QAV AU 851 — From Zero to System: A First-Year QAV Journey

Cameron: [00:00:00] Wel­come to QAV Christ­mas edi­tion. Uh, this is Decem­ber. We’re record­ing this, the 22nd of Decem­ber, 2025. TK is off play­ing. No, he is not play­ing golf. He’s gone away with a fam­i­ly thing to Hillsville, I think he said. Uh, with me replac­ing tk, the, uh, man who has sent us the most ques­tions by far in the last year for the show, which we appre­ci­ate.

Scott Mee­han: Some

Cameron: Uh, rel­a­tive­ly new. No. All good. All ques­tions are good. Rel­a­tive­ly new to the QAV uni­verse. Scott, wel­come to have being on the show, Scott.

Scott Mee­han: Morn­ing Cam, how are you? Mer­ry

Cameron: Good. And for peo­ple You too, Scott. And for peo­ple that aren’t watch­ing the YouTube, Scott is wear­ing the QAV uni­form proud­ly. And a ping cap for Tony Rel­e­vance [00:01:00] because as Tony said, that’s the, he told me we did a, we did a US show about, uh, the com­pa­ny that makes, uh, cer­tain kind of dri­vers and they own Top­golf a few weeks ago.

And, uh, that’s them. And Tony said that the ping ping was named after the sound that it made when it hit the ball. You do you play golf Scott? Is that why you have that hat? I guess.

Scott Mee­han: Yes. A lot of golf. I like to play more golf.

Cameron: And you are in, uh, new South Wales. Alright, well, tell us, tell us a lit­tle bit about your­self, Scott. What do you do? And, um, then we’ll get into the invest­ing side of things.

Scott Mee­han: I’m a dad of a young man called Char­lie, who’s 16 going on 25. Uh, mar­ried to Christie. Been togeth­er for 34 years.

Cameron: Wow.

Scott Mee­han: sweet­hearts. 19, 19 years. We start­ed dat­ing, but we’ve known each oth­er since we were 15. We,

Cameron: Whoa.

Scott Mee­han: yeah, bit scary has [00:02:00] its moments. Um, she puts up with me, let’s just put it that way. Uh.

Cameron: That’s so, yes. I think that’s true with all of our spous­es. They put up with us. Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: In terms of my invest­ing, um, I’m an absolute ama­teur, so I have been real­ly, real­ly hap­py to have found QAV ear­ly in my invest­ing jour­ney, for want of a bet­ter word. Um, I use it for my SMSF, don’t have a lot out­side of that. And we start­ed the SMSF in last year, in Feb­ru­ary, I think I was 6% down. And I found QAV. I went, well, this looks inter­est­ing. Had a chat with you, you twist­ed my arm. I went for the full mem­ber­ship and

Cameron: does­n’t, does­n’t sound like me.

Scott Mee­han: And then, uh, yeah, and since then it’s been a real­ly great lit­tle ride. Like it’s been great results, but I, I think regards of that, I think I’m get­ting a bet­ter idea of what I’m doing, before I was just kind of going hit­ting hope. So yeah, QAV has been great. been great.[00:03:00]

Cameron: What? What do you do for a liv­ing?

Scott Mee­han: I work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney, uh, for the stu­dent union. I’m in their com­mer­cial team, so I look after all their part­ner­ships, event, spon­sor­ships. Uh, we have a big f and b oper­a­tion, so I look at a lot of the com­mer­cial deals with that. Um, any­thing from cof­fee through to beer. Um, so yeah, I look after all the com­mer­cial side of the busi­ness.

Cameron: Oh, stu­dent union, com­mer­cial side of the busi­ness. Wow.

Scott Mee­han: a stu­dent unit to name, in name only, we are real­ly an f and b busi­ness. But, uh, the f and b keeps the busi­ness going and keeps the stu­dent union inde­pen­dent of the uni­ver­si­ty, which is good

Cameron: Excuse my igno­rance. What’s f and b?

Scott Mee­han: food and bev­er­age. So we run, uh, three bars and prob­a­bly 15, 16 cafes, SR like quick ser­vice, restau­rants, stuff like that on the cam­pus. ’cause the cam­pus is

Cameron: right,

Scott Mee­han: the size of a sub­urb basi­cal­ly. Mas­sive.

Cameron: right.

Scott Mee­han: And it turns over $4 bil­lion a year.

Cameron: [00:04:00] Get out of town.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. Yeah. We turn over 30 bil­lion. We think we’re all right. But, uh, the union itself does 4 bil­lion. um, all

Cameron: Wow.

Scott Mee­han: the inter­na­tion­al stu­dents.

Cameron: Wow. let’s get into the invest­ing. What, what made you decide to start invest­ing? What was the thing that prompt­ed you in the first place?

Scott Mee­han: I think before start­ed the SMSF, I’d nev­er bought a share in my life. So we had a, uh, ETF that were like dol­lar cost aver­ag­ing into, and that was about it. Like it, we’d been busy hav­ing a big mort­gage and kid and school fees, and it was like, ooh. But when we decid­ed to do the. S‑M-S-F‑I was like, well, we’re gonna have to buy some shares, aren’t we?

And I was look­ing at ETFs, I was look­ing at shares, and I’ve kind of got half the mon­ey spare left over into ETFs and half in shares. So plus we bought a prop­er­ty in, um, on the cen­tral coast with part of that as well. So that’s what got me into it. Like the SMSF was the main rea­son [00:05:00] before that, I lit­er­al­ly nev­er pressed go on a share by ever in my life. So com­plete ama­teur is

Cameron: it,

Scott Mee­han: good results.

Cameron: did you have like a finan­cial advi­sor who set it up for you and sug­gest­ed you do some, some, some stuff.

Scott Mee­han: of my old­est mates is an accoun­tant, so he helped me with the, um, the struc­ture of it and all the rules and the reg­u­la­tions and all the stuff that goes with it. That was a lit­tle bit of a mind head be hon­est. Um,

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: but it was good that I had him to sort of guide me through. But in terms of per­son­al finan­cial advice, no.

We we’re doing our­selves, well, actu­al­ly I’ve been

Cameron: Right.

Scott Mee­han: wife’s been just sort of lis­ten­ing to me going about it.

Cameron: And,

Scott Mee­han: She’s like, what­ev­er. I don’t.

Cameron: and so, and so you said you had­n’t real­ly done any invest­ing before this. What was your, what, what were your thoughts about invest­ing in shares when you got set up? Like did it seem daunt­ing or did it seem it should be easy or what?

Scott Mee­han: ter­ri­fy­ing

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: well, I’m invest­ing our fam­i­ly’s future here. [00:06:00] Um, and it’s not like it’s just spare cash. This is like the mon­ey we’re using to retire hope­ful­ly the next six or sev­en years. Um, ter­ri­fy­ing. And the, and the amount of infor­ma­tion was over­whelm­ing. Um, the amount of hard sales peo­ple I read into for it.

Like, you’d, you’d reg­is­ter for an inter­est in some­thing and then you’d get a phone call half an hour lat­er and some­one try­ing to hard sell you a stock and you’re like. Mate, I just was inter­est­ed in hav­ing a look. Um, PEs this, the ratio that was just like. I have no idea what’s going on. I was doing as much research as I could, try­ing to delve into things, but I was lost in the weeds of all the dif­fer­ent ter­mi­nolo­gies.

So I went, took a step back and just start­ed research­ing what­ev­er he meant first before I start­ed buy­ing any­thing. But I was keen to get the mon­ey we had was sit­ting there, that we got out­ta the super­an­nu­a­tion funds and get it invest­ed. So I just went for it, and then it was­n’t, well, it was­n’t good for a while. It was quite a,

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I was death rid­ing every­thing. It was hor­ren­dous. So [00:07:00] look­ing at the

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I had my share site thing going on going, Ooh, what’s hap­pen­ing? Stocks are going up, stocks are going down. Four months lat­er, I’m like, oh, that hap­pens. Okay, it’s fine. I’ve

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: a three PTL at 10% rule.

It’s fine.

Cameron: Yeah, like, I mean, that’s one of the great things about a sys­tem with rules, right? It just, it removes that lev­el of, um, emo­tion­al roller­coast­er that I think we go through when we don’t real­ly have rules in place. I’m inter­est­ed in, in your entry tra­jec­to­ry into QAV, because when I’m try­ing to mar­ket QAV, it’s one of the things that, uh, I’m always sort of spit balling.

