QAV 814 — The Big Grift

QAV 814 Audio Club

Cameron: [00:00:00] Wel­come back to QAV. Episode 8 1 4 Kept try­ing to talk to tk and he’d go, save it for the show. Save it for the show. So we had to get into the show. Well, it’s been a week tk. Hap­py birth­day

TK: you.

Cameron: week.

TK: Yes. Had a good cel­e­bra­tion.

Cameron: get my, did you get my gift?

TK: I did. Is that it?

Cameron: That is it.

TK: Okay. I I’ve got a bit of work to do to it. It, uh,

Cameron: You got­ta, you got to,

TK: a cou­ple

Cameron: there’s a mag­i­cal in can. Oh, what? It came like that with only two legs.

TK: I’ve got, them here. I can stick them back on. I bro­ken the, in the mail.

Cameron: Oh no, that’s no good. Well

TK: like my

Cameron: that was just so

TK: leg.

Cameron: you, you keep talk­ing about how you own a horse with ma

TK: Yep.

Cameron: hors­es. With ma. I thought it’s time you and I owned a horse togeth­er. That was the only one. That was the only one that [00:01:00] was with­in my bud­get. you and I now co-own a horse togeth­er. I call it QAV.

TK: Uhhuh

Cameron: That’s QAV the the horse.

TK: I think we should call it. MAGO.

Cameron: Why

TK: Make Amer­i­ca Go away. Not MAGA. MAGO.

Cameron: O way. way. Go oway.

TK: MAGO.

Yeah. Go away.

Cameron: Okay, well let’s get into the mar­ket then, I guess. Uh, what a crazy cou­ple of days it has been. I was, I’m up here in Bundy vis­it­ing my mom for school hol­i­days and, um, was doing some work on the, the Mon­day morn­ing blog post. Yes­ter­day, about 9:00 AM and then Hunter called me. the mar­ket had­n’t opened, and I’d done the blog post and I’d looked at where we were.

Uh, as of that moment, I think the light port­fo­lio was still up about 8% for the finan­cial year. Hunter called [00:02:00] me, I spoke to him for an hour, and then I opened up and looked at the port­fo­lio again, and it was down to zero for the finan­cial year, but then it was back up this morn­ing. So, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of crazy.

There was about, there was about three or four stocks that I was gonna have to sell at 9:00 AM this morn­ing by AM I did­n’t have to sell any of them except maybe a NZ, which is flirt­ing with its three point trend line cell. It’s above it. It’s below it. It’s above it. It’s below it. So,

TK: yes. I own a NZ and I’ve been look­ing at it too. I got the alert last night and

Cameron: yeah.

TK: like a scent below it this morn­ing and just thought, no, I’m just gonna leave that alone. See what hap­pens today.

Cameron: I think last time I checked, which was about half an hour ago, it was about 10 cents below it, but at 27 bucks, you know, so it’s 10 cents is nei­ther here nor there, real­ly? It goes up and down in that fair­ly quick­ly. Yeah. Trump change. Oh my God. So I guess this will be an [00:03:00] episode large­ly full of, uh, what’s going on in the US and how it affects us.

But again, and I’ve said this many times over the years, and I’ll say it again, it’s at times like this when we’re lucky to have a sys­tem. That I, I’m read­ing all of the invest­ing sub­red­dits here and in the US and peo­ple are like, just hold, buy more. Do this, do that. And there’s like, if, if you were going to places like that for invest­ing strat­e­gy or tac­tics, you would not know which way to move.

And for­tu­nate­ly, you know, I just look at my spread­sheet and it tells me what to do and I do it and don’t have to think about it. Don’t have to wor­ry about it.

TK: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been, I haven’t been going through the sub­red­dits like you do, but read­ing all the, the posts that I go through and the newslet­ters, et cetera, and some, there’s some crazy stuff being said by some pret­ty smart peo­ple. You know, things like, we’re gonna wait for the bot­tom. then lat­er on in the arti­cle it’s like, you can’t pick the bottom[00:04:00]

and here are

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: for the, here are some signs of the mar­ket bot­tom. But they don’t always work. It’s like just

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: around. It’s, uh, yeah, you should have worked out when you were gonna be a buy­er and when you were gonna be a sell­er years ago, and have that as your frame­work. And then when this hap­pens, you just, um, just lean into it.

Cameron: And you know, I say this all the time too, it’s the, the same is true for hav­ing a, a frame­work for life.

TK: very much so. Well,

Cameron: for life. I,

TK: you remem­ber we start­ed off talk, when we start­ed col­lab­o­rat­ing, it was around Maslow’s hier­ar­chy of needs, the frame­work for life. You’ve got­ta work out what’s impor­tant to you. You’ve got­ta get the hier­ar­chy in place, and then you’ve got to work out what you need for self-actu­al­iza­tion.

Cameron: I’ve been talk­ing to my boys, um, Tay­lor just broke up with his girl­friend in LA and while he’s, no, he got an apart­ment that, [00:05:00] um, she had to sign the lease for, ’cause he could­n’t, he does­n’t have a his­to­ry over there to get a lease. And then they broke up a few days lat­er, pret­ty much. Yeah. But, and I’ve been talk­ing to Hunter too.

And you know, the, the, the ques­tion that always comes up with these guys when they’re break­ing up with girl­friends are, um, all women crazy? And I go, yes, but all peo­ple are crazy. All peo­ple are crazy. All peo­ple have inse­cu­ri­ties, all peo­ple have self-esteem issues. All peo­ple, unless they have devel­oped a frame­work that enables them to deal with those things in a healthy man­ner.

And most peo­ple in my expe­ri­ence haven’t, or don’t because usu­al­ly they don’t about that until the shit hits the fan. And at which point it’s often like, it’s not too late. But, ’cause you know, unless you’re on your deathbed, you have decades of life to put that to good use. I was lucky enough to meet Bob when I was 19, 20. [00:06:00] Who helped me with that and got me through my twen­ties and and for­ties and fifties so far. But, um, you know, it’s like an invest­ment frame­work’s the same thing, right? Like you, you, you get it then it’s there in the bad times you through it, right? It’s already in place. You already know what to do.

You don’t have to go look­ing for one with­in the mar­kets crash­ing. It’s the wrong time to be look­ing for an invest­ing frame­work, you know,

TK: yeah,

And, and you said, I remem­ber lis­ten­ing to your pod­cast many years ago, and you used to say things like, what would Napoleon do? So you kin­da like had a frame­work to refer back to when some­thing was going crazy. It’s a bit like an invest­ing frame­work. You know what, what does QAV do in this sit­u­a­tion?

Yeah.

Cameron: what does TK do? And peo­ple have, we’re ask­ing that over the week­end on Face­book before you chimed in, but I was pret­ty con­fi­dent that you would just be fol­low­ing the rules, right?

TK: That’s what the, that’s what the rules are for, you know,

Cameron: It’s either there.

TK: don’t throw them out at the, at the first sign of trou­ble.

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: [00:07:00] Well, right. We’re, we’re fac­ing a, a, a down­turn in the mar­ket. What’s the first thing we should do? Oh, throw the rules out.

Cameron: The rules out. Yeah.

TK: Burn the house down.

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: Well, look, to be fair, you, you have fudged and mod­i­fied rules from time to time when you felt frame­work. Yes.

TK: It’s a, guide.

Cameron: Yeah. They can be mod­i­fied. But um, as I was explain­ing to a new mem­ber that I did a Zoom call with last week, uh, you don’t mod­i­fy, you do mod­i­fy things, but you don’t do them eas­i­ly, you know?

TK: Yeah. Yeah. It should slow­ly change. I think that’s a good mot­to. Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah,

yeah,

TK: you let expe­ri­ence guide you. So I, um, undoubt­ed­ly there’ll be some­thing com­ing out of this down­turn in the mar­ket, which may be an upturn next week, um, which we might say, okay, let’s look at, let’s look at how we through that, and is there a bet­ter way of doing it?

Cameron: And just on term in terms of, [00:08:00] um, peo­ple han­dling the crash, uh, in gen­er­al, like it’s been grat­i­fy­ing again, as, as it was the last time we went through one of these see peo­ple in the QAV Face­book groups say­ing, yeah, I’m just fol­low­ing the rules and doing what it tells me to do. And, you know, I know it’ll be okay.

And, and we’ll prob­a­bly end up with a lot of buy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties as the mar­ket starts to turn around again, we’ll be there like we were in Covid to get in at the right time and maybe there might be a, a boom year that comes out­ta this at. Some point if Trump comes to his sens­es, which I don’t like the chances of that, but some­thing, some­thing will hap­pen.

The mar­ket will turn around at some point. It always does.

TK: Yeah. Well, I, I mean, I’ve, I’ve writ­ten a whole heap of notes on the US mar­ket at the moment, if you want me to start going through those, but, uh,

Cameron: Let’s get into it.

TK: I, I

Cameron: That’s why peo­ple are here, I’m sure.

TK: I agree. It’s, cer­tain­ly top of mind and it’s a, it’s a shame, it’s top of mind. [00:09:00] I mean, I’m tempt­ed to say it’s noise, but it’s not. It’s, there are real world impli­ca­tions for tar­iffs.

There are real world impli­ca­tions for com­pa­nies and, every­thing that goes with it, um, with a down­turn in the mar­ket with the poten­tial reces­sion that it might bring on. So, yeah, I’m not, I’m not. I sound like I’m mak­ing light of this, but this could be a real prob­lem. but we do have a frame­work to get through real prob­lems.

So that’s, that’s the good side of things. But, um, yeah, it’s like if it was, if you go back to first prin­ci­ples, and I’ve, I’ve argued this with peo­ple prob­a­bly or twice with David Markham that, um, who was a pro­tec­tion­ist when it comes to indus­tries because he want­ed to see more jobs, kept on shore and, and you know, peo­ple, man­u­fac­tur­ing cars, et cetera in the us.

So I, I get that, but even if you think that’s a good thing, and I, I don’t, I’m, I’m a free mar­keter when it comes to these things, um, even if you accept that, [00:10:00] that that’s your posi­tion, you just drop a bomb? On Free­dom Day do you go and nego­ti­ate with your part­ners and, and you know, put some­thing in place to make it hap­pen that’s, that’s a lit­tle less cat­a­stroph­ic.

Um, so that’s the first point. Even if you do believe in build­ing up indus­tries, again in your own coun­try, there’s a way to do it. with your trad­ing

Cameron: Which is the way it, it is always done, which is through diplo­ma­cy and. Lead­ers of coun­tries in their, uh, their chief admin­is­tra­tors sit­ting down and going, well, we’re not hap­py with this, and, uh, well, we’re not hap­py with that, so let’s

TK: Let’s.

Cameron: out a com­pro­mise and come up with a way to move for­ward. So let’s how grownups do it.

TK: but I don’t, I don’t believe, well, first of all, I don’t think putting tar­iffs on cars, for exam­ple, is gonna cre­ate more car employ­ment in the US because car fac­to­ries are prob­a­bly gonna be run by robots. So it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna help that sit­u­a­tion at all, I don’t think. And all it means, [00:11:00] all it means is that you’re gonna have invest­ment in the auto indus­try for as long as the tar­iffs last.

if you are, think about the eco­nom­ics of that, right? You are gm, you’re the CEO of gm. Tar­iffs have come in, got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build plants in the US and onshore, or your auto­mo­bile fac­to­ries. That’s prob­a­bly gonna be a four or five year plan involv­ing mul­ti-bil­lions of dol­lars. the only crux that jus­ti­fies that is tar­iffs.

And the only crux hold­ing that up is the cur­rent pres­i­dent. So you, you may not as com­mit­ted to bring­ing those plants on shore, or your board might not be as you, as you might seem to, to the pres­i­dent.

