Go hack yourself! July 19, 2024

0:07Welcome to Motley Fool Money, the podcast that has many more healthy habits than we have time for. That's a very simple and frankly cheating lead into what is going to be today's episode. Of course, it wouldn't be an episode of Motley Fool Money without Mr. Andrew Page Esquire. Mr. Page, how are you? Pretty good. That was a little bit of a croaky intro there. I, you know, I was actually about to say to you off here, I thought, hold that. Then I started talking, I was like, I'm going to have to give it away anyway. You know what it is? What? Children's sport. Ah, yes. Shouting in the cold barrel air.

0:45My son's soccer game on Saturday morning. I have been hoarse ever since. So my high notes are not as good as they were. Yesterday, I wasn't as hoarse yesterday. The high notes were a problem. Today, I haven't tried the high notes, but the voice is a little bit hoarse. Yes, lucky we're not doing an audio podcast, so we'd have to rely on my voice for the next hour and a half. You're not one of those parents, are you? No, I am actually, well, it depends what you mean by one of those parents. so I have taken it upon myself to be the chief cheerleader for the team okay so I'm not a I'm not a I used to be a referee so I actually know what those parents until you got banned exactly that's right for braining someone no I know what those parents are like so I'm like you know what I'm gonna go and I'm gonna I'm just gonna this is very Pollyanna which is probably you keep with me I'm just gonna make give all the kids lots and lots of positive feedback so the whole game nice it's all like hey nice work Johnny hey nice work Jilly you know great work do that yeah great pass there you know whatever whatever that's just my thing and i'm sure it's annoying uh one of the parents did say i'm glad you do that because that's how i learned all the kids names so it's pretty funny um so yes i i make a point of doing that i and i do it all game and it just you know positive reinforcement if it's worth anything is and i'm not you know not every child wins a prize or every got an approximation award just that idea of hey if it's a good pass it's a good pass if it's yeah you know you shot a goal looks good defense or something but yes i i uh i and i think i obviously yelled a little bit louder than usual on the weekend potentially.

2:12I'm not sure if that's exactly what happened, but that's why I am hoarse. So if the voice is going to put you off, maybe give this episode a miss, but otherwise I'll battle through. That's nice. I'm just waiting for one of the parents there to sort of like capture it and send it out on social media. I'll be retweeting that. Let it help it go viral. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Anyway, anyway. So it's all fun. Mate, again, we're doing a pre-record, pre-record. So this is actually being recorded. This is why I am so hoarse. It's a Monday when we're recording this rather than the usual Thursday day when voice had time to recover um so let's uh let's let's was i said what do we do he said you know what let's do healthy habits and i thought that was a spectacularly good idea because we kind of i think a lot of time we triage stuff right and that's that's not a bad thing triage is useful uh particularly the mailbag episodes we get lots of people who come around say hey i'm doing this should of that or how could i do this and i hope that's useful um certainly if you're still listening to this podcast i hope you found it useful or you're really ready to find some podcasts you actually enjoy but um what we haven't done a lot of is kind of not exactly first principles we're not gonna this is not root and branch there's no there's not a classroom there's no textbook don't we're not gonna get a lot about it but you can't wait hey let's do healthy habits the things that we should do regularly and i just really like that because we haven't done anything like that in a very very long time we've done some you know getting started investing we've done some quotes and bits and pieces but i just like i like the frame up of the healthy habits idea and i think there is hopefully a lot of value in in that the things that we could do should do do do regularly um that that can i think make us better there's there's a great quote is what's your what's your thoughts because they become actions what's your actions they become habits something like that i think that's true because habits can be good or bad and i think that's the other thing is you don't uh what's buffett's quote uh chains of habit are too lightly go on so you got it yeah the chains of habit are too lightly felt until they're too heavy to be broken That's the one.

4:03That's the one. So the flip side, of course, is start off with intending to have some healthy habits. We may do some bad habits along the way if they come to us, but we're going to try and start with the habits and work that way. Mate, so I will throw this straight to you. I suspect at some point I may get a straw man plug from you. I would presume, actually, one of the habits is keep your diary. Am I right there? Yeah. Well, I mean, whether it's a straw man or not, I just, I always, I'm going to double, triple, quadruple down on that because it is, to my mind, it is by far the best way to improve your outcomes.

4:43It is the best habit that you can have. Yes. Let me just, before I iterate or expand on that a little bit more, just take a step back here and just remind people that with investing, what you want to continually focus on is the process and not be too distracted by individual outcomes. Yeah. Which sounds completely contradictory. It's really hard to untangle. Don't worry about what happens. Just do the right thing. It's like, what do you mean? It's so hard. I mean, again, we've said this before, but this is a game where you can do everything right and lose money and you can do really dumb things and make money.

5:21Exactly. You know, it's something that over time, let me start again. If you've got a good process, that will still be the case, but you'll find that you're playing with loaded dice. I'm playing with loaded dice that are more likely to end land on a four, five or six, not guaranteed can still land on a one, two or three. But as soon as I know that I'm just going to keep rolling the dice and I'm always going to bet on four, five or six. I just am. And I might have a hundred roles in a row where it doesn't go my way. What's the next smart move? What's the smartest move for the next role? Well, it's still the same.