Um, I assume there’s sort of a dis­cov­ery, uh, and then cred­i­bil­i­ty build­ing phase that peo­ple go through. Can you tell me how you came across QAV and, and what that ear­ly expe­ri­ence was like for you?

Scott Mee­han: I think I heard [00:08:00] Tony on the Shares for Begin­ners pod­cast. Maybe.

Cameron: Oh, okay. Yep.

Scott Mee­han: Maybe I heard him there. He sound­ed inter­est­ing. Um,

Cameron: So you were lis­ten­ing, you were lis­ten­ing to pod­casts, you were try­ing to research stuff.

Scott Mee­han: I, I think I got my lit­tle Spo­ti­fy wrap this year and. years ago it was all music. This year it was like just you, lis­ten. Lis­ten to pod­casts, finan­cial.

Cameron: Right.

Scott Mee­han: So you guys chefs, the begin­ners, the mot­ley

Cameron: Well, as the, as the guy that did the very first, the guy who Mabb as the guy who made the very first Aus­tralian pod­casts, uh, 21 years ago. Uh, you’re wel­come. You, you are, you’re wel­come for bring­ing pod­cast­ing to Aus­tralia there.

Scott Mee­han: know that. That you were the first.

Cameron: Yeah. Uh, real­ly, I, I should talk about it more. Uh, I fig­ure peo­ple are sick of hear­ing me.

Yeah. No. 20 uh, 2004, I record­ed the first Aus­tralian pod­cast. Um, I start­ed pod­cast­ing after I left Microsoft, you know.

Scott Mee­han: was it on this first pod­cast of yours?

Cameron: [00:09:00] It was a tech show. Um, so I, uh, but the back­sto­ry is I’d been work­ing at Microsoft for the pri pre­vi­ous six or sev­en years. I, I left in the mid­dle of 2004, went to Europe. I bought a bought, um, this, actu­al­ly

bought this,

Scott Mee­han: wow. Two. Yeah, 2004.

Cameron: um. Yeah, I’m hold hold­ing up, uh, one of the orig­i­nal iPods, uh, for the cam­era, for the peo­ple that aren’t watch­ing the stream or the video. Um, yeah. And so I, I walked out­ta Microsoft, walked into a, was it an Apple store? ’cause Apple stores did­n’t exist back then, but it was a, a Mac store, which felt like heresy.

It felt like, uh, you know, uh, an athe­ist walk­ing into a church. Um, I was expect­ing to get hit by a light­ning bolt, but bought, uh, like I was, I think it’s a 40 gig, um, one of the spin­ning wheel iPods, which I still believe is one of the great­est, uh, con­sumer [00:10:00] tech­nol­o­gy devices I’ve ever had. It was amaz­ing.

Scott Mee­han: fun­ny

Cameron: And I took it to Europe.

Scott Mee­han: yeah. Wow.

Cameron: Yeah. Sor­ry, what?

Scott Mee­han: It’s fun­ny to think that’s only 2004 that came out like 21 years ago.

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: feels like

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: for like, you know, I’m 53. It feels like they’ve been, Apple’s just been every­where for­ev­er.

Cameron: Yeah, so I took that to Europe. Um, went, went to Europe for a month after I left, uh, Microsoft, and was lis­ten­ing to a lot of audio books. Pod­cast­ing had­n’t been invent­ed yet. Um, but then when I came back, pod­cast­ing was invent­ed around about July, 2004, um, which is about the time I left Microsoft. Begin­ning of July, I start­ed lis­ten­ing to ear­ly pod­casts and the ear­ly pod­casts.

There was only a hand­ful of them. Um, they were tech relat­ed and I was lis­ten­ing to that and, and it, and I loved it because when my friends and I in the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try would get togeth­er and talk about tech­nol­o­gy. [00:11:00] You know, there’s a cer­tain lev­el of con­ver­sa­tion that hap­pens, but when you lis­ten to the radio, you lis­ten to FM radio or, or any­thing on the tele­vi­sion, main­stream jour­nal­ism talk about tech­nol­o­gy, it was always like, well, have you seen what the kids are doing with the inter­net today?

And as it was this dumb down, real­ly lame, annoy­ing lev­el of dis­cus­sion, and I was, I, when I left Microsoft, I decid­ed I was gonna take a year off work and just fig­ure out what I want­ed to do with the rest of my life. ’cause I was sort of sick of the, sick of the cor­po­rate grind sort of thing. Yeah. My and my, my boys, my old­er boys were three or four at the time, and I want­ed to spend more time with them, more time at home.

I want­ed, um, to do some­thing entre­pre­neur­ial so they did­n’t grow up see­ing a dad who had a cor­po­rate job that he hat­ed kind of thing. I was, I was just hav­ing lots of cof­fees with lots of friends, uh, talk­ing about what was gonna be the next big [00:12:00] thing. Uh, and then I start­ed think­ing, you know what? I should just record these con­ver­sa­tions and put them out as a pod­cast for my oth­er friends to lis­ten to.

They might enjoy that. So that was the first show was called G’day World, and it was me and a anoth­er guy just basi­cal­ly talk­ing about tech­nol­o­gy, what was hap­pen­ing. And, um, yeah. Yeah, and it blew up, um, ear­ly on, and I think Tony start­ed lis­ten­ing to maybe that show, or the next show I did, which was on Napoleon.

About a year after that I start­ed doing a show on Napoleon Bona­parte, and I think Tony may have start­ed lis­ten­ing to that or one of those shows. Any­way, so yeah.

Scott Mee­han: You then. That’s how he found you.

Cameron: No, no. He start­ed email­ing me around about that time and, you know, say­ing that he liked the show and this and that and the oth­er. And then we just start­ed email­ing each oth­er. And then when I moved to Bris­bane [00:13:00] in 2008, actu­al­ly it was 2009, I think Chris­sy had just arrived here from the us. He was liv­ing in New Zealand and he and Jen­ny came back to vis­it fam­i­ly in Bris­bane.

And he said, he con­tact­ed me and said, Hey, wan­na take you out to din­ner when I’m in Bris­bane? So, you know, we went out to din­ner and, and as I remem­ber, I said, so what do you do with your­self, Tony? He said, oh, I’m just an investor. And in my head I went, oh, that’s bor­ing. And so that was it. I did­n’t ask any more ques­tions,

Scott Mee­han: So I start talk­ing

Cameron: until

Scott Mee­han: They’re like, show the shirt. They’re like,

Cameron: yeah.

Scott Mee­han: up. Move on.

Cameron: And it was­n’t until Tony and I were mak­ing the film, the posters behind me, and, um, which was four or five years, no, six or sev­en years ago now. And my old­er boys who were had just leav­ing high school, they start­ed a pod­cast and they inter­viewed Tony about mon­ey man­age­ment for kids [00:14:00] leav­ing high school.

Like, what should they do? And I heard them inter­view Tony, and he said, well, yeah, I, I cre­at­ed this sys­tem for invest­ing and it’s deliv­er­ing dou­ble mar­ket returns. And I stud­ied all the greats. And, and I was like, I, I saw him that day. And I was like, I did­n’t know any of that. How come I did­n’t know any of that?

And he goes, well, you nev­er asked. And um, it was about that point when I said, you know what, we should do a pod­cast about where you teach me how to invest.

Scott Mee­han: Love

Cameron: And he said, I don’t think any­one, I don’t think any­one would lis­ten to that. And I said, well. I don’t care. I wan­na, I wan­na, I wan­na learn. I wan­na know what, you know, uh, so that was the gen­e­sis of this.

Scott Mee­han: do.

Cameron: Oh yeah. I mean, I think any­one who learns the sys­tem, um, can fol­low the sys­tem. I, I, I always say, I reck­on it takes about a year. It took me about a year to feel com­fort­able with how the sys­tem worked. I mean, to Tony’s depth of knowl­edge after [00:15:00] 35 years, what­ev­er it is now is obvi­ous­ly you’re nev­er gonna catch up to that.

It’s like, I’m nev­er gonna be as good at kung fu as my sifu who’s been doing it for 30 years. ’cause he’s just got that in, you know, that 30 years of expe­ri­ence and wis­dom built in. But, you know, I can fol­low the basics of kung fu and I can get a black belt and I can do all of that kind of stuff. Yes, had good black eye cou­ple of them recent­ly, but, um, I.