Cameron: But I’ve, I’ve read a num­ber of arti­cles in the last cou­ple of years, well before this whole tar­iff thing, well before the cur­rent Trump admin­is­tra­tion, uh, of the CEOs of Amer­i­can auto­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­ers talk­ing about the idea of decou­pling [00:12:00] from Chi­na and say­ing, well, that’s all well and good, we don’t make all of the parts for our cars.

All of the parts, we might assem­ble them, but all of the parts for our cars are made in oth­er coun­tries, and a lot of them are made in Chi­na. We don’t have the man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ty in this coun­try to make all of the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of parts that go into mak­ing a car. You would need to build hun­dreds of fac­to­ries. To build all of the spe­cial­ized parts before we could do and that and, and then you need the rare earth mate­ri­als for the com­put­er chips and you need all sorts of stuff that we don’t have it. Like logis­ti­cal­ly, it is not a click of your fin­gers. Put a tar­iff. Okay, well we’re just gonna do it here. Like, it’s insan­i­ty to think that after off­shoring man­u­fac­tur­ing for 50 years, there’s gonna be a quick solu­tion to onshoring this stuff, uh, if ever.

TK: no, that’s right. And the mar­ket’s [00:13:00] evolved that way ’cause that is the best way to pro­duce auto­mo­biles com­plex. Sup­ply chains is, is to, is to find a spe­cial­ist who can do it for you cheap­er than you can do it your­self. So

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: that’s, that’s eco­nom­ics 1 0 1. So it’s, it’s, it’s not gonna work. Um, and, and the oth­er prob­lem with those kinds of indus­tries, and we, I saw it first­hand in Aus­tralia when I was, um, run­ning a com­pa­ny called My Direct, which was a, in the rag trade.

uh, it was at the tail end of the tar­iff being re uh, being reduced and even­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ed, uh, in the cloth­ing and tex­tile indus­tries in Aus­tralia. And, you know, we had sup­pli­ers who were out­ta busi­ness because when the tar­iffs got tak­en away or got reduced, you know, got less than year by year in the footwear indus­try and the, in the tex­tile indus­try, they could­n’t com­pete because what hap­pens is.

They’re frozen in time. When the tar­iffs get put in, they, they can make their fac­to­ry run effi­cient­ly and make a buck when the tar­iffs are there. Right? The peo­ple who are [00:14:00] out­side or over­seas, um, who don’t have that, they’re still improv­ing. They’re still becom­ing more effi­cient because they have to, to, to the point where after, I don’t know, five years, 10 years, they get bet­ter.

They can, they get bet­ter at pro­duc­ing their, their shoes or jumpers or what­ev­er such that they can still sell them into Aus­tralia cheap­er than the com­pa­ny that’s got the tar­iffs. Even with their tar­iffs on, they’re still cheap­er than the com­pa­ny that’s pro­duc­ing them local­ly because they’ve been pro­duc­tive the whole way.

The tar­iffs are a ter­ri­ble bar­ri­er to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, because, you know, they’re put in place because it, the man­u­fac­tur­ing isn’t pro­duc­tive in the first place. So,

Cameron: Well is it isn’t com­pet­i­tive with inter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers or sup­pli­ers or grow­ers, what­ev­er. It’s.

TK: So, so the, so the auto­mo­bile sup­plies and com­pa­nies know this, they know that their, their invest­ments only work as long as the cur­rent regime stays in place and they have the same lev­el of tar­iffs. [00:15:00] But even­tu­al­ly might take 10 years, will be able to pro­duce auto­mo­biles off­shore, which are, which they can sell into Amer­i­ca with the tar­iffs, which are still cheap­er and bet­ter than the local­ly made items there.

And then they go out­ta busi­ness, or the tar­iffs get raised again. But then they have to, you know, they, they soon work out. Their best busi­ness mod­el is to, is to lob­by the gov­ern­ment. It’s not to pro­duce, um, bet­ter auto­mo­biles. that’s, that’s the kind of dance that gets played in the indus­tries after that.

And it’s a ter­ri­ble place to be, which is why tar­iffs were unrav­eled around the world.

Cameron: Well, they weren’t com­plete­ly unrav­eled. I mean, there were still tar­iffs all around the world. Even with free trade agree­ments, there are still tar­iffs, there are carve outs and those sorts of spe­cial deals.

TK: But they tend to be one-offs. Right. And, and I mean, yeah. Look, I’m, yeah, I’m gloss­ing over it. Like, you know, you can say that the Euro­peans sup­port their farm­ers too much, um, So there are tar­iffs around the world. You’re right. But it’s very dif­fer­ent to say­ing, uh, your coun­try gets 34% on every [00:16:00] good that’s, um, import­ed into my

Cameron: yeah,

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: and you know, I, I’m, I’m dumb when it comes to a lot of this stuff and it’s real­ly hard for my brain to process these sorts of things, and so I’ve spent a lot of time over the last week in par­tic­u­lar try­ing to get my brain around it, but. this like a, as we know, I am sure you’ve seen the analy­sis on this, when Trump held up his big board with the tar­iffs that the coun­tries are charg­ing the US went, uh, actu­al­ly that’s not true.

They don’t charge us those tar­iffs. it was a cal­cu­la­tion that was based on the trade imbal­ance. had noth­ing to do with tar­iffs. that’s point A is he has no idea what he’s talk­ing about, but point. But then if you start talk­ing about if the US is upset about trade imbal­ance, I mean, I’ve been try­ing to under­stand why you’re upset, how you get upset about trade [00:17:00] imbal­ances and tar­iffs play a role in trade imbal­ances.

I under­stand that as do cur­ren­cy val­u­a­tions and those sorts of things. But at the end of the day, as I under­stand it, back to our co i, I keep try­ing to reduce things down to a cof­fee shop anal­o­gy. It’s like, I come to your shop. I buy, uh, five cof­fees and uh, a cou­ple of, uh, crois­sants and some banana bread.

’cause you make real­ly good crois­sants and banana bread and real­ly good cof­fee. And, and I have a, I have a a, a jew­el­ry shop you don’t buy much of my jew­el­ry ’cause you don’t like it or it’s too expen­sive or what­ev­er. And then I get pissed off at you ’cause you’re not buy­ing stuff from my shop. And I’m gonna I’m gonna increase the prices on your, your cof­fees in order to stop my employ­ees, let’s say from buy­ing your cof­fees or your, like, it, it [00:18:00] makes no sense.

You’re just not sell­ing stuff that I want.

TK: the, anal­o­gy is, I, I own the jew­el­ry store and I’m gonna stop buy­ing cof­fee from you because you don’t buy jew­el­ry from me. I’m gonna make my own cof­fee and drink that. And it’s sort of,

Cameron: Right.

TK: you’ll work out

Cameron: Yeah, but you don’t, you don’t have a cof­fee machine.

TK: exact­ly. Well, I can’t make crois­sants or

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: bread.

Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: So that’s,

Cameron: it’s just, it just makes no, although have you read or heard of the paper that this is all based on Steven Moran’s paper,

TK: I mean, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.

Cameron: so I start­ed read­ing it and then it was too bor­ing, so I got GPT to.

TK: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: ana­lyze it for me, but, so this guy, Stephen Moran, who’s, um, for­mer for­mer senior strate­gist at Hud­son Bay Cap­i­tal and is the cur­rent chair­man of the Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advi­sors to Trump, he wrote a paper called A User’s Guide to Restruc­tur­ing the Glob­al Trad­ing Sys­tem [00:19:00] late last year. And it seems to be the plan that they’re fol­low­ing. And as I under­stand it, the basic idea is we throw mas­sive tar­iffs on all these coun­tries and it in order to reduce the val­ue of the dol­lar. So basi­cal­ly. throw tar­iffs on these, uh, coun­tries. So Amer­i­cans stop buy­ing as much of these coun­try’s prod­ucts, which means these coun­tries have less Amer­i­can dol­lars, which means they buy less cur­ren­cy based backed assets, uh, trea­suries, bonds, et cetera, which means the dol­lar deval­ues the US dol­lar deval­ues, means US goods are cheap­er for those coun­tries to buy unless they throw tar­iffs on them like Chi­na has.

But, uh, and then that’s going to bol­ster [00:20:00] Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing and farm­ing and what­ev­er ’cause the US dol­lar will be deval­ued and their prod­ucts will be cheap­er. That seems to be the basics of Moran’s, uh, strat­e­gy here, that

TK: Uh,

Cameron: seem to be fol­low­ing.

TK: just exam­ine that log­ic cam. ’cause I have heard the argu­ment. I did­n’t know who, who it came from. Uh, we’re gonna deval­ue the dol­lar. Okay. Tick. That’s hap­pen­ing now. And then over­seas peo­ple will be able to afford to buy more of our goods, so they buy more of our goods. What hap­pens to the US dol­lar when peo­ple buy more of your goods?

Cameron: Goes back up again. Although, I mean, the oth­er thing is peo­ple tend to buy, you know, US trea­suries, uh, uh, US assets because it’s sup­posed to. So it’s sup­pos­ed­ly a safe place to put your mon­ey

TK: Not

Cameron: it’s such a sta­ble, sta­ble genius of a coun­try with this sta­ble genius [00:21:00] run­ning it. I don’t think any­one in the world right now is look­ing at the US going, this is a sta­ble place to invest our

TK: Yeah,

Cameron: I mean, I think, I mean, you, you, you were talk­ing as a lot of my Amer­i­can friends do about, well, Trump won’t be in pow­er for­ev­er, and I’m like.

TK: he

Cameron: Real­ly? Yeah. You real­ly think there’s gonna be anoth­er elec­tion? Uh, I mean, a real elec­tion, there may be a sham elec­tion, but as I’ve said, I dun­no if I’ve said it on this show, but I’ve said it on my oth­er shows many times, and Musk can­not afford to be out of pow­er.

Now this is essen­tial­ly, it’s like Cae­sar cross­ing the Rubi­con. Once Cae­sar crossed the Rubi­con, that was it. He knew that The game had to change because would get pros­e­cut­ed and exiled and destroyed. They were already try­ing to do that to him, which is why crossed the Rubi­con in the first place. Once you crossed the Rubi­con, there’s no going back. There’s no tak­ing a re un unless you’re com­plete­ly, I don’t [00:22:00] know, will­ing to roll the dice a sec­ond time. But you, he can­not afford to be out of pow­er. They will destroy him and his fam­i­ly, and his col­leagues and his friends, and Musk, if the Democ­rats ever get back in pow­er, it’s all over.

It’s lights out for all those guys.

TK: And there’s, I mean, he’s already come out and said, said as much, and last week on Air Force one, he

Cameron: Got­ta run for a third term. Mm.

TK: about run­ning for a

Cameron: There are ways, eh, there are ways to do it.

TK: And, then I’ve read arti­cles which explore that, talk­ing about Vance runs for pres­i­dent, gets the pres­i­den­cy and then steps down and Trump’s the vice pres­i­dent and he gets the job.

Or he is

Cameron: Yeah. But that does­n’t that Yeah. Speak­er, he could be, he can’t be vice pres­i­dent for that to work, but he could be speak­er. Yeah.

TK: So I agree with

Cameron: Oh,

TK: He, he’s gonna hang on to pow­er.

Cameron: in any, if he can, like, it’s, it’s got­ta be a fight for onto pow­er. And if not him, if he dies, be Vance or it’ll be, you know, who­ev­er else, [00:23:00] Peter Thiel and Elon Musk wan­na be run­ning the coun­try and, yeah. Any­way.

TK: uh, the upside is there might be some­thing good for us out of all this, um, because the peo­ple who are now sell­ing to the US may actu­al­ly flood our mar­ket with cheap goods. So we might actu­al­ly see cheap white goods, cheap TVs, cheap auto­mo­biles in Aus­tralia. ’cause they can’t go to the US ’cause of the tar­iffs.

