I thought you meant his urine, like, uh, Howard Hughes.

[01:39:53] Cameron: Yeah, well, there you go. Another genius. What was, what was Trump’s line about

[01:40:01] Tony: He’s a germaphobe. Oh no.

[01:40:03] Cameron: No, no. Trump’s called himself some kind of a genius when he was president. I can’t remember what it was. I’m a very, very stable genius. Very stable genius. I think that was the line. All right.

[01:40:18] Tony: Alright. Okay.

[01:40:20] Cameron: Uh, QAV a good week, everyone.

[01:40:22] Tony: Yep. Happy ASX.