I think we can all get our black belt in QAV. We can all be, uh, mas­ters of the sys­tem. We’ll nev­er catch up to Tony or War­ren, but, um, you know,

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: it’s not that hard to, to become good at the basics.

Scott Mee­han: Yes.

Cameron: So any­way, back to you.

Scott Mee­han: Right.

Cameron: enough about me. That’s

Scott Mee­han: Where were we?

Cameron: so you, you dis­cov­ered it via Phil Ello and you start­ed lis­ten­ing and, and you know, how long did it take you to start, uh, putting it into prac­tice, do you think?[00:16:00]

Scott Mee­han: I think

Cameron: I.

Scott Mee­han: try­ing to remem­ber, but like, remem­ber hear­ing the pod­cast, look­ing at the web­site going, seems inter­est­ing. I like the idea of a sys­tem that I can just fol­low and press but­tons that I need to. Um, think I had a chat with you. Just like this. And so like why I don’t pay for any­thing else, like apart from share site, like I, and sor­ry, but I don’t pay for any oth­er share invest­ing thing.

Every­thing else I lis­ten to is free. So Shares for begin­ners, all your equi­ty mates or what­ev­er. So me to invest the mon­ey was a big step in my, I remem­ber say­ing Seed’s a bit steep. They’re like, it would be worth it. And I went, okay. So, and it pret­ty quick­ly like. to the buy list, did a bit of his­tor­i­cal check here.

The buy list looked to sort of, I guess, ver­i­fy your num­bers as well to see if I could ver­i­fy what you were say­ing was true. Um, ’cause there’s so much BS out there in finan­cial ser­vices land that, that I, I’d learn over the pre­vi­ous three or four months. I was like, this

Cameron: [00:17:00] Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: you kind of get lost in. I dun­no, I, I, my wife’s cousin is a, like a, is a banker type and he just, I hear him talk and I just say, shut up mate.

You’re bor­ing me. I was like, he’s mak­ing a truck­load of mon­ey and good luck to him. But, um. For it’s just like, I want some­thing I could fol­low. Because clear­ly I had no idea what I was doing and I had proven in the results I’d had in the pre­vi­ous four months. The ETFs were doing fine, the shares were doing shocked, and I’m going, maybe I’ll just dump every­thing into ETFs, and just do it that way and not wor­ry about it. was real­ly enjoy­ing the side of research­ing it and learn­ing about it and hear­ing peo­ple talk about stocks. Lis­ten­ing to you guys, Tony, doing his deep dives. I found that. I guess com­fort­ing in a way, and then saw the results. Like I was pret­ty ear­ly in on, um, pers I think and pep­per mon­ey, um, all of which have kind of gone, you know, like it’s not bad.

I, I [00:18:00] per mine would not hit my radar ever. In terms of buy­ing it. So for me to have

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: hear what you guys had to say about it, go and do a lit­tle bit of my own rea­son, not mas­sive amounts. Like I, I don’t have the time. I’ve got a full-time job, I’ve got a life. Every­thing else I did­n’t wan­na have to spend my whole life doing it.

But, but then to

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: ones and get some sort of, I guess. Ear­ly pos­i­tive respons­es in terms of the stock prices, um,

Cameron: Mm.

Scott Mee­han: for me and I’ll, at this stage, I’m still lit­er­al­ly, hon­est­ly, Kim, I am dai­ly star­ing at my screen, refresh­ing the screen, watch­ing the num­bers go up and down and going, hon­est­ly, I’ve got­ta stop this.

It’s a prob­lem. So even­tu­al­ly.

Cameron: You, you’ll get over that.

Scott Mee­han: so here we are in Decem­ber and it’s basi­cal­ly

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: of invest­ing and I maybe look at them once a day now because I, all my alerts are a bit funky at the moment and they’ve all gone weird. So I just have a quick look in, see what’s hap­pen­ing. I check your Face­book page, I check the web­site, the QAV web­site to see you [00:19:00] haven’t announced some­thing strange is hap­pen­ing in the uni­verse. That’s about it now, and it just hap­pens and it rolls along and I’ve hard­ly, I think I’ve sold one share in the last eight weeks and I bought one and before that I was prob­a­bly the first three or four months. It was con­stant sort of rolling over of, of buy­ing and sell­ing. Now the best bit was, I think I had a fair bit of cash sit­ting that I had­n’t invest­ed when we had Lib­er­a­tion Day. Uh, well, I should say dick­head day to be like, maybe I’ll get, maybe I’ll get arrest­ed for that in, in states when I go to Amer­i­ca. I don’t know. Uh, any­way, mov­ing on. Um, So all these ones that were on the buy list dropped quite a bit and I was just like, hap­py days. And I, I, I bought a lot and that’s real­ly helped as well.

So that just, that was just a luck, a bit of luck, a bit of tim­ing, what­ev­er it might have been. I had­n’t invest­ed the mon­ey ’cause I had­n’t got to the stage of hav­ing the time to, to spend it. I’d sold a bit in the buildup to join­ing you guys and rotat­ing through that. I, I did sell pep­per mon­ey though, which was [00:20:00] dis­ap­point­ing. Then I bought it again for more. Any­way, fine. Still doing well.

Cameron: And, uh, you did­n’t start with a paper port­fo­lio or any­thing like that.

Scott Mee­han: Prob­a­bly should

Cameron: just don’t dive straight in.

Scott Mee­han: should have.

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I,

Cameron: Well, I think it’s a good way of, yeah, it’s a good way of test­ing it before you spend real mon­ey.

Scott Mee­han: just very keen to get

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: into the i Here are the sto­ries, right. It’s not tim­ing, it’s time, all that sort of stuff. And I was very keen that I had this quite well to me, quite a large amount of cash from the super mon­ey that was­n’t invest­ed and need­ed to be invest­ed. So pure luck in terms of I had that mon­ey still sit­ting there in April when it went crazy, and then prices dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly and then shut back up again.

So

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: strat­e­gy, buy the dip.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, yeah, as long as it’s not still dip­ping. Um, you know, I think I [00:21:00] said to you an email, like when we say it’s not tim­ing that is true over the long haul, but your first, your ear­ly expe­ri­ence is deter­mined.

Scott Mee­han: Def­i­nite­ly.

Cameron: extent by tim­ing the peo­ple that got start­ed in late 2021 or ear­ly 2022 when the mar­ket crashed after Ukraine inva­sion and inter­est rates start­ed going up.

That, that cou­ple of years was rough for peo­ple that got start­ed. I, I remem­ber just say­ing to a lot of peo­ple in 20 22, 20 23, you just got start­ed at the wrong time. I mean, it’s, it’ll turn around again, but this is just tri­al by fire, right? It’s, uh, it was a, our mark, our port­fo­lio port­fo­lio, like the first QAV light port­fo­lio that I start­ed Feb­ru­ary, 2022, uh, or April, 2022.

Any­way, some­where around there, um, was down at one point, like 15% when the mar­ket was up by 10%. [00:22:00] And it was, you know, it was, did­n’t both­er me because I knew, oh, well, it’s just the way it is. Right? It’ll, it’ll come back. But, uh, for peo­ple that were brand new, I, you know, I can, uh, appre­ci­ate how it was, uh, a rough ride and not all of them made it.

You know, some of those peo­ple that got start­ed then dropped out, pulled out, um, and if they’d stuck around, they’d now be doing dou­ble mar­ket, you know, and, and maybe they went and found anoth­er sys­tem that works for them.

Scott Mee­han: that, that’s the

Cameron: We’re not the only sys­tem. Right.

Scott Mee­han: I’ve par­tic­u­lar­ly learned in the last year is just the patience of it and. Just sort of, you read all those time­less quotes from the dif­fer­ent investors, like, you know, the, the smartest thing to do is to do noth­ing or what­ev­er it might be. It’s the hard thing to do.

Seri­ous­ly. Like, you know, I’m,

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: uh, maybe when I’m look­ing at the moment, I’ve seen a bit of volatil­i­ty and has been, um, P‑L-T-P‑T.