So that might work for us. Um, what else can I say about this? Uh. The, the oth­er thing about the tar­iffs in the US is it’s got, there’s gonna, there’s prob­a­bly gonna be, it’s like pro­hi­bi­tion, right? They’re, they’re now pro­hibit­ing items that peo­ple wan­na buy from being bought. It’s a bit like in Aus­tralia now, where you can buy black mar­ket cig­a­rettes for 25 bucks because the gov­ern­men­t’s put a tar­iff a, a, on legit­i­mate cig­a­rettes and it just, you know, they’ve lost all the rev­enue from that ’cause peo­ple are going around that.

It’s gonna hap­pen in the states as well. The, the bor­der is still a lit­tle bit [00:24:00] porous in the US it’s very large and, and goods will get in at, you know, from cur­rent sup­pli­ers at cur­rent rates and be sold on the black mar­ket. So that will also help to erode what Trump’s try­ing to do with man­u­fac­tur­ing in the us.

So that’s anoth­er rea­son why it may not work. Um, this is, this is remind­ing me of Brex­it. It’s like, this is Amer­i­ca exit­ing. world trade basi­cal­ly. Um, and you know, the UK econ­o­my is still not back where it was pri­or to Brex­it. This, inter­est­ing­ly enough, I looked up what hap­pened to the stock exchange and the stock mar­ket has been doing okay since Brex­it.

So it’s, it’s recov­ered just like, I think ours prob­a­bly will as well. um, but the econ­o­my’s and lurched in the UK for a, for, for a cou­ple of years since Brex­it. So the kind of pat­tern I’m look­ing at for the US or the tem­plate for the US going going for­ward. the last com­ment I’ve got is this could all be a grift, [00:25:00] you know, think­ing out­side the box.

Trump may well have had friends short­ing the mar­ket and then he’ll, he’ll start say­ing, oh, look at Japan, aren’t they love­ly? We’ve got­ta, I’m gonna take the tar­iffs away from them. We’re both gonna agree not to charge each oth­er tar­iffs. And, you know, slow­ly he walks back from where he is now and the mar­ket shoots up a, after he sold, got out of his shorts and bored them, bought back into the mar­ket.

So it’s, it’s, could all

Cameron: We,

TK: grift,

Cameron: you obvi­ous­ly don’t fol­low my Tik­Tok because I post­ed a Tik­Tok a cou­ple of weeks ago where Steve San­ti­no said that this is a com­plete grift and it got, it’s cur­rent­ly up around about 600,000 views and lots of, lots of angry debate and com­ments going on in the com­ment sec­tion, but yeah. Well, did you see what hap­pened yes­ter­day when it spiked the mar­ket?

Spiked briefly.

TK: ’cause there was a ar.

Cameron: Yeah. And did you hear how that hap­pened?

TK: All I heard was there was a rumor that Trump was gonna walk the tar­iffs back, and then they [00:26:00] came out lat­er on and the

Cameron: I.

TK: came out and squashed it

Cameron: One guy on Twit­ter,

TK: called San­ti­no.

Cameron: who, no, I wish. A guy who goes by the name of Wal­ter Bloomberg. He’s got about a mil­lion fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, and he just reposts Bloomberg head­lines. He post­ed a tweet that said that Has­sett said that Trump was con­sid­er­ing putting a 90 day sus­pen­sion on the tar­iffs. The mar­ket shot up like eight or nine points, and then, uh, an hour lat­er was like, oh, no.

He said he’s not gonna do that, and the mar­ket crashed again. Now, if that guy who runs that Twit­ter account hap­pened to buy shares before he post­ed that tweet or any­one else that said to him, Hey, post this tweet. there’s got­ta be, I mean, I, I, I don’t think there’s got­ta be, but the chance that there’s, you know. The on the inside that are ready to buy when it bot­toms out before they know that Trump’s [00:27:00] gonna, and, and no one’s gonna pros­e­cute them. I mean,

TK: all sit­ting

Cameron: they’re all

TK: in the, Oval Office with their black­ber­ries, with, with

Cameron: Black­ber­ries.

TK: on

Cameron: Wow.

TK: trade. What was that,

Cameron: Hmm. Take me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I, I am of the opin­ion that every­thing that Trump’s entire plan, uh, this time around is just grift. It’s just the big grift. Him, his chil­dren, his asso­ciates, it’s let’s just bleed as much mon­ey out of the US econ­o­my as we can, as long as we can. I dun­no what they do then. I dun­no what part, part two is of that plan, but, uh, when they crash the US econ­o­my.

TK: Oh, but you know, Musk will be on Mars and Trump will be in Flori­da.

Cameron: No. Well, actu­al­ly I do, because I cov­ered this on futur­is­tic last week. So there’s this guy, I won’t waste a lot of time on this, but there’s this guy called Dry­den Brown who runs a com­pa­ny called Prax­is. [00:28:00] Prax­is is his way of try­ing to imple­ment the net­works state idea. There’s this guy who’s part of the Elon Musk, Peter the, uh, mark Andresen bil­lion­aire cir­cle called He’s a part­ner at Andreessen’s. Andreessen Horowitz wrote a book a cou­ple of years ago called The Net­work State, and it’s basi­cal­ly the idea of, just it, imag­ine a a Red­dit com­mu­ni­ty with 50,000 Uber rich nerds just decide to start a coun­try togeth­er. They’re gonna start their own nation state with their own laws, their own tax­a­tion, their own what­ev­ers. Then they go and buy a piece of land, declare them­selves an inde­pen­dent nation state. This guy, Dry­den Brown, he’s raised $500 mil­lion in com­mit­ments from Peter Thiel and the like. He went to Green­land a year or two ago and tried to buy Green­land to estab­lish Prax­is as a nation state there. They told him to go away, [00:29:00] but uh, that kind of ties into the Trump efforts to take over Green­land.

I think it’s also rare earth ele­ments and all of that kind of stuff, buffer zone, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, they’re try­ing to set up their own, basi­cal­ly, you know, tech­no utopi­an, nation state.

TK: Is

Cameron: Fas­ci­nat­ing stuff.

TK: like, is there sub­head­ing or their mot­to? Where is John Gault?

Cameron: Yeah. Well that’s what I said. I, no, it’s Atlas shrugged, the oth­er one.

TK: one. Okay. I,

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I said on the show. This is Atlas Shrugged in prac­tice. Basi­cal­ly we’ll just go set up our own coun­try in prac­tice. Well, that’s what prac­tice means in Greek is putting the­o­ry into prac­tice. Um, yeah. It’s lit­er­al­ly, is John Gold?

Yeah. I mean,

TK: but it’s also like the B Ark in Hitch­hik­er’s Guide, is one of my favorite con­cepts in lit­er­a­ture. We used to talk at, we used

Cameron: I don’t remem­ber that.

TK: peo­ple on the B ark when we, I used to work cor­po­rate, so, right. Um, [00:30:00] a, a world con­fer­ence of uh, politi­cians and engi­neers and physi­cists, et cetera, and they come up with this con­cept.

Uh, they announced to the world that they’ve real­ized there’s gonna be an aster­oid strik­ing the earth in the next five years, but they’ve just got time to build some rock­et ships, uh, three arcs to take peo­ple off the plan­et to, um, to sur­vive the aster­oid col­li­sion. A arc is gonna have all of the world lead­ers and politi­cians in it.

sea Arc is gonna have all the engi­neers and, and con­struc­tion peo­ple, and peo­ple who build things in it. B Arc is gonna have the rest, all the cre­ative types, the tele­phone san­i­tiz­ers, the col­or, coor­di­na­tors, the movie pro­duc­ers in it. five years passed, they got three arcs. They, they load the B arc, have a big, a big fan­fare, big parade.

Um, press the but­ton, send it off into space, and then just go

job done. And,

Cameron: Right.[00:31:00]

TK: and then at the very end of the cycle of books, um, what’s his name? Ford Pre­fect Lands on a plan­et. Um, and. It after a lot of coin­ci­dences, it turns out it’s inhab­it­ed by the B Ark sur­vivors and it turns out it’s earth car.

Cameron: Uh, I got­ta go back and read those. It’s been decades and decades. I,

TK: So we can put the Prax­is peo­ple on the B can

Cameron: hmm. Mm, well, I think they wan­na build their own and, and he’s talk­ing about it as being a dry run for Elon’s Mask Mars I think is, he’s gonna change the name. He’s gonna put a K on the end of the name of the plan­et when he lands there. Just call it Elon Mask. Um, yeah. Dry run to just go and set up a brand new city with peo­ple who choose to be mem­bers of the, they take out a sub­scrip­tion to be mem­bers of the city, and Trump’s sell­ing is fi is [00:32:00] $5 mil­lion, gold, gold, visa, what­ev­er it is. Any­way, any­way.

TK: uh, a cou­ple of oth­er com­ments. Um, one of the things I’m. I’m hap­py about QIV and, and, and hap­py. I haven’t been invest­ing in growth stocks, is I, I went through and did a lit­tle quick com­par­i­son. I’m pick­ing the eyes out of some of the stocks here, some of the stocks, you know, they’re at the growth end of the mar­ket are down 30% plus, this year.

Uh, and stocks that I’m hold­ing, like as you said before, a NZ may be a sell, but it’s down. It’s not down that kind of amount. It’s down 10, 15%. so it’s times like these, I mean, there’s always a time in the cycle when I go, oh geez, I should look at crow stocks and try and devel­op a frame­work to invest in them.

That’s usu­al­ly the top of the mar­ket. I should, I should learn from that. Next time you hear me say it, just, uh, you know, remind me it’s top of the mar­ket time. Um, but yeah, so like, uh, EDUs is down. 30 odd per­cent from a time [00:33:00] Mac­quar­ie’s down 30%, ResMed’s down 20%, zero the same. Next dcs down 40%. Good­man Group down 35, life 360 down 30%.

But you know, then you look at the stocks that kind of, we focus on a NZ down 10 QB down five, and it just reminds me of the old apho­rism up the esca­la­tor down the ele­va­tor shaft. Um, with those, with those stocks that are priced to per­fec­tion, as soon as insta­bil­i­ty comes into the mar­ket, they drop quick­ly.

Cameron: Yeah. And I’ve been hear­ing you say that as long as we’ve been talk­ing about invest­ing, like, uh, when when the mar­ket hits trou­ble, they drop like a stone every time.

TK: they do.

Cameron: Yeah. Same things hap­pen­ing with the Mag sev­en over in the US obvi­ous­ly.

TK: yeah. And, and Tes­la in par­tic­u­lar.

Cameron: Hmm. And Bit­Tor­rent, I mean, you know, it dropped a ton too, so. Yeah.

TK: [00:34:00] Yeah, so that’s

Cameron: Well.

TK: uh, uh, the oth­er thing I wan­na talk about, just quick­ly, last com­ment before we leave this is that, uh, we’ve got a Tel Tel­stra I had a look at today as I was decid­ing what to do a pulled pork on. It’s just off the bio list. I think it’s a QIV score of 0.09, but it has been on the buy list ear­li­er this year.

It’s one of the only stocks going up. Um, at the moment. And anoth­er one, which has been on the bio list, I think last year came off it uh, Austal, um, ASB is going up as well. ’cause there’s been for two things that hap­pen at this kind of, in this kind of mar­ket. Um, one is there’s a migra­tion to what’s called the defen­sive stocks.