Cameron: Uh, plen­ty group.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. P plen­ty group. So it hit like [00:23:00] I

Cameron: Let’s down a bit.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. It’s just sort of gone on a bit of a tail­spin for the last two weeks and I have no idea why. And I’m like, in the past I would’ve been pan­ick­ing about it. Now I’m just like, if it hits it’s three PTL, I’ll just sell it Right.

Does the 10% thing, I’ll just sell it. So that

Cameron: Yeah,

Scott Mee­han: just a lot calmer for me, which is nice.

Cameron: yeah.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. And also it

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: know. You can see that oth­er things are doing well and things have bad moments that go up and down. I, I’ve been astound­ed at, at how much things change in a real­ly short space of time or a direc­tor does some­thing stu­pid or all those things that hap­pen and you’re just like, is almost ignore it in a way. Try to

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: and try and stick to the rules.

Cameron: Well, it’s, it’s kind of busi­ness as usu­al I’ve learned is that you will have ex, you’ll have, you know, a one com­pa­ny in your port­fo­lio where some­thing hor­ri­ble will hap­pen. Um, the direc­tors will get detained [00:24:00] by the gov­ern­ment of a small African nation, uh, or,

Scott Mee­han: Yes.

Cameron: know, or the CEO will get accused of mal fance or, you know, sex­u­al

Scott Mee­han: Yes.

Cameron: Yeah.

Some­thing like that. There will be, there’ll be one or two com­pa­nies in your port­fo­lio where some­thing hor­ri­fy­ing will hap­pen and the shares will drop by 40% overnight. Um, there’ll be anoth­er one or two stocks that get a wind­fall. Some­thing, you know, some pol­i­cy change will hap­pen here or in the Unit­ed States and their shares will explode, or they’ll get acquired and their shares will explode, and then the rest of them will truck along doing, you know, 10, 15%, what­ev­er it is.

And that’s just,

Scott Mee­han: Like it real­ly has

Cameron: yeah.

Scott Mee­han: Is that real­ly hap­pen­ing? Because, you Yeah. Every now and then you’re gonna sell one. Right. For what­ev­er rea­son. And, but,

Cameron: Yeah,

Scott Mee­han: but it’s, it’s inter­est­ing to watch that. Like I’ve got 15 shares and only one is down,

Cameron: [00:25:00] yeah.

Scott Mee­han: like one is

Cameron: Which,

Scott Mee­han: and that’s shares I start­ed buy­ing at the begin­ning of last this year type of thing, or March this year, which is

Cameron: yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I’ve had

Cameron: has,

Scott Mee­han: a cou­ple.

Cameron: I think I did talk about your per per­form, uh, per­for­mance on the show, uh, last week, but just remind me how it’s doing.

Scott Mee­han: on mate. I nev­er look, well, cur­rent hold­ings I’m up 35%, but I’ve had to sell that as include the sold ones. I’ll have to dou­ble check, but I think it was about 15% up over­all. Um, and then add some div­i­dends on top of that as well. But,

Cameron: Right.

Scott Mee­han: the actu­al

Cameron: Uh,

Scott Mee­han: that are all QAV stocks that I haven’t had to sell up 35%.

Cameron: yeah. That’s great.

Scott Mee­han: It’s a

Cameron: Yeah. Like, you know, the, the thing that, you know, when, when I, when peo­ple sort of ask me how the sys­tem works and I, I don’t want to get into the nit­ty grit­ties of it. Um, and my [00:26:00] men­tal mod­el for why it should work long term is at the end of the day, we’re just try­ing to find the com­pa­nies that are per­form­ing well, gen­er­at­ing.

A lot of cash, and we buy them when we can get them at a dis­count to what we think their actu­al val­u­a­tion is. And if you can buy shares in well per­form­ing com­pa­nies at a dis­count over a peri­od of time, most of them log­i­cal­ly should do. Okay.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: It’s, that’s it. It’s, it’s not very com­pli­cat­ed, right?

Scott Mee­han: you asked me to explain to you the num­bers behind it, I could not still like. I kind of look at the num­bers that you guys put through on your, your buy list and go, okay, it looks good. And take a quick look at their books and stuff like that to make sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing and then buy it. I wish to say I have to say that I do more than that. Maybe I should. see

Cameron: No.

Scott Mee­han: I’m like, okay, is that Mabb [00:27:00] research? Is that it is. That’s all I’ve got­ta do.

Cameron: Well,

Scott Mee­han: Alright. That

Cameron: you know, it’s,

Scott Mee­han: and some­times it’s

Cameron: I get in.

Scott Mee­han: goes south and you’re like, oh, okay. It hap­pens.

Cameron: Yeah, I get into debates. Well, I, I don’t, but peo­ple try and get me into debates on Red­dit. Uh, par­tic­u­lar­ly for our US show, uh, every, every week, uh, when I do a deep dive on an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny and I post a sum­ma­ry of it to the val­ue invest­ing sub­red­dit, peo­ple will weigh in there would obvi­ous­ly no way more than I do about this par­tic­u­lar sec­tor or that par­tic­u­lar sec­tor, and they’ll give me all of these argu­ments for why that com­pa­ny is not gonna do well in the future.

It isn’t a good invest­ment. And every time I’m like, Hey, you might be right, but I don’t try and pre­dict the future. That’s not how our mod­el works. Uh, I’m just, I’m just look­ing for com­pa­nies that are gen­er­at­ing a lot of cash and seem to be avail­able for a dis­count to their val­u­a­tion. That’s it. You know, I buy ’em more often than not, I’ll do well out of them.

[00:28:00] Some­times they’ll go the wrong way. We sell ’em and keep mov­ing. Right. I don’t, I, I don’t care. I don’t care about the sec­tor, I don’t care about the, the macros or the micros. You know? Good luck to you with all of that. Um, I’m sure you’ll do well,

Scott Mee­han: it

Cameron: but I’m, I,

Scott Mee­han: sim­pler.

Cameron: I can’t get into an argu­ment about the, in intri­ca­cies of cop­per min­ing in the US because I real­ly, it’s not how our mod­el works.

We’re just look­ing at num­bers.

Scott Mee­han: Uh, yeah, I’ve been doing it for 12 months, fol­low­ing things real­ly close­ly over the year and hear­ing all these dif­fer­ent fore­casts of doom, gloom, opti­mism, you name it. it just is just a lot of shit to be hon­est. Like you get, I think you said guys sent an email recent­ly to talk about the news and what it’s there for and stuff, and I found that quite. Reas­sur­ing. It’s kind of how I look at it now. I was like, yeah, it’s good to read about. It’s good to be, have knowl­edge of that, but it does­n’t mean the share price will go up or down, does­n’t mean that this is gonna hap­pen. It just [00:29:00] sort of, it’s just a sto­ry. So

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: it might, you know what, Kim, it might’ve been you, I heard on shares for Big­ger, there’s not Tea K now I think about it. It was like ignore the, you are talk­ing about ignor­ing the sto­ries like that We

Cameron: Well, Tony, I got,

Scott Mee­han: We buy the num­bers or some­thing. We buy.

Cameron: yeah,

Scott Mee­han: Was it.

Cameron: I did go, I did go on on Phil’s show at one point. Yeah. Uh, but Tony’s been on it a bunch of times and, and I got that from him. Ignore the sto­ries, but that was one of the things that. You know, I think real­ly helped me when I heard Tony explain that. You know, I think when that was sort of the sub­ject of my email, um, in the newslet­ter a week or so ago, I think when we’re new to invest­ing.

We think that the finan­cial media is there to help us, and after a while you real­ize, no, it’s, and I should know that because I do media analy­sis as part of my [00:30:00] pod­cast­ing stuff on a reg­u­lar basis. I, I under­stand that gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the media exists to dri­ve nar­ra­tives with cer­tain vest­ed inter­ests behind them.

But I’d nev­er real­ly thought about that in terms of the finan­cial media. But it’s obvi­ous when you think about it, the finan­cial media exists there to dri­ve eye­balls and clicks and adver­tis­ing rev­enue for the pub­lish­ers of the finan­cial media them­selves. And they will write about what­ev­er sto­ries they have to write about to keep the adver­tis­ing mon­ey com­ing in.

And also they have, you know, cer­tain incen­tives with cer­tain adver­tis­ers that they’re push­ing this or push­ing that.

Scott Mee­han: Yep.

Cameron: And the rest of the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try is about gen­er­at­ing income, gen­er­at­ing rev­enue for them­selves. That’s why they, they don’t exist to help us. They don’t exist to make us suc­cess­ful.