So the likes of kin­da the bor­ing stocks that sell every­day things to peo­ple that they need to keep buy­ing. They tend to, you know, start to see a bit of growth, um, or at least sup­port in this mar­ket. Tel­stra’s one of those too. Peo­ple are prob­a­bly gonna keep their phones. They’re not gonna, cut back on a lot of things, but they’ll, they’ll keep their phones, um, [00:35:00] going.

same the super­mar­kets, so that’s good. Austal’s a bit dif­fer­ent this time. Austal’s, one of its large busi­ness­es, is sell­ing, build­ing and sell­ing ships to the US Navy. So defense stocks are hav­ing a bit of, um. Time in the, the sun at the moment is, all coun­tries are kind of reeval­u­at­ing at Don­ald Trump’s insis­tence, whether they’re spend­ing enough on defense.

and as, as alliances are a bit more flu­id these days, they’re kind of reeval­u­at­ing their own abil­i­ties to defend them­selves. So, um, yeah, doing well as well.

Cameron: I hope they’re all try­ing to fig­ure out how to defend them­selves from Don­ald Trump. That’s who I wan­na be defend­ing myself from right now. Uh, speak­ing of which, I noticed the, uh. A spokesper­son for Bei­jing’s embassy in the Unit­ed States told the a FP. We have stressed more than once, that pres­sur­ing or threat­en­ing Chi­na is not the right way to engage with us.

Chi­na will firm­ly safe­guard its legit­i­mate rights and inter­ests. When [00:36:00] he is threat­ened to the tar­iffs on Chi­na. They’re like, uh, I don’t think so. I read that they’ve, um, in the last cou­ple of days, Chi­na’s, uh, passed a new piece of, uh, law leg­is­la­tion, a bill, what­ev­er they call ’em over there stop sell­ing. All of the rare earth ele­ments to US com­pa­nies. So the stuff that they con­trol, 70 to 80% of the mar­ket for that goes in all of the chips and the EVs and the AI chips and all of that kind of stuff. They’re just like, okay, you can’t buy those any­more. the door on that. So

TK: And even

Cameron: stakes are being raised.

TK: like pay­ing the 34% tar­iff prob­a­bly meant they weren’t gonna buy much from Chi­na any­more and would look for oth­er places any­way. Aus­tralia might ben­e­fit from that too, ’cause we have some at rare Earth min­ers in Aus­tralia.

Cameron: But I don’t think we cov­er the range of rare [00:37:00] earth min­er­als that the Chi­nese own, a lot of which are crit­i­cal for mil­i­tary equip­ment as well as, as I said, EVs, chip, ais, com­put­er chips, what­ev­er. So it’s a, I explained it to Hunter this morn­ing. I said, it’s a game of Brinks­man­ship right now. It’s who blinks first, who backs away first?

Is it gonna be Trump or Chi­na? Basi­cal­ly, at the end of the day, oth­er coun­tries will play around the edges, but it real­ly comes down to Trumpy Chi­na, I think.

TK: does­n’t it real­ly? And that’s gonna be the biggest impact on us, I think. ’cause if, if either of those coun­tries go into reces­sion because of the trade war, uh, that, that may, well, that will affect Aus­tralia. Um,

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

TK: oth­er­wise it’s real­ly kind of shiny thing, object that’s been played out in Wash­ing­ton that we’re all focused on.

But, I think that’s the, the core of it is if Chi­na or Amer­i­ca goes into reces­sion, we will have some blow back in Aus­tralia.

Cameron: Yeah. Quick one on port­fo­lio updates. Uh, I checked this morn­ing like I haven’t checked [00:38:00] since the mar­ket opened today because it’s all over the place, but as of this morn­ing, our US port­fo­lio had gone from being a hun­dred per­cent up for the finan­cial year to just 40% up ver­sus the s and p 500, uh, 14%. we’re still doing three times the s and p 500, but at much low­er num­bers than we were a week ago. The Aus­tralian dum­my port­fo­lio was up 7% for the finan­cial year ver­sus the STW down neg­a­tive 2.4% for the finan­cial year. So doing. I bet­ter than triple mar­ket doing quadru­ple mar­ket against the s

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: the STW for the year. But, uh, yeah, so like our, our port­fo­lios have fall­en but nowhere near as much as the index­es have.

And this so far, I mean, that could change. I’ve seen it change before. I’ve seen us fall more dur­ing the 20 20, 22, uh, finan­cial [00:39:00] the in, when inter­est rates were going up and the Rus­sia, Ukraine thing start­ed kick­ing off, we did fall a lot more, our port­fo­lio suf­fered a lot more than the index for rea­sons I still don’t under­stand.

But, uh, this time around, so far, not so bad.

TK: Yeah. Which is, you know, kind of what’s good. It’s, and it also kind of makes sense to me that low­er PE stocks and val­ue stocks don’t fall as far and this kind of sit­u­a­tion. So That makes sense.

Cameron: Yeah, but it, they did in 2022, but I think, again, we were doing the rule one, um, death spi­ral in 2022.

TK: a

Cameron: Now that I’ve pushed all my rule one num­bers up to 20%,

TK: Same.

Cameron: I haven’t had to rule one any­thing This time around. I’ve just, they’ve become rule ones and then they aren’t rule ones any­more. Um, I think there is, I think sev­en West Media is still, has gone 20% down.

Last time I looked,

TK: Okay.

Cameron: oh no, it’s, it’s only [00:40:00] 16% down now,

TK: The oth­er

Cameron: but it’s a three point trend­line cell.

TK: the oth­er thing to be care­ful of at the moment is there are lots of comp, lots of com­pa­nies which are ex div­i­dends. So, uh, one of mine’s super, super group, super retail group.

Cameron: Yep.

TK: if I add the div­i­dend back, which has got a cou­ple of days before it’s paid, it goes back above its cell line.

But if it,

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: it, once it pays, that might, may have to change.

Cameron: Yeah. So its cur­rent price is $12 60. The three point trend line naked is $12 80, but with the div­i­dend it’s 1234. it’s still well above that for the moment. And A and Z, by the way, is now back above its three point trend line by 1 cent. By 1 cent. That’s good enough for me.

TK: The oth­er que The oth­er ques­tion I, and I dun­no the answer to this, but I have, is how much is, is this volatil­i­ty in the mar­ket due to index funds and pas­sive invest­ment ETFs, et cetera, hav­ing to con­tin­ue, con­tin­ue to [00:41:00] rebal­ance and sell in a, in a, um, a chop­py mar­ket? Be good to

Cameron: Yeah, I dun­no. Yeah. What else?

TK: That’s it for me. I’ve got a pulled pork to do, uh, on

Cameron: I’ve,

TK: Ing­ham’s.

Cameron: well, I do have a ques­tion left over from, well, it came in late last week. This is from Trent. Uh, as we are now five years post the Covid crash, the L one is mov­ing around a bit. Take MMS for exam­ple, last month, cell line and bread lat­er was $13 52. But, uh, for me,

TK: I.

Cameron: but uh, this month when look­ing at my alerts, it has dropped to $12 15 as the line is flat­ter. What is Tony’s approach to deal with this? Does he fol­low the less demand­ing cell line or have anoth­er approach? I can to, I plan to keep mov­ing my cell alert up by about 10 cents a month, the his­toric move­ment of line, rather than give it a free ride. Trent,

TK: You have that Bat­man meme [00:42:00] ready to go?

Uh, no I don’t.

Cameron: I think I made that one for Trent last time too, to be fair to Trent, I know Trent just sends in ques­tions quite often just so there are ques­tions. He’s try­ing to help us out,

TK: No, thank you, Trent. Uh,

Cameron: so yes, no,

TK: line. It’s, it’s gonna hap­pen.

Cameron: no.

TK: for new lis­ten­ers, we use the low, the two low points in a five year month­ly graph, and occa­sion­al­ly one of those low point points rolls off and a new low point comes onto the graph and that can affect the

Cameron: A high­er low point.

TK: Or, or it could be a low­er one,

Cameron: Hmm

TK: it has to be a high one,

Cameron: hmm.

TK: For low points.

Cameron: Yeah, it does. Yeah.

TK: the cell line. Um, so that’s what, uh, Tren­t’s allud­ing to. Look, I, I don’t change the rules. I don’t add 10 cents a month to the cell line. Um, I’m hap­py to keep hold­ing stocks for as long as pos­si­ble, um, as long as they stay with­in trend.

Uh, so yeah, that’s a, my [00:43:00] approach. Fol­low the rules.

Cameron: Right. Thank you, Trent. If any­one else has a ques­tion, is the time when you should be ask­ing ques­tions. It’s, uh, chaos out there. I do, I mean, I, I, I mean, I remem­ber days when we used to get like. 10 ques­tions a week. Now we get no ques­tions. Hope­ful­ly it’s because we’ve answered all of the ques­tions so many times that peo­ple get it.

TK: Hope­ful­ly,

Cameron: I don’t know.

TK: no one’s

Cameron: Hope­ful­ly.

TK: just talk­ing to

Cameron: Yeah, it’s, and Trent,

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: just us and Trent, yeah.

TK: us some inter­est­ing ques­tions, like, you know, who’s gonna win the US Mas­ters on the week­end? Or

Cameron: Mm

TK: What’s

Cameron: mm

TK: at Flem­ing­ton or

Cameron: Don­ald Trump is, isn’t He

TK: is,

Cameron: is. I saw that he was play­ing golf over the week­end while the mar­ket was crash­ing and, uh, he, uh, won his tour­na­ment sur­pris­ing­ly. Uh, yeah. Yeah.

TK: Right.

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: like, uh,

Cameron: Mm.

TK: who runs North Korea who shot

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

TK: in, won

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

TK: [00:44:00] time he played

Cameron: Kim

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: Uhhuh. Yeah. Kim Jong.

TK: that. Great

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: there. I’ve got­ta rec­om­mend too, uh, I actu­al­ly, I think his name was Rick Riley, the author from Mem­o­ry used to write for Golf Digest, but, um, it’s called Com­man­der in Cheat.

It was, came out around the, the time Trump was select­ed the first time, it says golf­ing sto­ries involv­ing Trump, includ­ing one where he walked into the golf course at Mar-a-Lago one day and saw some­one’s name being paint­ed onto the, uh, uh, board of club cham­pi­ons. And he went, take that name down.

Put mine up. I beat that guy once.

Cameron: Sounds about right. Oh, well the only oth­er news thing about the whole Trump sit­u­a­tion that I found inter­est­ing was in the finan­cial review today that all of the Wall Street are now speak­ing out pub­licly about how bad this is and what a bad idea it is and how it’s all gonna go bad­ly. [00:45:00] most of these guys are pro-Trump. So you, you’ve got. Um, what’s his name at JP Mor­gan? Um, bill Ack­man came out, said the US is head­ing for a self-induced eco­nom­ic nuclear win­ter. Boaz Wein­stein pre­dict­ed the avalanche has real­ly just start­ed. Jamie Dia­mond warned it may be dis­as­trous in the long run. Lar­ry Fink said the US econ­o­my was weak­en­ing as we speak, by one.

Many of the biggest names across Wall Street, some of whom sup­port­ed the US Pres­i­dent dur­ing, dur­ing his elec­tion bid last year. And oth­ers who mere­ly hoped for loos­er reg­u­la­tion and eco­nom­ic growth under his admin­is­tra­tion are speak­ing out against his deci­sion to unleash expan­sive tar­iffs world­wide, plung­ing glob­al mar­kets into chaos. So it’ll be inter­est­ing to see how long he plans to hold out against Street. Uh. You know, there is a cer­tain lev­el [00:46:00] of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance and defi­ance that he can pull togeth­er, but if, if all the bil­lion­aires, uh, and Wall Street start turn­ing against him, it’s gonna be hard­er and hard­er for him to keep that going, I sus­pect.