They exist to gen­er­ate rev­enue for their busi­ness­es and for their

Scott Mee­han: Clip their

Cameron: part­ners, not for us. Yeah. It’s, it, they are not your friend. [00:31:00] They are there to enter­tain you and lead you aray and to take your mon­ey. That’s why they exist. And the best advice that we can give any new investor is ignore it and focus on the fun­da­men­tals.

Focus on under­stand­ing how, how shares actu­al­ly work, which is, is the com­pa­ny mak­ing mon­ey? It’s fun­ny, I was read­ing, um. I got a, I saw a, a, a newslet­ter, I can’t remem­ber. It was turned up in Yahoo Finance, some guy in Aus­tralia who runs a, a invest­ing newslet­ter, and he was tout­ing his abil­i­ty to pick 10 bag­gers.

And, uh,

Scott Mee­han: Love it.

Cameron: you know, after spend­ing the amount of years I have talk­ing to Tony and doing this, now, my ini­tial response is, I, I, I don’t wan­na find 10 bag­gers. I mean, a 10 bag­ger is love­ly, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not chas­ing 10 bag­gers. This whole thing about [00:32:00] chas­ing 10 bag­gers, to me, that just seems like, you know, phon­ing a, this is all, this is a, there’s an old, there’s an old David Lee, old David Lee Roth song about, you know, some­thing being a myth, like a beau­ti­ful woman who cooks and cleans.

Um, you know, it,

Scott Mee­han: Okay.

Cameron: I, I know I get into, get into trou­ble for say­ing that it’s not me. It’s David Lee Roth. He said that right.

Scott Mee­han: I, I was­n’t involved in that. I’ll leave it to you, mate.

Cameron: Oh no, it is Dave. Uh, blame Dave. Uh, you know, we we’re not, we’re, we’re not try­ing to find 10 bag­gers. We’re try­ing to find, you know, stocks that do well, solar com­pa­nies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I

Cameron: And also he was say­ing in this thing that all of the 10 bag­gers that his sys­tem finds,

Scott Mee­han: yes, I read it. Yeah,

Cameron: they usu­al­ly aren’t mak­ing mon­ey.

Oh, yeah. Right.

Scott Mee­han: I, yeah, it was Karl Kapaa, I think his name is Off

Cameron: That’s him. Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: the crazy

Cameron: say­ing

Scott Mee­han: dai­ly thing every day, and he gives you all the chart watch­es [00:33:00] and stuff. It’s hys­ter­i­cal to read.

Cameron: chart watch. That was it. Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I love it.

Cameron: And is like, so his, his sys­tem iden­ti­fies them when the pre-cash flow or pre prof­it not mak­ing any mon­ey pre-cash flow. And I’m like, okay. Uh,

Scott Mee­han: you are throw­ing Mabb. That’s cool.

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: to bet it, go for your life. Like, you know, if you want to take some of your mon­ey and go for it, like, awe­some. I, if I had a spare a hun­dred grand to sit around, I did­n’t know what to do with. I sure look, do it, but I don’t. I’m invest­ing for my fam­i­ly’s future and my retire­ment. So I hope to stay, stay the course and stay steady a lit­tle bit.

Cameron: And whilst I have no doubt that there are com­pa­nies that are pre-rev­enue that will go on to be 10 bag­gers, how many com­pa­nies that are pre-rev­enue will also go on to go out­ta busi­ness in six months? Or, you know, be zero bag­ger or take, you know, go back­wards to such an extent that they neu­tral­ize the 10 bag­ger.

If you only pick the 10 bag­gers, that’s great, but how do you only pick the 10 bag­gers and avoid the, so it’s [00:34:00] this, but all of that, that mind­set of, of try­ing to find the 10 bag­gers and invest­ing in com­pa­nies and aren’t mak­ing any mon­ey. Like it’s just so like fi sev­en years ago, pre QAV, I would’ve thought that was real­ly smart stuff.

Now I look at it and go, that’s just, you know, that’s just cat­nip for ama­teurs real­ly, you know.

Scott Mee­han: it, it, it, fun­ny like the, the short space of time I’ve gone from read­ing stuff about that and get­ting all excit­ed and think­ing that’s gonna change the world to, it’s good. It’s an enter­tain­ing read, but I’m kind of good. Thanks. Um,

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: thanks to you and Tony. Hon­est­ly, I, that’s.

Cameron: Well, it’s, thanks to Tony, it’s, it’s like sen­si­ble, like how do you just do the sen­si­ble thing, right? Which is,

Scott Mee­han: and, and be

Cameron: as I said,

Scott Mee­han: and be dis­ci­plined and all those things that you read about. I’m, I’m kind of pleased that I’m get­ting there. I’m still, you know, look­ing at it right now, I can tell you it is. There you go. 12 point a half per­cent return and five point a half per­cent on div­i­dends. What’s that?

[00:35:00] 18%? Is that

Cameron: over what time­frame,

Scott Mee­han: my first pur­chase in Decem­ber last year, so 12 months.

Cameron: right.

Scott Mee­han: That includes

Cameron: 12 months.

Scott Mee­han: that I got into ear­ly on, like

Cameron: Yeah. Right. Don’t think that was on our list.

Scott Mee­han: I bought it cheap. It like tripled in price and I’m think­ing this is pret­ty cool. Should I sell it? No, it’s all right. And then I lit­er­al­ly halved in price from when I bought it. That’s when I sold it.

Cameron: Right,

Scott Mee­han: still there now. I should have sold it. It’s

Cameron: right, right,

Scott Mee­han: you go. So like that before, there’s a, before QAV, but I did it and it was, it said 6% down.

I, it more. but

Cameron: right.

Scott Mee­han: I reck­on I bought 20 shares and 18 of them were losers. So, good times. Good times. Lucky I

Cameron: So 18% in the last 12 months ver­sus the mar­ket’s up about 11%. The SPDR is up [00:36:00] about 11%, I think at the last 12 months.

Scott Mee­han: with divs as well? Yeah,

Cameron: Yeah, that’s with divs.

Scott Mee­han: That’d be

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: Okay, cool. But yeah, it’s, it’s, very, it’s just com­fort­ing. Hon­est­ly. I can, I’ve real­ly enjoyed the year with you guys. It’s been real­ly cool. So I look for­ward to the pod­cast and I look for­ward to the buy list.

Bring it back on Sun­days, mate. Can’t wait till Mon­day. Give up your Sun­day for it, please.

Cameron: Well, I already do, you know, for the week­end, like it is sort of ready to go or ready today. Um, yes. I just don’t pub­lish it,

Scott Mee­han: yeah. It’s alright. It’s cool.

Cameron: until I sit down to work.

Scott Mee­han: Where’s and where’s the camel

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: Has it

Cameron: Where is it?

Scott Mee­han: is it? Or is it still on your lap­top? Where your com­put­er.

Cameron: Yeah, it’s on, it’s on my lap­top. You know, it’s, I think I’ve, I’ve said it before, like I, I could go to the effort of [00:37:00] try­ing to pub­lish it in a way that peo­ple could run it them­selves, but, um.

Yeah, there’s a lot of work involved.

Scott Mee­han: reck­on I’m prob­a­bly anoth­er, we, when I sent you the emails, like I’d love it if I could just drop every­thing in and just do it for me. Um, but it

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: there’s just, when I read the oth­er guys on Face­book, the oth­er mem­bers like they’re run­ning their own stuff any­way, some of them, and they’re

Cameron: Yeah,

Scott Mee­han: up some glitch­es from your data and what­ev­er it might be.

You know, I, I’m not that tech­ni­cal. I,

Cameron: yeah,

Scott Mee­han: it defeats me, like lit­er­al­ly, which makes it even more

Cameron: yeah,

Scott Mee­han: well.

Cameron: yeah. Oh, you’re doing well. So,

Scott Mee­han: run a spread­sheet and can’t run, can’t run the bloody buy list. It’s all right. It’s fine.

Cameron: well, you’ll, you can, you can learn to do that. It’s not that hard. It, you know, again, uh, it’ll, you know, maybe, uh, six months to a year of a lit­tle bit of effort and you’d be able to do [00:38:00] it. Any­one can do it.

Scott Mee­han: there.