TK: No, I agree. And um, it was inter­est­ing. I think it was Bessent, is it Scott Bessent? One of his finance? Cab­i­net

Cameron: Yeah,

TK: uh, I heard him inter­viewed on Fri­day and he said, you know, we’re doing all this to fix the Amer­i­can econ­o­my That Biden wrecked. And I’m like,

Cameron: yeah,

TK: you’re gonna wreck the econ­o­my to fix the prob­lem that that may have hap­pened because of what Biden put in place.

It just does­n’t, does­n’t make any sense.

Cameron: No, I mean, that’s, that’s the get out­ta jail free card for every­thing, right? It’s, yeah, we, we have to do this because Biden did such a bad job, includ­ing. Putting a jour­nal­ist on their secret sig­nal thread [00:47:00] and

TK: And whether you think Biden did a good job or not, it’s like you don’t clean up the mess by mak­ing a big­ger mess.

Cameron: yeah.

TK: Yeah. Any­way. Yeah. That’s

Cameron: All right.

TK: isn’t it? I mean, the, how long will can Trump hold all against Wall Street? There’s got­ta be a mar­ket some­where say­ing how long before he gets impeached as well.

I think be on the cards. I.

Cameron: Can he be impeached? Does, does­n’t he con­trol both hous­es now?

TK: Yeah,

Cameron: I don’t think he can be, I,

TK: Midterms

Cameron: he can be impeached.

TK: maybe. the smart mon­ey’s on the midterms.

Cameron: Are there gonna be midterms? I.

TK: good point.

Cameron: Alright. I don’t know, man. I, I, I can’t, I can’t see that hap­pen­ing or, or hap­pen­ing smooth­ly. Any­way, we’ll see, see how much mon­ey Elon has left by the midterms to, uh, buy an elec­tion out­come this time around.

TK: What was I watch­ing? I, it must have been a clip from SNL or some­thing about the new TE mod­el Tes­la that gr that dam­ages its own [00:48:00] head­lights and graf­fi­ti itself.

Cameron: Uh huh.

TK: The autonomous Tes­la.

Cameron: Yeah. Tay­lor called me the oth­er day from, uh, Way­mo. He was, he was catch­ing a Way­mo from, it was Venice Beach back to Hol­ly­wood, and it was gonna take like an hour. he was in a Way­mo for the first time and he was like, dude, this is trip­py. Like, I’ve been in the traf­fic for half an hour already.

There’s no dri­ver. It’s just weav­ing in and out and doing stuff. He said it was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly felt like liv­ing in the future and absolute­ly ter­ri­fy­ing.

TK: it would be, would­n’t it? Like being, not, you’d have to com­plete­ly trust the autonomous dri­ving sys­tem. Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah. Trip­py.

TK: Mm.

Cameron: All right. Do you wan­na do your, uh, pulled pork?

TK: And, um, I’m gonna do Ing­hams. I, I think I did them about four or five years ago. One of the first ones pulled Porks. I did. Um, but they weren’t part of our recent [00:49:00] And going through the Blist, it was hard to find some­thing that was­n’t tank­ing. again, Ing­ham is one of these defen­sive stocks because, um, it actu­al­ly gets a bit of a boost when turn down because, and, and they’re, we have more around cost of liv­ing cri­sis now because peo­ple do stay home and cook more and they do trade down from high­er qual­i­ty and more expen­sive cuts of meat to chick­en.

And Ing­ham’s is a, a poul­try, um, farmer and a pack­ager sup­pli­er. Uh, it’s a large a DT stock.

Cameron: Hold on. Episode six 50, Decem­ber 13th, 2023. Was the last time you did it and the episode was called Tur­duck­en. So it’s one of my, one of my bet­ter episode names

TK: Oh, thank you for that. I, I actu­al­ly tried to do a search and could­n’t find it for duck­ing.

Cameron: Tur­duck­en. I’m just won­der, I’m won­der­ing what the share price was back then. [00:50:00]Do you know?

TK: don’t, no, you can look

Cameron: Decem­ber, 2000? I’m doing it 2000 Decem­ber, 2023. It was at $3 93. It’s now at $3 23, so it has­n’t had a good, uh, what­ev­er that is, year and a bit.

TK: yeah. Right. 18 months. I thought it was longer. Okay. It does pay a good div­i­dend, so you’ve got the div­i­dends at least. But yeah, it’s always, it’s like I said, these are defen­sive stocks so they don’t get growth. Um. A bit like the super­mar­ket stocks, they bop along and they deliv­er on their op. They deliv­er oper­a­tional­ly every day, every day of the week, every day of the year.

But, um, you know, they’re essen­tial­ly grow­ing at the rate of the econ­o­my and is a bit like that too. So they do well in these, these kind of times. And cer­tain­ly the share price, um, has­n’t crashed like many oth­ers has this week. Uh, notwith­stand­ing what I’ve just said over the last 12 months, their [00:51:00]volume was down 2.7% uh, they did sink to a slight loss this year as well.

And, and Pat was down so did­n’t have a great year when they released their, their, um, results, uh, in Feb­ru­ary, uh, they did get bol­stered by buy­ing, uh, a com­pa­ny called Bostock Broth­ers, uh, which is a New Zealand poul­try brand. and they do oper­ate in Aus­tralia and New Zealand. So, um, I. Uh, the New Zealand busi­ness was doing well after the inte­gra­tion of this, uh, Bostock broth­ers, uh, brand.

some­thing else to note is the CEO Andrew Reeves retires Midge, uh, but will be suc­ceed­ed by the Ing­ham’s New Zealand CEO and Edward Alexan­der. So. know, good suc­ces­sion plan, plen­ty of time to do it right and pro­mot­ing from with­in. one of the oth­er rea­sons why I sort of latched on to Ing­hams, and I did­n’t talk about this last time, I have a bit of a soft spot for this com­pa­ny because, talk­ing about Ing­ham’s, um, [00:52:00] reminds me of their involve­ment in the horse rac­ing indus­try in Aus­tralia.

I can hold up my birth­day gift from you, you again. Bob and Jack Ing­ham were big in the horse rac­ing world. They, they’re both, uh, unfor­tu­nate­ly no longer with us. Um, their hors­es raced in the all Cice col­ors and include the cham­pi­on such as Octag­o­nal and his son long row. And any­one who fol­lows horse rac­ing will rec­og­nize those names.

And if you don’t, you will know this one. Deb­bie Cap. Uh, Bob’s daugh­ter was a one-third own­er of weeks of Cham­pi­on may­or that raced over the last few years. I’m going to read from, uh, an arti­cle from Aus Horse Mag­a­zine, not just because it’s about the rac­ing his­to­ry of Bob and jack­ing, but it also up their atti­tude to busi­ness and the poul­try indus­try as well, and gives us a bit of an insight into their suc­cess, even though it’s a round­about wave approach­ing it.

is from OS Horse Mag­a­zine. In the 1950s, Wal­ter Ing­ham [00:53:00] Jr. Inher­it­ed a small farm at Ula New South Wales from his father and turned it into the most suc­cess­ful chick­en farm in the state. anoth­er gen­er­a­tion, his son’s Jack and Bob had trans­formed, trans­formed the 42 acre farm into Ing­ham’s Enter­pris­es, a 2 bil­lion per year.

Busi­ness. They’d employed more than 8,000 peo­ple across a hun­dred dif­fer­ent loca­tions. mid 1980s, the Ing­hams had set about rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing rac­ing and breed­ing in the same way they had the poul­try busi­ness. broth­ers were already suc­cess­ful own­er breed­ers, but this was to be rac­ing on an indus­tri­al scale.

Noth­ing like it had been set up of that size in Aus­tralia, and it had been their dream to do it says Trevor Law, who was lured from William Eng­lish to over­see both the rac­ing and breed­ing oper­a­tion. To under­stand what the Ing­ham’s built how it is impor­tant to know who they were. to the peo­ple who knew the [00:54:00] broth­ers well, and you won­der how they worked so close­ly togeth­er giv­en how dif­fer­ent they were.

Jack who passed away in 2003 was a rac­ing trag­ic who wore his heart on his sleeve. reck­oned the mid­week Can­ter­bury races could­n’t start until he arrived. that was said in jest, but we will nev­er know because Jack was nev­er late. Bob who died in Sep­tem­ber was more reserved. He loved rac­ing, but just as much.

was a prag­ma­tist, A facts and fig­ures man who tal­lied every cent and pro­duced a ledger for every­thing. Even the broth­ers bet­ting on June 30 each year. The broth­ers went halves in every­thing, even wins and loss­es on the punt. I paid for three Jacks divorces or half of them. Bob joked in the 2008 inter­view with com­men­ta­tor John Tapp.

Ini­tial­ly, the broth­ers oper­at­ed from adjoin­ing desks in a Liv­er­pool office that had a sin­gle tele­phone line and some­times used their sim­i­lar sound­ing voic­es to stream­line their [00:55:00] com­mu­ni­ca­tions with cus­tomers. Some­body would ring and they’d be talk­ing to Jack. I could pick up my phone and lis­ten in, and then Jack would stop talk­ing and I would car­ry on.

Bob recalled to tap. They would still think they were talk­ing to Jack. When applied to rac­ing, the broth­ers fine tuned busi­ness acu­men, acu­men, and famous atten­tion to detail. Infused with a pas­sion for the sport proved to be a dynam­ic com­bi­na­tion. It was Bob Ing­ham’s meet­ing with the Amer­i­can poul­try boss, Don Tyson.

That sparked the rapid growth in the chick­en busi­ness when the broth­ers applied new pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing tech­niques. lessons learned how to min­i­mize costs and max­i­mize out­put with CO. With­out com­pro­mis­ing qual­i­ty would now be applied to rac­ing. Ing­ham rac­ing would be an arm of Ing­ham and Ing­ham Enter­pris­es, just like the chick­en farms and plants are and will be wrong with the same scruti­ny and sophis­ti­ca­tion.

Big on infra­struc­ture. Num­bers and stream­lined sys­tems. Only the best [00:56:00] staff are sourced, Bob ever. The num­bers man want­ed more than a hun­dred hors­es in work at Crown Lodge, but the facil­i­ty would not cut cor­ners. Every­thing from the size of the box­es, which were eight feet longer than the usu­al box the direc­tion most box­es faces faced North South to ensure max­i­mum com­fort from a cool breeze rather than the hot west­er­ly that can blow through.

Sum­mer in line with the Ing­ham phi­los­o­phy of doing things for the right rea­sons and doing things the right way. No expense was spared. were thick doors to main­tain warmth and win­ter, and a tun­nel con­nect­ed to sta­ble to the race course to avoid road cross­ings. The highs were amaz­ing. John Hawkes reflect­ed when his time with the Ing­hams as their train­er end­ed in 2007.

With­in three years of train­ing for the Ing­hams, we were fly­ing around in Lear Jets hop­ping from state to state, win­ning group run, won races. It was like Hol­ly­wood, an expe­ri­ence I’d nev­er felt. LOB says it was years ahead of [00:57:00] its time. you see Chris Waller and Keira Ma and the biggest sta­bles have become big­ger and big­ger.

But it all works through the infra­struc­ture of it. All sys­tems can’t work with­out the infra­struc­ture. And that is what Bob and Jack under­stood from the start. It was a huge oper­a­tion, but because Bob was a stick­ler for facts and fig­ures, it worked. It’s all genet­ics. Bob bob­bing him once said he was talk­ing about chick­ens.

If you match them right, it makes the chick­en grow quick­er and they eat less food. He added, but he could eas­i­ly have been talk­ing about the art of breed­ing. Thor­ough breeds. Goes on to talk about, uh, what they did in the rac­ing world. Um, talks about the fact that they raced the long row. Uh, lob again, I’ll quote from him.

He, he says, and this is, uh, the fact that they con­tin­ued to race long road, well after they were offered mil­lions of, of dol­lars to, to buy him to send a stud. Lobb says, we were lucky. We were in a posi­tion by then to knock those off back. We [00:58:00] knew that every horse had costs from birth. We knew what every horse costs from birth and how much it returned.

That meant we knew which lines were work­ing and which ones weren’t. Close friends or argu­ment that had Jack still been alive, he would nev­er have sold the oper­a­tion. It would’ve bro­ken his heart. But in the end, it was unsur­pris­ing­ly a num­ber that caught Bo Bob Ham’s atten­tion $500 mil­lion. That’s how much Shaik Muham­mad of Gaol and rac­ing paid in an all-inclu­sive walk him walk­out deal that remains the biggest of its kind in rac­ing his­to­ry.

So that’s, uh, the ing­hams, Bob and Jack, how they grew the poul­try busi­ness and how they grew the, their horse rac­ing busi­ness and then sold it to good dol­phin to the shape.

Cameron: What a nice sto­ry. That’s love­ly.

TK: It it? was well writ­ten

Cameron: Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

TK: QAV num­bers for Ing­hams. The stock price I’m using is $3 21, which is 9% below con­sen­sus.

Tar­get is [00:59:00] almost approach­ing 6%, 5.92%, which is strong. But just below our cut­off for a score, uh, in the, in the bile list check­list, stock doc­tor, finan­cial health and trend is strong and steady. Stock Edia ranked I G’s qual­i­ty as a nine, uh, as a 94 with an F score of sev­en out of nine, both good over­all stock Edia ranked INGA 98 out of a hun­dred, which is a, a tick both for qual­i­ty and for the over­all rank­ing.

Prop calf for this com­pa­ny is 3.1 times, mak­ing this very cheap from an oper­at­ing cash point of view. EPS was neg­a­tive for the half, mean­ing IV one is neg­a­tive, so that it’s pret­ty irrel­e­vant. IV two was $2 72, but both IV one and IV two are both below the share price. Net equi­ty per share is 64 cents, so we can’t buy it for any­thing like book val­ue.

Earn­ings per share fore­cast, how­ev­er, is to grow next year. a pos­i­tive PE ratio, we can’t score it for growth over [01:00:00] pe

 this stock does­n’t have an own­er founder, um, since the death of Bob and Jack, no one’s picked up that man­tle on the board, so we can’t score it for that. No pe so we can’t score it for that. equi­ty is almost con­tin­u­al­ly increas­ing, but just mess­es in one half.

So it does­n’t get a score for that. It is a recent three point trend line upturn, uh, which is one of the only man­u­al data entry on we can score it for. over­all, it gets a score of eight out­ta 15 for qual­i­ty or only 53%, which is not, uh, very high. low prop calf means the QAV score is rea­son­able at 0.17.

that’s the, the sto­ry of, uh, ING, the risks, it’s, it’s essen­tial­ly, it’s almost like a com­mod­i­ty stock. So it does face risks if, um, if feed prices go up. It’s also faced the risk recent­ly of, uh, of, uh, bird flu. Um, which has infect­ed some of the farms in Aus­tralia, and they’ve had

Cameron: Mm.

TK: down and their, and their chick­ens [01:01:00] killed.

so that has­n’t been good for those com­pa­nies. Um, it’s also faces the risk that it, it, it tends to have large cus­tomers who have lots of mar­ket pow­er like Wool­worths and oth­er super­mar­kets and like the quick restau­rant trains that, chains that sell, uh, uh, chick­en prod­ucts. So they often, even though they’re a large com­pa­ny, they often don’t, uh, aren’t able to exer­cise pric­ing pow­er, um, with those kinds of heavy sup­plies.

how­ev­er, if there is a reces­sion, then ING is a defen­sive stock and peo­ple will trade down to cheap­er cuts of meat and will to hone more, which is a trend that’s been hap­pen­ing in the last year any­way, and that will ben­e­fit this com­pa­ny. So that’s ING Ing­ham’s Group.

Cameron: I read a, I read a sto­ry yes­ter­day, uh, in the fin or some­where I think, talk­ing about the rise of ozem­pic in Aus­tralia, North­ern shores and places like that. [01:02:00] Appar­ent­ly, I. every­one’s on ozem­pic. But inter­est­ing it was talk­ing about the trick­le down effects of Ozem­pic. Uh, I don’t know much about class of drugs, but appar­ent­ly they work by sup­press­ing crav­ings for sug­ar and things like that.

And then peo­ple would, and it was say­ing that, um, peo­ple are eat­ing more healthy foods and, and going to eggs for more pro­tein. And so that, ’cause it’s been real­ly hard to buy eggs here. I don’t know how you find it down there, but we go through weeks where there’s no eggs we eat a lot of eggs, uh, for, ’cause I did it for pro­tein, for kung fu for my amaz­ing body trans­for­ma­tion.

I won’t take my shirt off again, but Chris­sy has been mak­ing fun of me late­ly. ’cause I’ll, you know. three or four oppor­tu­ni­ties a day to have to take my shirt off just to go look at my body. Isn’t this amazing?[01:03:00]

TK: Well, thank you for not tak­ing your shirt off.

Cameron: oh right. You con­vinced me. Alright, I’ll take, no, I spilled cof­fee on my shirt yes­ter­day. Oh, well I’m gonna have to take my shirt off. Um, but yeah, they were say­ing peo­ple are eat­ing more eggs so that

TK: Right,

Cameron: on top of the avian flu and the floods that have ham­pered, uh, dis­tri­b­u­tion and that kind of stuff. But yeah, appar­ent­ly they were just talk­ing about the, the effects of large, some­thing like 9% of the US pop­u­la­tion is tak­ing ozem­pic or that class of drugs they reck­on now, and then that has trick­le on effects with, you know, changes to diet.

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: Also changes to how peo­ple exer­cise, where they get their dopamine from. Peo­ple are say­ing in this arti­cle A, I think there are Aus­tralians that, um, they don’t get dopamine from eat­ing junk food now, so they’re doing online shop­ping or stuff like that to get their dopamine hits, you know, late night online shop­ping.

TK: Yeah. I, I know.

Cameron: [01:04:00] Inter­est­ing how one thing like that can have lots of macro­eco­nom­ic effects, you know?

TK: And yeah. Well, and, um, not just that, but one ger­mane what we were talk­ing about. There’s a com­pa­ny called YP Euca­lyp­tus in Aus­tralia, which is mak­ing, um, their own put togeth­er ver­sions of the same drugs that, uh, go into Ozem­pic because Ozem­pic is reg­u­lat­ed Aus­tralia, and they’re get­ting around the reg­u­la­tions by, uh, what’s called com­pound phar­ma­cy.

So they’re, they’re get­ting their own ingre­di­ents and putting it togeth­er to make their own ver­sion of Ozem­pic, um, which gets around the reg­u­la­tions appar­ent­ly. Uh, and that’s been flour­ish­ing. It’s been a, a hot busi­ness to invest in, um, just the same as it will hap­pen when Trump’s tar­iffs. Come into effect and peo­ple can’t, Ozem­pic iss prob­a­bly man­u­fac­tured over­seas.

It’s not, if so what’s it called? Nordisk? Nova Nordisk is the com­pa­ny comes out of Nor­way, I believe. So it’s gonna face tar­iffs. So yeah, some­one’s kind of find out a way of pro­duc­ing it [01:05:00] in the semi black mar­ket sort of way the, in the US togeth­er around the tar­iffs. So there are real world exam­ples of this.

Um, if any­one wants to, to, um, have a lis­ten in more about, uh, this whole issue, there’s a great. A dive that, um, the acquired pod­cast did a few months ago on, on Ozem­pic and Novo Nordisk. And the whole his­to­ry of it, it comes out of, uh, the pro­duc­tion of insulin, which I think was invent­ed in Cana­da, dis­cov­ered in Cana­da as being a, a, a cure for, um, dia­betes.

and, uh, they go into the his­to­ry of how dia­bet­ics were, were, treat­ed. And it’s, it’s hor­rif­ic the kinds of things peo­ple with dia­bet­ics were dia­betes was put through to try and it. And then some­one came, uh, that, uh, the fact that they were insulin, um, deprived and then start­ed giv­ing them insulin and there was still lots of prob­lems with that, get­ting the dosage right, et cetera.

and, uh. Uh, Nordisk was one of the, [01:06:00] uh, peo­ple who was able to mass pro­duce in insulin, for the first time. ’cause it’s very hard to, to pro­duce. I don’t think it exists in the wild. It’s pro­duced by one of the glands in the body. but they came up with it any­way. Um, it’s a great pod­cast to go and have a lis­ten to, even just from the his­tor­i­cal aspect of it, but they also cov­er Ozem­pic and the economies of that and how Novo Nordisk has been a ter­rif­ic, uh, com­pa­ny to invest in.

Cameron: This is Tobias Carlisle’s pod­cast. That acquired pod­cast.

TK: so.

Cameron: He’s com­ing on our US show in a cou­ple of weeks. I’ve got him in. He’s on hol­i­days at the moment, but when he gets back, he’s gonna come on. Would you be good?

TK: nor Disc on that, then. That’d

Cameron: Yeah. You have to add that to your notes.

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: Hmm.

TK: Yeah. Good.

Cameron: Well, that’s the show for today. I mean, just to, to wrap up for peo­ple.

If you’re not gonna lis­ten to after hours, um, just stay the course, fol­low the rules and it’ll all pan out. It’ll be fine. [01:07:00] I,

TK: It may not be fine. I mean, we might all be eat­ing more chick­en next year

Cameron: well, okay.

TK: in our back­yard. Rais­ing our own

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: Might be run­ning around like chick­ens with their heads cut off. No, that’s what the rest of the mar­ket is doing.

TK: that. Yeah.

Cameron: No, that’s right. After hours. What do you got?

TK: Yeah. Well, thanks for all the birth­day wish­es and thanks for your gifts and thanks Cam. It was great. We

Cameron: So, hold on. That horse was­n’t wrapped

TK: was

Cameron: prop­er­ly. How did it get bro­ken?

TK: in bub­ble. wrap.

Cameron: But the legs were still bro­ken off.

TK: Unfor­tu­nate­ly. Any­way, I’ll go on back on it. It was a nice gift. Thank you. Nice ges­ture. It’s amaz­ing how many peo­ple say to me, we don’t know what to buy you, and I’m like.

Cameron: I.

TK: I, I like horse rac­ing. I like golf. You know, I read, I watch Mo. I Mo. It’s like

Cameron: Yes,

TK: the eas­i­est per­son if you think about it. To buy for any­way.

Cameron: yes. Yeah. You have lots of inter­ests.

TK: So thanks for that. That was great. Um, Alex brought me a, brought [01:08:00] me a gift, a t‑shirt. You’d prob­a­bly, you’d prob­a­bly like it.

Cameron: Oh, Quin­ten and Taran­ti­no by writ­ten Tino. That’s great. I love it.

TK: I was almost gonna wear it today, but I, I stuck my QIV shirt on.

Cameron: That’s nice.

TK: so that was good. Uh, I’ve got a horse rac­ing at five o’clock and I was so, I’ve been so busy the last few days. Um, I haven’t had a chance to put the, the email out, so it’s gone out before we came on now. But, uh, yeah, cha cha changes, we’ll have run by the time peo­ple lis­ten to this.

Hope­ful­ly we’ll have won, but who knows, um, is start­ing favorite. Uh, so I’m, I’m gonna wish myself good luck for that one. Um, I want­ed to talk about the elec­tion and anoth­er, uh, exam­ple of bet­ting on gov­ern­ment elec­tions. And we spoke about this when, um, Biden hand­ed over to, uh, Kamala, and I was able to, to have an arbi­trage on that elec­tion.