Cameron: I did­n’t know any­thing about Excel when we start­ed. Like real­ly? I did­n’t know my way around it. And these days with chat.

Scott Mee­han: And you

Cameron: Yeah. But you know, I was a, I was a sales guy. I was­n’t a spread­sheet guy. But these days with chat GPT, if you don’t know how to do some­thing and a spread­sheet, you just ask it, Hey, how do I do this? And it’ll tell you. So,

Scott Mee­han: doing, and it would give me this, I know what it was called, Python code, and I’m like, what the fuck is a Python code? I had no idea.

Cameron: yeah.

Scott Mee­han: and run that and every­thing would just go and I’ll be like, okay, I’ll just wait for the buy list on Mon­day.

Cameron: Yeah. Well, or you can just do that. Uh, so, uh, any­thing that you would like us to do for mem­bers this com­ing year, apart from give you the cam­era lat­er?

Scott Mee­han: Uh, keep mak­ing mon­ey. No. Um, uh, what would be inter­est­ing I reck­on is to do, like, do you do any­thing where you look back on. The his­tor­i­cal buy list and [00:39:00] how it’s gone for all of those shares, even the ones you did­n’t buy and you sort of say they’ve come on the buy list in June this year, let’s say they might’ve gone off the buy list three months lat­er and they might’ve popped back on it again in Decem­ber or what­ev­er.

But once you get those ones from the day they launch from the buy list and track their per­for­mance mov­ing for­ward, just I reck­on it would be a good, an inter­est­ing sort of his­tor­i­cal review of what you’ve done. And anoth­er way of say­ing, aren’t we doing well? Make sense. Does­n’t make sense. I look like I’ve

Cameron: I’m just think­ing it through. No, no. So look­ing at stocks from buy lists of days gone by and just see how they’ve done since they’re on the buy list.

Scott Mee­han: first time they hit the buy lis­ter, like from the very first time they went on the buy list and then.

Cameron: Right.

Scott Mee­han: ’ cause and then if they’ve, if they’ve trig­gered a three point sell line or some­thing that in that time, there­fore you had to sell it, great, and then you buy it again when it comes back on the buy list or what­ev­er.

What that looks like his­tor­i­cal­ly for all the

Cameron: Uh.

Scott Mee­han: that have been there. Because I reck­on the, I’ve prob­a­bly, a weird spread­sheet. I [00:40:00] track every­thing on that, and I think I’ve got about 140 dif­fer­ent stocks that appeared on the buy list since this year, maybe rough­ly. Um, but I, I only track the ones that I buy, but it’d be inter­est­ing to see some come and go real­ly quick­ly.

Like you say Maya popped on for a week and it goes, or what was that one? PPE, I think I bought it. Where is it? Yeah, peo­ple in that kind of dropped in and dropped out. So they come on for a rea­son, what­ev­er that is. But then they go off, but they only stay on for a week. That’s inter­est­ing. Does that mean that you should buy it that week and then not wor­ry about it?

Or does that mean Yeah, it’s there. You can buy it if you wan­na buy it, but if it does­n’t stay on the list for a peri­od of time, is it only because had one week and the num­bers were a bit weird or some­thing? Or the share price dropped up dra­mat­i­cal­ly? What brings it on the buy list? So to under­stand that process?

’cause they come and go, right? Some are peren­ni­al, like some are there for­ev­er. Well, this year any­way, I say for rec for­ev­er, since I’ve been track­ing In Feb­ru­ary, there’s some that have been on there [00:41:00] almost every week.

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: and that’s inter­est­ing because that usu­al­ly means they must be doing well. Like I, I’ll use pep­per mon­ey as a good exam­ple.

It popped on at a dol­lar 30 or a dol­lar 20. It went pret­ty quick­ly to like $2. Then it dropped off the buy list for a lit­tle while. Maybe some new num­bers came out and it came back on the buy list again, but at like $2 30. And I’m like, but I bought it for a buck 20. I wan­na buy it again at $2 30 or should I just not wor­ry about it?

Cameron: Yeah. Well, you know, ide­al­ly they should come on and then go off because their share price goes up so much that they’re no longer a cost effec­tive buy for us. But if we already own them, it’s good.

Scott Mee­han: yeah.

Cameron: Um,

Scott Mee­han: But say if

Cameron: being able to track them all.

Scott Mee­han: yeah. If you’re

Cameron: Yeah. But all.

Scott Mee­han: sor­ry, go.

Cameron: I was just gonna say it’s track­ing them all, includ­ing whether or not we would’ve sold them for rule one or a three point [00:42:00] trend line.

You know, is, is some­what com­pli­cat­ed to do, but I could build a sys­tem to do that. The tricky thing is also track­ing com­mod­i­ty cells, but I have the his­to­ry of com­mod­i­ty cells going back quite a few years now, so I could pos­si­bly build some code that would do that. My ques­tion to you is, what would we be try­ing to learn from that process?

Scott Mee­han: one thing I tried to do when I start­ed to go look back at your buy list and go, okay, is this bull­shit or is it not bull­shit? So look, his­tor­i­cal­ly at the buy list that you had. Fol­low them along. Yeah, you’ve got your dum­my lights, all that sort of stuff. That’s cool. That’s, that’s the stuff that you bought.

But what about all the things on that buy list? I’m total­ly com­ing at it from a com­plete ama­teur, no idea what I’m doing point of view. I’m like, well, I’ll look at the his­tor­i­cal stuff and see if those results tracked for all the things that, on the bias, it looked pret­ty good. I mean, I did­n’t go real­ly, real­ly deep into it, but I prob­a­bly went back a cou­ple years, had a look at the dif­fer­ent ones, had a look at your [00:43:00] port­fo­lios went, okay, so that would give you. I think from a QAV point of view, it would give you like a real­ly inter­est­ing sort of set of data that would show peo­ple that this actu­al­ly works. Not just for the stocks that I’ve bought for me, but for the stocks that appear on the buy list. they appear on the buy list, they’re clear­ly a buy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Yeah. So whether you,

Cameron: Buy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, but we also know that, you know, we are, we’re look­ing for a 60 40 win loss ratio or win ratio, so we know that near­ly half of them prob­a­bly won’t work out.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. But that’d be

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: though, right? To see if that that’s

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I reck­on it’s got­ta be stronger. Like if I’m ran­dom­ly pick­ing 15 stocks and 14 are up, that does­n’t make me the best stock pick­er on the plan­et, that’s for sure. Just means either I got lucky or the sys­tem works well enough that you can kind of be blind and still do.

Cameron: One of the ques­tions that, um, we some­times get is what would hap­pen if [00:44:00] we bought a stock that was on the buy list and then just ignored it for 10 years? No, no sell trig­gers. You just hold it for­ev­er. Which is a clas­sic val­ue invest­ing sort of school of thought. And I know that there have been QAV mem­bers in the past that have decid­ed that they don’t wan­na sell things, they just wan­na buy, um, for­ev­er com­pa­nies that you hold for­ev­er and they’ll just wear the volatil­i­ty.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: And I know that, um. Tony’s expe­ri­ence. The rea­son we have the cell trig­gers comes from the GFC.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: When the GFC hit in 2008, there was lots of great com­pa­nies that then took 10 years to get back to where they were pre GFC. Tony’s ratio­nale is, well, I don’t wan­na wait 10 years for stocks to get back to where they were.

Yes, maybe if you hold ’em for­ev­er, they’ll get back there. But, uh, to him it makes a lot more sense to sell them on their way down, buy some­thing else at the bot­tom [00:45:00] and write it up, not wait for them to get back to where they were.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: Um, but yeah, we, we could see how that pans out over long peri­ods of times.

Scott Mee­han: It’s a big ask to do it. There might

Cameron: Yeah, just,

Scott Mee­han: there’d be an algo­rithm for you, mate. Um, I guess the

Cameron: yeah.

Scott Mee­han: be inter­est­ing would be like, I, and it prob­a­bly ties to this, is like when the stock is doing so well and it’s fly­ing for you and I, I’ll use pers an exam­ple. Per­cy is up 102% for me and I bought three dif­fer­ent tranch­es of it at dif­fer­ent time, just so very excit­ing.

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: but is there a point where you go. Should I sell some of this? Should I not sell some of that? And that’s not com­ing. That’s just more like I’m sit­ting on a pret­ty nice prof­it. I think Tony men­tioned it was talked about before and he said it could be our first 10 bag­ger on QAV. And I’m like, okay, maybe I should just hold it there. uh, that point, like. That stock will go down again, I’m sure of it. And it’ll drop below some lev­el at some stage. And do you wan­na [00:46:00] wait for that or do you just sort of say, well, I’ll take some prof­it, I’ll clip some­thing off the top and then I’ll rein­vest that some­where else in some­thing else. And I, I real­ly, that’s one bit, I’m kind of like see­ing, look­ing at three or four stocks are up more than 50% going and,

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: be patient, just sit and wait. Then, but wait­ing for some­thing. Wait­ing for what? I don’t know, a deba­cle hap­pens at Perseus and sud­den­ly the stock price cuts in half, and then it’s like I could have col­lect­ed some prof­it then

Cameron: Well, that’s sort of a peren­ni­al QAV ques­tion is should we take prof­its? And if so, when?

Scott Mee­han: we,

Cameron: And I think, you know, the, the,

Scott Mee­han: that.

Cameron: yeah. Well, Tony’s talked about it and thought about it as long as we’ve been doing the show. And, you know, I think his, his usu­al response is, do what­ev­er you need to do to sleep well at night.

If, if, if that, you know, it’s a per­son­al, it’s a [00:47:00] per­son­al deci­sion you have to make. Um, but. Sure. But for him, we haven’t fig­ured out how do you know when to take the prof­its and what to rein­vest that mon­ey then in that will do as well as that com­pa­ny will do. Obvi­ous­ly if it’s gone up by three or four times, uh, already, there’s some­thing real­ly, real­ly work­ing for that busi­ness.

And are you gonna be able to sta­tis­ti­cal­ly find anoth­er stock that is gonna do as well as that one has? So it’s, yeah.

Scott Mee­han: that, it’s that, but it’s that

Cameron: Or are you bet­ter off just stick­ing with Michael Jor­dan? Right. There’s the oldy thing

Scott Mee­han: pess of me going, the pes­simist of me going, oh, what if some­thing hap­pens? That thing drops back where I, Lord and I, I was sit­ting on all that juicy mon­ey and I’m like,

Cameron: and it does, we’ve [00:48:00] seen it hap­pen. I mean, I’ve seen it hap­pen sev­er­al times. I’ve had, like, findy is a, is a recent exam­ple. Findy was up 120% and then it came back to zero. I’ve seen it hap­pen with Mabb in the past up a hun­dred per­cent. And then it drops back to, becomes a rule one sell. And you’re like, how the hell could that hap­pen?

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: But,

Scott Mee­han: Over­all, you’re

Cameron: you know.

Scott Mee­han: still worth hold­ing.

Cameron: Yeah. But then you have the com­pa­nies that, like Perseus, right? That if we’d sold it at a hun­dred per­cent, we would’ve missed out on the 200% or the 300%. So

Scott Mee­han: Hope­ful­ly, yeah.

Cameron: it’s, um,

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: yeah, we, we,

Scott Mee­han: sim­ple

Cameron: we don’t have any Yeah. And, and you can look at these things in ret­ro­spect and go, if only I had sold it at that point.

But that’s, you know, we, it’s not that.

Scott Mee­han: alco­holism.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: It’s a rock, rocky road to the,[00:49:00]

Cameron: Yeah, and look at the end of the day, um, I, I think where I’ve land­ed on that is, um, the sys­tem returns dou­ble mar­ket.

Scott Mee­han: yeah,

Cameron: That’s good enough. Like there, there are big win­ners, there are some losers there. The rest is aver­age. The sys­tem’s already deliv­er­ing dou­ble mar­ket. Um, try­ing to improve on dou­ble mar­ket by get­ting, uh, clever, try­ing to be clev­er­er,

Scott Mee­han: Yeah,

Cameron: clev­er­er,

Scott Mee­han: clever

Cameron: I’m not sure.

Thank you. Then the is, is, is pos­si­ble. Maybe AI will teach us how to do that, but at the end of the day, you know, I think.

Scott Mee­han: with

Cameron: My mind­set is, yeah, dou­ble mar­ket is what Buf­fet has done for 65 years. He’s the great­est investor in the his­to­ry of [00:50:00] invest­ing. Uh, shut up and take the mon­ey.

Scott Mee­han: hap­py.

Cameron: stop try­ing to Yeah, we’re doing, we’re doing bet­ter than the vast major­i­ty of full-time pro­fes­sion­al fund man­agers and investors.

Scott Mee­han: doing bet­ter than my super fund I was in. I’m very hap­py about that.

Cameron: Yeah. And we have pro­fes­sion­als come on the show as guests from time to time, and they are high­ly esteemed pro­fes­sion­als that get writ­ten about in the finan­cial review and we’re beat­ing them. And so, well, I’m like, real­ly? Do we need to, you know, tweak it any fur­ther? Maybe. But it’s, it, it works pret­ty good.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah, yeah, it’s a sur­prise that it does­n’t get more nor more noise in the media. You just need a bet­ter PR team mate for Q.

Cameron: I from your Yes. From your mouth to ALA’s [00:51:00] ears. So if you have any thoughts on how to help us get more pr,

Scott Mee­han: Good ques­tion.

Cameron: me know.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: I think, I think I, I, I’m assured by the fact that if Tony decides you don’t wan­na do it any­more, you reck­on you could still run it because it’s like he’s kind of the engine room behind it, isn’t he? So, and you said some­times it’s hard to get him to do a show, and I’m like, shit.

Cameron: I think he’d rather be doing oth­er stuff than doing the show, but he’s nice enough to turn up. Um, look, I, I, yeah, it, it, I mean, I can talk about this, uh, till the cows come home. I’m not sure any­one wants to lis­ten to me, though. I think peo­ple wan­na lis­ten to Tony. They don’t wan­na lis­ten to me, but I run the port­fo­lios and have done for.

Scott Mee­han: yeah.

Cameron: years, right? So

Scott Mee­han: he pro­vides insight that is

Cameron: Yeah,

Scott Mee­han: he’s been on boards and so, so he’s, he sort of is able to say with­out know­ing exact­ly what’s hap­pen­ing in that board­room, he’ll be able to extrap­o­late. Option­al two, but oth­er prob­a­ble things that are hap­pen­ing. I always find that

Cameron: yeah,

Scott Mee­han: ’ cause that’s, I don’t hang out in [00:52:00] board­rooms. I don’t attend to.

Cameron: yeah. Tony has, Tony has all of the wis­dom and insight, and he’s, um, apart from being a real­ly smart guy, he is, got a lot of expe­ri­ence. He and Jen­ny have spent decades in senior ech­e­lons and board­rooms and all of that kin­da stuff, and at fan­cy par­ties, um,

Scott Mee­han: golf cours­es now.

Cameron: that I’m nev­er gonna get invit­ed to. So, uh, yeah, there’s, well, I, I would­n’t, I would­n’t fit in in most of these, uh, yeah.

But, um, yes, but in terms of, uh, how QAV itself works, you know, I think I can talk about that. But if any­one ever wants to lis­ten to that,

Scott Mee­han: I mean, look, I know if it’s for the show, but like. My thoughts are, this has great legs as a prod­uct. just a mat­ter of find­ing a way to make that work and get­ting the finances for it and all [00:53:00] that sort of stuff. So that bit, you know, if Tony isn’t real­ly keen to expand it, it kind of makes it hard, though.

That makes sense. Yeah.

Cameron: I think he’d love to have, you know, a lot more peo­ple lis­ten­ing to it. Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: mean, how many sub­scribers have we got or have we got, sor­ry, we got, have you got? Like a thou­sand.

Cameron: Oh, lis­ten­ing to the show. A thou­sand. But, uh, yeah, pay­ing sub­scribers 10%.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah,

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: Right? So a hun­dred page sub­scribers. When that, that guy from the TYKR stuff is basi­cal­ly, it sounds like you guys, but not as good.

Cameron: Yeah. Right.

Scott Mee­han: I’ve looked at it. I’ve got, I’ve just gone hol­i­days. This is my week to do my week free tri­al and see what it’s like. Um, and I’ll, I’ll send you back what I know, but like for me. If I can sort of go like this and have not an f‑ing clue what I’m doing, there’s

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: there’s some­thing in it, right? Like the [00:54:00] def I’m like, plus the insights are inter­est­ing from Tony. The buy list makes per­fect sense. We’re not rec­om­mend­ing you buy this. It’s just these are the list of flocks we think are under­val­ued this week and you should buy these ones.