I found anoth­er one in Aus­tralia, [01:09:00] I, a week or two ago when the elec­tion was called, I checked the bet­ting odds and there’s basi­cal­ly on BET fair, which is where I used to go for my polit­i­cal, um, mar­kets. was a, a four cor­nered race. They were offer­ing odds for, A LP to have a major­i­ty gov­ern­ment win.

Um, the lib­er­al coali­tion to have a major­i­ty gov­ern­ment win. And then both of those to have a, a minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment to rule with a minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment. um, I, I checked the polls and the polls on the elec­tion are with­in the mar­gin of error though, you know, neck and neck basi­cal­ly. And the A FR did the review of the most mar­gin­al seats.

And I read that and thought the a LP have a a two seat major­i­ty at the moment, and you can make a case to say, net net they may lose a cou­ple and gain a cou­ple, in the elec­tion if you go through seat by seat. So I checked the odds the a LP to the labor gov­ern­ment to to form major­i­ty gov­ern­ment was $7.

Uh, ’cause [01:10:00] every­one was say­ing, oh, it’s gonna be a minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment either by the lib­er­als or by labor. And I’m think­ing it’s not what. The not what the facts are say­ing, at least it’s if you say polls are facts. So I, I put a bet on just my usu­al $10. So noth­ing, noth­ing huge at $7. I checked it before I came on today that that same offer­ing for the a LP to retain gov­ern­ment and it’s out­right is now $3 70.

So the arbi­trage is to, to lay it, which it can do on bet fair. Um, in oth­er words, I’ll put my $10 on it. Um, if the a LP don’t, if the a LP do win major­i­ty gov­ern­ment, then I win 70 and pay some­one 37. And, um, uh, if they don’t, I get my $10 back because the per­son who took my oth­er side of the bet los­es.

So it’s a, it’s a risk-free trade now to, to win 12 bucks. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna both­er doing that for 12 bucks. I’ll prob­a­bly just keep it naked and try and win 70. But I just, these kinds [01:11:00] of things in, in mar­kets where. Peo­ple are using opin­ion to dri­ve the bet­ting guides rather than the facts. Um, or, or rather, a real­is­tic assess­ment of the facts.

Just keep pop­ping up all the time.

Cameron: Maybe you build a check­list these.

TK: haven’t, no, it’s just a bit of com­mon sense look­ing for val­ue in the mar­ket.

Cameron: Aha. Well, uh, what have I got? I start­ed, I told you before I start­ed watch­ing Slow Hors­es on your rec­om­men­da­tion. I’ve watched the first cou­ple of episodes enjoy­ing it. It’s, it’s a slow burn. I like it. Yeah, it’s a slow burn. I dun­no what’s going on, but I get a sense that Jack­son Lamb is up to some­thing, I dun­no what, but, uh, great, great per­for­mances, inter­est­ing sto­ry, nice cast.

And you know, Gary Alban’s great. He’s fun. Um, I’ve been watch­ing the stu­dio too. We watched episode two of that last night, the Won­er, was [01:12:00] just great.

TK: Isn’t it?

Cameron: bril­liant. Yeah. Yeah. Just fan­tas­tic.

TK: It’s

Cameron: So, so impres­sive. Impres­sive­ly done

TK: the cameos are bril­liant.

Cameron: well, did you rec­og­nize the woman who played her­self as the direc­tor of the film that he was

TK: did

Cameron: on set for?

TK: Who was that?

Cameron: She’s a Cana­di­an actress called Sarah Pol­ly. Who I, I’ve been a big fan of, but haven’t seen much of for 25 years. There was this great 1999 film called Go starred her Olefin, Katie Holmes, Jay Moore. It was basi­cal­ly about a bunch of young 20 some­things that. a drug deal before going to a par­ty, and then things go wrong and they have to, you know, they, they buy some drugs then they’re gonna sell them and they get robbed.

And Tim Ele­phan­t’s the drug deal, and he goes, I want my mon­ey back. I don’t care what hap­pened. And he holds Katie Holmes hostage, but then she flirts with [01:13:00] him and it, it’s great. Sarah Pol­ley was the lead in it, real­ly great. But it was direct­ed by Doug Lyman, who direct­ed Swingers before that, and then went on to do the Bourne Films and a lot of oth­er things that he did Edge of Tomor­row, the Tom Cruise one where he was like a clone or some­thing

TK: be a sequel to

Cameron: great to,

TK: com­ing up soon.

Cameron: I

TK: Hmm.

Cameron: real­ly, Doug Lyman’s a great direc­tor.

I, I real­ly like his stuff. But this was one of his ear­ly sort of indie films. Sarah Pol­ley dis­ap­peared after that. She’s sort of a real­ly lefty, um, Cana­di­an, uh, polit­i­cal activist who was offered, um, lead in Cameron Crow’s film, almost famous. And turned it down ’cause she did­n’t want to do big Hol­ly­wood films and, um, what’s her face?

Goldie Horn’s daugh­ter end­ed up doing it and got an, an Oscar nom for it I think too. But,

TK: girl.

Cameron: so she went back to, she went back to Cana­da to most­ly do, um, indie Cana­di­an TV and film and [01:14:00] be a polit­i­cal shit stir and stuff like that. But any­way, great to see her. I was like, oh shit, I haven’t seen her for 25 years.

It was fan­tas­tic. Yeah, she was good.

TK: but I’ve got­ta wait for the next episode. I, I’ve watched that one. I want­ed to watch episode three straight away, but it drops every week,

Cameron: Yeah. Oh, there’s only three out, so there’s, that’s where it’s up to.

TK: Yeah,

Cameron: Oh, right.

TK: I,

Cameron: Well that’s good. Um, and I, we took Fox and one of his friends to see the Minecraft movie on the week­end, man, like, um. Since it was announced, all I’ve heard is peo­ple shit-talk­ing it and my boy old­er boys were shit-talk­ing it when it came out in the us.

TER sent me one of the first reviews that gave it a one star and said it was the worst film of the year We went. But then Tay­lor went to see it before us in LA and he said, dude, this is a nine out of 10. went to see it, uh, Sat­ur­day after­noon, and it was one of the best cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences we’ve ever had, [01:15:00] part­ly because the film was good.

The film was fun. It’s Jack Black doing a hun­dred per­cent Jack Black. It’s like, one of the things I did­n’t real­ize before we saw it was that it was direct­ed by Jared Hess, who’s the guy direct­ed Napoleon Dyna­mite, which is one of our all time. Favorite films was

TK: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: years ago, but great film. But he, but you know, I think he just went to Jack Just go a hun­dred per­cent, just be a hun­dred per­cent Jack Black.

So you’ve nev­er seen Jack Black be more Jack Black than he is in this film, includ­ing singing songs that he obvi­ous­ly wrote him­self that are com­plete­ly tena­cious d esque kind of songs. But the best thing about the film, if any­one’s gonna go see it, your kids or go see it in a cin­e­ma full of kids because the kids go nuts in this thing.

I have nev­er, not even when they did the Star Wars. You know, when­ev­er it was 10 years ago, I have nev­er seen a cin­e­ma go this [01:16:00] nuts. Every line, the Jack Black said that was in the trail­ers about mine, crafty stuff. kids in front of us and behind us would all stand up and scream and throw pop­corn.

They just went bananas. And it was so much fun see these kids just going bal­lis­tic over this film. It was crazy. And Tay­lor’s been send­ing me, he said the same thing hap­pened when he went to see it, but it was full of 20 year olds. It was­n’t kids, it was 20 year olds who grew up like he did with Minecraft. It’s a phe­nom­e­non. The kids just love it and it’s gonna do a bil­lion, like it did dou­ble. They were expect­ing it to do 80 mil. Open­ing week­end in the US it did 160, then it did 144 inter­na­tion­al­ly as well. On the open­ing week­end. It’s gonna do a bil­lion dol­lars. And it’s not like a seri­ous film. It’s a stu­pid, you know, uh, bit like his Juman­ji films or what­ev­er, like, it’s just, [01:17:00] you know, done for fun. No, it’s got no seri­ous mes­sage, like the Bar­bie film. not like, it does­n’t have any sort of, uh, mod­ern woke take on any­thing. It’s just, just fun, just stu­pid. Jack Black and Jason Mamo of fun any­way. Yeah. Yeah. We real­ly, real­ly came out­ta it. I just had a grin on my face for the whole thing. ’cause the kid, the clos­est thing I can remem­ber to it is going to see the matrix. it first came out, did you see it in the cin­e­mas and b, before you knew any­thing about it? Uh,

TK: much. Yeah.

Cameron: before there was any spoil­ers. Yeah, I was explain­ing it to Chris­sy ’cause she was­n’t around, was too young to think about it. But, you know, I remem­ber gonna see it and it was like, was no trail­ers, there were no leaks.

It was before there was real­ly inter­ne­ty type leaks there. All they did was, what is the matrix? That was the whole mar­ket­ing cam­paign. What is the Matrix? And at that first scene where [01:18:00] Trin­i­ty gets up and runs around the walls and starts kick­ing the shit out­ta the cops and the cin­e­ma just went,

TK: Yeah.

Cameron: holy shit. What are we, what are we, what are watch­ing? was that same sort of thing. It was just like, just pure cin­e­mat­ic joy.

TK: backs up and spins its wheels and then goes hurtling towards the tele­phone just before she’s upload­ing. Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: huge. Hmm.

Cameron: Yeah, it was amaz­ing. And um, you know, this, like, I, I, I don’t like gonna the cin­e­ma usu­al­ly ’cause it’s like it’s ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive and I’d rather just sit at home and eat my own pop­corn and watch it. But this was the def­i­n­i­tion of a cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. ’cause you’re in an audi­ence full of kids that were just los­ing their shit over this whole thing.

It was, it was real­ly, real­ly fun.

TK: some kind of Tik­Tok meme that, uh, when they men­tion a line from the trail, you’re sup­posed to stand up and throw your pop­corn?

Cameron: Could be, I don’t know.

TK: a,

Cameron: Was it,

TK: I’ve heard that from

Cameron: it was a. [01:19:00] Right. Well they did and it worked. I don’t know, like if the mar­ket­ing peo­ple at Minecraft came up with that and put it out there, then they absolute­ly nailed it. Tay­lor sent me tik­toks of out­side of cin­e­mas with the doors closed. Just hear­ing the, the

TK: right.

Cameron: scream­ing are going nuts when the lines are men­tioned. bril­liant, bril­liant mar­ket­ing if that’s, if they delib­er­ate­ly engi­neered this, like absolute­ly nuts.

TK: we’re gonna see a Kool-Aid movie?

Cameron: Well, of course saw, we, we saw the Minecraft movie and then watched that episode, I think that night. So it was like, that’s a ref­er­ence from the episode, first episode of the stu­dio. The Seth Rogan thing. Yeah. Uh, which was great too, by the way. When he runs into Scors­ese at the par­ty and then Steve Cemi comes in after and you just see Steve Cemi go, Mar­ty, what’s [01:20:00] wrong?

TK: That was bril­liant. Yeah.

Cameron: And Mar­ty play­ing him­self like, he’s so good

TK: fur­ther.

Cameron: play­ing him­self. Yeah.

TK: What’s, I know a fur­ther look. Why’s that fur­ther?

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: are you fur­ther?

Cameron: If any­thing, if I know any­thing, it’s IV act­ing. Why are you look­ing iv?

TK: Yeah. great

Cameron: Just great.

TK: I start­ed.

Cameron: I’m just, I like, I was gonna say, I’m hap­py for Jack Black, and I’m hap­py for Seth Rogan too, but, I just hope Jack Black does­n’t die of a heart attack before he gets to enjoy this lev­el of suc­cess. You know,

TK: Yeah, right. I start­ed watch­ing Sev­er­ance this week, which I real­ly enjoyed. It was great hav­ing all the char­ac­ters

Cameron: first sea­son or the sec­ond sea­son.