Well, you know, you should

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: for your port­fo­lio. I mean, I’ve just, whether I’ve just got lucky, but like. I haven’t fol­lowed every stock you’ve bought and sold. I’ve just kind of picked the stuff I thought looked inter­est­ing. I jumped on a NZ ’cause it was a NZ and it was one of the rare blue chips.

It appears it’s not, was­n’t a min­ing com­pa­ny. I’m not over­ly, gets angry about the min­ing com­pa­nies, but I’m like, well, on the buy list. Um, but me to do that to me says that is a sys­tem any­body can use and we just need a way of get­ting it out I think quite apart from the chance of mak­ing a shed ton of mon­ey at it, great.

But also. To share the insight and the sys­tem with peo­ple like me that don’t have a clue and are prob­a­bly out there spend­ing mon­ey on some oth­er idiot that’s rip­ping them off. Right. So I don’t know [00:55:00] how, how we make that work and how you would, uh, how we, how you actu­al­ly

Cameron: Well,

Scott Mee­han: out and, but it, it will require a bit of fund­ing from a, uh, mar­ket­ing pro­mo­tion, PR side of things.

But also you talked about hav­ing to buy that data. What data is it?

Cameron: if we, well, if we want­ed to do a one click, uh, t. YKR type ser­vice, we would need access to the fun­da­men­tal share data that we get from say, Stock Doc­tor or Stock edia. Now

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: we would need to have our own license for that. And we’ve looked into it. Yeah, you need to get it from the ASX or, you know, um, uh, one of their bro­kers,

Scott Mee­han: Why can’t you use stock? Just the stock edia or Stock Doc­tor stuff? It’s.

Cameron: their terms and con­di­tions don’t lead to

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. Yeah.

Cameron: re re, you know, repur­pose that data. It’s for your own per­son­al use only. You can’t resell it.

Scott Mee­han: And

Cameron: Um, which is what we’d be doing.

Scott Mee­han: from the [00:56:00] ASX? Dare I ask a lot.

Cameron: Yeah. It’s like 20 grand, uh, a month depend­ing on the license. Yeah, yeah,

Scott Mee­han: That’s, that’s

Cameron: yeah. The data, the,

Scott Mee­han: That’s

Cameron: data costs are sane, uh, to get, you know, the whole­sale access to it so you can retail it.

Scott Mee­han: locks out. It locks out stuff like this and keeps it with Morn­ingstar.

Cameron: Well, yeah, to an extent. But you know, just in terms of build­ing the pod­casts where we had more mem­bers, if I could afford to drop 10 grand a month behind adver­tis­ing,

Scott Mee­han: Yeah.

Cameron: uh, for QAV, I’m sure I could build, uh, our reach and our expo­sure to a lot more peo­ple. It’s, uh, I’ve been try­ing to boot­strap that process for the last five or six years.

Um, but yeah, I don’t have that kind of coin.

Scott Mee­han: yeah. And it’s,

Cameron: might have to,

Scott Mee­han: you look at oth­er, oth­er

Cameron: might have to bring on investors.

Scott Mee­han: Yeah. You look at

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: you look at the guys from equi­ty mates and they’re a free pot­ty, but like they’ve, I [00:57:00] think they’ve just been, I think, who is it? Is it be the shares has bought part of them or some­thing like that? Um,

Cameron: I don’t know.

Scott Mee­han: one of the big ones, like one of the big

Cameron: Yeah.

Scott Mee­han: in the uni­verse.

Um, and

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: But then this tick­et guy real­ly got me think­ing, so I’m gonna look into it. I’ll see what he’s

Cameron: Hmm.

Scott Mee­han: That might make it dif­fer­ent to you guys, but it just sounds like your stuff with­out, with­out a sys­tem as well, with like a sell­ing and buy­ing sys­tem. I don’t know. So, but I will review and report back, sir. Yeah.

Cameron: Scott, well, um, love­ly to see you face to face again, and, and con­grat­u­la­tions that you’ve had a good year and a, a good start. I mean, I think once you get a good year under your belt, um, you hope­ful­ly are up and run­ning, like there will be not good years, but, uh, hope­ful­ly the, the, the head start that you get means your port­fo­lio could take an aver­age year or a bad year and still look [00:58:00] okay, and then you keep wait­ing for the next good year, right?

Scott Mee­han: Yeah, I think like in terms of invest­ment time, I, I’ve got, I wan­na retire at 60, that’s sev­en years away, so. It’s get­ting clos­er. So a cou­ple of good juice to start would be nice. And then I could wear a cou­ple of bad ones maybe

Cameron: Yeah,

Scott Mee­han: after

Cameron: well, I dun­no that, we’ll,

Scott Mee­han: itchy feet.

Cameron: uh, I, I, I dun­no how long Goodyear stretch­es go for, but my expe­ri­ence about a year and then the mar­ket sort of cools down for a year or two, and then you got­ta wait for anoth­er good year to come around. But, uh, the, as the, I think it’s a Peter Lynch quote, I use it most of my emails these days, every, every­one’s a long-term investor until they have a bad year.

So, uh, be,

Scott Mee­han: 50%.

Cameron: yeah, not finan­cial advice, but just be aware that there will be bad years. And that’s part of it, you know, that’s just how the mar­ket goes in cycles and you just stick with it, wait it out, and wait for the [00:59:00] next good year, you know.

Scott Mee­han: Excel­lent. Thanks Cam. Mer­ry

Cameron: Thanks, Scott.

Scott Mee­han: the fam­i­ly.

Cameron: Mer­ry Christ­mas.

Scott Mee­han: Uh, all your oth­er lis­ten­ers out there, you should vol­un­teer to come on. He does­n’t bite.

Cameron: Yeah, I was say­ing to Scott off air, he’s the only per­son that’s, uh, tak­en up my offer to come on, which is not sur­pris­ing to me after the years. ’cause I always send out invites and no one ever takes me up at it. Very few peo­ple take me up on it. But, uh,

Scott Mee­han: more

Cameron: come on. Share your sto­ries. Yeah, we’d love to have more peo­ple on the show.

Take care of your­self, Scott. Have a good one.

Bernard: Q A V is a check­list-based sys­tem of val­ue invest­ing devel­oped by Tony  Khyne­ston. over 25 years. To learn more about how it works and how you can learn the sys­tem, vis­it our web­site, Q A V Pod­cast dot com dot A U.

This pod­cast is an infor­ma­tion provider and in giv­ing you prod­uct infor­ma­tion we are not mak­ing any sug­ges­tion or rec­om­men­da­tion about a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct. The [01:00:00] infor­ma­tion has been pre­pared with­out tak­ing into account your indi­vid­ual invest­ment objec­tives, finan­cial cir­cum­stances or needs. Before you decide whether or not to acquire a par­tic­u­lar finan­cial prod­uct you should assess whether it is appro­pri­ate for you in the light of your own per­son­al cir­cum­stances, hav­ing regard to your own objec­tives, finan­cial sit­u­a­tion and needs. You may wish to obtain finan­cial advice from a suit­ably qual­i­fied advis­er before mak­ing any deci­sion to acquire a finan­cial prod­uct. Please note that all infor­ma­tion about per­for­mance returns is his­tor­i­cal. Past per­for­mance should not be relied upon as an indi­ca­tor of future per­for­mance; unit prices and the val­ue of your invest­ment may fall as well as rise. The results are gen­er­al advice only and not per­son­al prod­uct advice.

Trans­paren­cy is impor­tant to us. We will always be very open and hon­est about the stocks we own. We will also always give our audi­ence [01:01:00] advance notice when we intend to buy or sell a stock that we are going to talk about on the pod­cast. This is so we can nev­er be accused of pump­ing a stock to our own advan­tage. If we talk about a stock we cur­rent­ly own, we will make it known that we own it.

This email is autho­rised by Antho­ny  Khyne­ston. Autho­rised Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Num­ber zero zero 1 2 9 2 7 1 8 of M F & Co. Asset Man­age­ment Pro­pri­etary Lim­it­ed (A F S L five 2 zero 4 4 2).
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