TK: Sea­son

Cameron: Oh, right.

TK: I’ve been sort of putting it off, wait­ing for Jen­ny to fin­ish sea­son one, but she’s not going to, so I start­ed watch­ing it myself, which was

Cameron: Gave up. Yeah.

TK: good to see

Cameron: Yeah,

TK: Real­ly good.

Cameron: yeah. It’s an inter­est­ing sea­son. I was­n’t, I was­n’t, um, as [01:21:00] impressed with it as my boys were, the, the finale, but, yeah. Inter­est­ing. I mean, I give them, I give them props for try­ing to do some­thing that’s dif­fer­ent and orig­i­nal and, Hmm,

TK: just plays with your mind,

Cameron: very trip­py.

TK: speak­ing of won­ders like that, run­ning through the cor­ri­dors and it just keeps, you just turn cor­ners and turn cor­ners and turn cor­ners and turn cor­ners. Nev­er get­ting any­where.

Cameron: Yeah. My con­cern with that show that it reminds me too much of lost or X‑Files that they’ve cre­at­ed so many balls that are up in the air or plates spin­ning shows that do, that don’t have a good his­to­ry of land­ing them all. Like if you think about the shows that have had real­ly good land­ings, I think of, um, break­ing Bad Bele Sa Sopra­nos, the Wire, Shield, and they weren’t [01:22:00] that com­pli­cat­ed.

They were pret­ty straight up

TK: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: gang­ster sto­ries or, you know, bad guys turn­ing good, good guys turn­ing bad, what­ev­er it is. Um. The shows that too clever usu­al­ly. ’cause you know, I’ve seen enough writ­ers talk about these sorts of things on pod­casts. They don’t start the shows. Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca was anoth­er one that lost it at the end. They don’t start these shows know­ing how it’s gonna fin­ish. They just have an idea and then they just keep com­ing up with ideas. Oh, would­n’t it be fun

TK: Right.

Cameron: would­n’t it be crazy if, and then at some point they’re in the last sea­son and they’ve got 50 open ques­tion marks and that they have to fig­ure out how to close up.

And they’re lucky if they close two or three of them up, let alone all 50. And, um.

TK: Yeah. Okay.

Cameron: Any­way,

TK: Yep. Oh, I’ll

Cameron: I am read­ing a book, um, unre­strict­ed War­fare. I’m [01:23:00] reread­ing it. Actu­al­ly, I’ve, well, I’m con­tin­u­ing to read it. I start­ed it a year or two ago. It’s by Char Liang and Wang Chung Shui. It was writ­ten in 1999. They were two PLA colonels, uh, peo­ple’s Lib­er­a­tion army in Chi­na.

And it was basi­cal­ly their plan for, it’s, it’s known as the basic, uh, text­book by the Chi­nese strate­gist for how Chi­na was going to take over the world. And, um, I’m, I’ve got three or four books about Chi­na’s long term strat­e­gy here that I’m read­ing, and this is one of them, it’s real­ly good. Um, I mean, look, I’m an unabashed, fan of Chi­na and what it’s done in the last 50 years, how it’s gone from being the. One of, if not the poor­est coun­try on the plan­et to one of, if not the most pow­er­ful coun­tries on the plan­et in 50 years in my life­time. And I think they’ve done an amaz­ing job. I think they’re an absolute, Char­lie Munger [01:24:00] called them an eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle. And, um, I don’t think most peo­ple in the West pay enough atten­tion to how they’ve done it and how they’re doing it, what and, and how they pulled it off. So any­way, I’m read­ing a num­ber of books on that at the moment, which is, uh, good fun well as, uh, Len Day­ton’s, uh, sequel to that last one.

TK: Which one? Which one’s that? What’s it called?

Cameron: Horse Full Water or some­thing,

TK: Good

Cameron: horse Under­wa­ter.

TK: book.

Cameron: Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m in the mid­dle. I’m some­where in it. I’m, dun­no what’s going on. He is doing scu­ba train­ing and he is in Italy or some­thing, but, uh, I don’t, yeah, I’m still a lit­tle bit lost, but, uh, stick­ing with it.

TK: Good. Uh, well one, one thing that Jen­ny and I have watched, we’ve watched the fin­ish the sec­ond sea­son of SAS Rogue Heroes dur­ing the week, which is, if noth­ing else, the sound­track is just [01:25:00]It’s so good. Uh, think they fin­ished the series with mag­a­zines shot by both sides play­ing in the back­ground, they’ve had like The Clash and Motor­head and AC CDC and all sorts of great music behind it.

So it’s good from that point of view. Um, but it’s one of those I, I know when a char­ac­ter becomes embed­ded in my brain, I start to think the way they talk. And that start­ed hap­pen­ing with me that the lead in sea­son two was a guy called Pat­ty May, who’s based on a true, uh, per­son who led the SIS into, into, um, I.

Ro he’s been, it was there from the start. knocked around with his back­sto­ry a lit­tle bit. He’s an Irish­man. Um, I think in real life he was actu­al­ly, a bit more well off than they por­tray him in the movie and they kind of had to do that. So his, his shtick is, he’s a poor Irish guy who keeps going up against the land and Eng­lish­man, who were in the hier­ar­chy of the British army you know, fights his way [01:26:00] out all the time, fist the cuffs, get lands in jail, breaks out, that kind of stuff.

But he, he’s got the actor who plays him has this way of talk­ing. There. He sounds every syl­la­ble with an eye accent. And I keep hear­ing that voice in my head the time.

Cameron: He’s

TK: The way, he speaks. Yeah.

Cameron: liv­ing rent free in your brain as the kids say.

TK: But it’s great ’cause he’s got a real­ly real styl­ized per­for­mance, which is a lot of fun.

And it, and it

Cameron: Who’s the actor?

TK: I can’t think of his

Cameron: Do you know?

TK: Dun­no, sor­ry. I don’t rec­og­nize him.

Cameron: Okay. I’m look­ing him up.

TK: very good. Um, and yeah, it’s, I I real­ly enjoy the series. It’s, it’s, um, he’s kind of like just below Mr in between, in my book. It’s like, it’s a lit­tle bit com­mer­cial, but, strong, real­ly strong fight­ing char­ac­ter.

Um, there’s a fe the female lead­er’s great. She, um, she plays a French spy and she’s got the best [01:27:00] wardrobe. Jen­ny just loves the thing she wears. In the show. but her, her role is to be the liai­son between the, the GA gov­ern­ment in exile and the British forces as they in France. She’s sup­posed to link up the resis­tance with, um, with the SAS ’cause the SAS get para­chut­ed in just before D‑Day and then have to cut off all the sup­ply lines and stop the Ger­mans from rein­forc­ing the coastal defens­es.

And then she’s sup­posed to, um, know, liaise with the, the French resis­tance, but she’s wan­gled away into the front line, where she’s not sup­posed to be. But that’s, it’s, it’s a great char­ac­ter as well. And, um, there’s a great, great scene at the end where, uh, Pat­ty, Maine and, and the French spy are hav­ing drinks before they, the night before they.

Take off for D Day and they’re work­ing out a code, um, to, to, you know, for the French resis­tance to rec­og­nize the SAS, you know, ’cause they’re not in uni­form, right? They’re, they’re them­selves or the com­man­dos. and she’s [01:28:00] play­ing on the phono­graph, one of those wind up old phono­graphs. And Pat­ty goes, take that with me?

And so she says, sure. So he’s in the plane and they’re singing, um, whiskey in the Jar, an old Irish song about drink­ing. one of, and like the, they’re all big, burly men. And one of them goes, well, you got that for Pat­ty? And he goes, I’m gonna strap it to my leg. And I’m gonna jump with it. And when I get there and we’ve suc­ceed­ed, I’m gonna play Whiskey in the Jar.

And that’s how the free French resis­tance will know that we’ve won. He talks about how he’s gonna strap it to his left leg and land on his right leg and roll as a para­troop.

Cameron: Does he pull it off?

TK: don’t know. That’s where the sea­son fin­ish­es. This is their para­chut­ing

Cameron: Uh, right, right.

TK: Yeah. Lots of good fun.

Cameron: Good stuff. So what’s that on?

TK: on demand.

Cameron: Uh, okay. I might have to check that out when we fin­ish all the oth­er things.

TK: free. You guys [01:29:00] pull up with com­mer­cials, but, um, it’s good fun.

Cameron: All right, well, what have you got on for this week, Tony? Apart from hors­es, any­thing else?

TK: a dou­ble mar­ket. The one that Steve Mab and I own will race on Sat­ur­day in the Bendi­go Guineas. Uh, it’s mas­ters week, so I’ll be sit­ting on the couch glued to every shop being played in the US Mas­ters. We’re liv­ing the two times I’ve been there. Um, usu­al­ly on my birth­day, bit of a birth­day present to me watch­ing the US Mas­ters, uh, golf tour­na­ment.

Um, Jen­ny’s up in Mel­bourne some meet­ings, so I’ll go and pick her up dur­ing the week. I’m on Sat­ur­day. I’m not going up to Bendi­go to watch the horse run. I’m, Alex asked me to do a, a class with her. We’re doing a sem­i­nar on mid-cen­tu­ry design, fur­ni­ture design at the

Cameron: Oh wow.

TK: Gallery. So

Cameron: Fan­tas­tic.

TK: he does­n’t ask me to do much, so I thought I’d go along with her.

Um,

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: yeah, which would be inter­est­ing. Um, so the back­ground to it is she’s work­ing for the, [01:30:00]um, Gib­son’s auc­tion house and she spot­ted a bit of a gap in their mar­ket. They don’t have an expert on mid-cen­tu­ry fur­ni­ture design, so she thought off her own back, she’ll go and do this course and then start to try and.

her way into that role to start climb­ing up the cor­po­rate lad­der at Gib­son. So I thought, yeah, I’ve got­ta sup­port her. That’s great ini­tia­tive. So, uh,

Cameron: Yeah,

TK: to the NGV for an all day sem­i­nar on Sat­ur­day.

Cameron: that sounds fan­tas­tic. That sounds like a lot of fun.

TK: thing is with like, we’re gonna learn about, um, the, you know, EAMS chair and house and things like that.

And we were talk­ing about it, and then

Cameron: Hmm.

TK: I was over hav­ing a piz­za with her and Sean the oth­er week it, and Sean’s playlist was on Spo­ti­fy and the song start­ed up and I said to Alex, is that, um, is that ba Bauhaus? That sounds like And it was­n’t. But we both start­ed going under, at the, exact­ly the same, the [01:31:00] same time the right cue in the

Cameron: Uh.

TK: intro.

So we,

Cameron: Wow.

TK: said, yeah, we both got the same brain.

Cameron: Your work here is done.

TK: that’s a

Cameron: Yeah.

TK: dead by BA House.

Cameron: Yeah. I love Bauhaus. Uh hmm. Desire. I mean, not the band. Yeah. Yeah. I got, I got, I got a book on Bauhaus not that long ago, like a cou­ple of months ago. I got a book and was read­ing up on the whole move­ment and et cetera, et cetera.

TK: It’s

Cameron: hmm,

TK: it? I saw an exhi­bi­tion of them at the Guggen­heim when I was in New York once and um,

Cameron: hmm

TK: You know, rev­o­lu­tion­ized of radios and house­hold appli­ances as well as build­ings and every­thing.

Cameron: hmm. And just graph­ics, you know, um, approach to think­ing about design in gen­er­al. Alright, tk. Well, um. Thanks for every­thing and, [01:32:00] uh, let’s see what the week has to hold. We’ll be back next week to

TK: pick it apart

Cameron: find out.

TK: A SX.

Cameron: Yeah, Have a good week every­one. [01:33:00]