5:58Right. And so you, you want to, you want to keep that in mind. And so it's sort of like, I think this is just to come back to the diary this is where the diary is really helpful because it'll help you match up sort of the intent the rationale with the outcome itself we'll have all been in this situation I'm sure where you bought a company and you sort of the reasons were x y and z and then it went your way and if you're honest with yourself well none of the reasons that you said he caused that yeah and out of the blue completely unlooked for acquisition takeover came came onto the scene yeah um you know something like that you will you will convince yourself that it was your genius and you saw something that no one else saw or you don't necessarily convince yourself you just let it pass as if it's okay and the mad stuff still sticks in your craw that that idea of you know even if it's like oh my god how good am i it might just be oh that's cool but then the bad stuff still gets you your back up right it's it's that asymmetry between the again we've talked so many times before about the the the joy of gain and the pain of loss that that idea of you know uh we feel things two or three times more significantly when we lose yeah then we then we make the equivalent amount so you make something like oh that's good you lose it oh my god this is awful that that kind of compounds all of that rationale as well yeah and and on the other side uh of the equation as well when it goes against to you so for example again we're recording this live it's the 24th sorry recording it live well we are recording it live there's no i are involved we are doing it live exactly it's very complex uh 24th of june i just i woke up this morning i saw satire the luxury goods online retailer shares are down 40 right 40 this is a big company you know it's not not the biggest of companies but it's not some like weird nano cap stock that just regularly moves 40 in a day oh my goodness So, right.

7:53Okay. So, they've come out and said that we're going to have our full year result is going to be very strong growth, but not nearly as strong as what perhaps everyone was expecting. Yeah. I won't get into the details, but the point of it is there was nothing short of some inside information. Yeah. There was nothing that would have alerted you to that. So, on their third quarter update, which was very positive, very optimistic, they're having some other issues. But, you know, otherwise, in terms of sales, they're doing a good job. And it just came out of left field. And you'll be, a lot of people today will be going, oh, 40 % down.

8:27How could I not done that? I made such a stupid mistake. And I, not to try and give people extra ammo to protect their egos, but in some cases, and in fact, in a lot of cases in investing, you've just got to take it on the chin because there is no way you could have really seen these kinds of things coming, not with any kind of certainty. So again, it's this idea of like, when I'm about to invest in something. In fact, before I even done an individual investment, what's the game plan here? What am I trying to achieve? What's the timeframe? What's the kind of risk that I'm after? What's the kind of exposure that I'm after?

9:01How active do I think I want to be? What's the balance of passive versus active? Very, very high level stuff. And then on the individual company, well, why do I like this? Relative to the 2 ,000 other umpteen options that are sort of out there. What is the driver of growth here? What am I expecting to see? And then things will unfold in the way and manner in which they ultimately unfold. But you can back check that. You can look at that. There is nothing better than something going your way for the reasons that you thought. That's right. That is. And I laugh because I'm not, you know, it's not as common as people might otherwise assume.

9:34Absolutely. I thought this is undervalued because the market is failing to recognize this. But over the coming years and quarters, I think the company will continue to deliver expanding operating leverage and better margins, et cetera, et cetera. And then it happens, right? You'll never get it exactly right. But that shows you that your process is good, that your reasoning is sound. And that is something to continually come back and reflect on. And you'll never be able to do that unless it's not in writing, just on a Google Doc or something, or a Word Doc, a text doc. It doesn't matter what it is.

10:04And it doesn't have to be a 400-page thesis, a one-page outline. What's the company do? Why do I like it? Why do I think shares a good value? I mean, I would probably encourage you to put as much detail as you can in there. But just by doing a one-pager, you're ahead of 98 % of people that are out there. And it is that much too, you know, that idea of – I think that's a really important point. So I guess you know what I would say, Ram, is I think all that's absolutely true. I'm going to speculate, and you can disagree with me, that actually the value of it is not in actually writing it down at all.

10:41I think the value is actually in giving yourself a process, speaking of habits. that you go through to give yourself... There's no problem worrying about it afterwards, right? I bought Wooly shares. Why did I buy them? Oh, well, because of this and this and this reason. That's one... That's not unreasonable. It's not a bad idea to do. But if you make yourself write down before you buy them, to actually really crystallize your thoughts, it becomes... You and I write in part for a living, and I was about it before the pod, actually.

11:09My articles are better because I tweet, and my thinking is better because I write. and that is largely because you are forced to actually put your thoughts down and explain yourself and sometimes you realize you don't know what you don't know we don't know what you do know or or you you have to try and resolve that for yourself and say what's actually going on here or again i love twitter because like hey here's what i think so it's what about that oh that's a good point actually yeah i'll incorporate that or whatever else it is but the time i go to write i've generally had i have too often or very often not too often it's not bad but i very often write only, not only, mostly what I've already tweeted.

11:44So I kind of had this first draft, which gets iterated in front of, you know, thousands of people, which, you know, it can go badly if you're really, really stupid. But generally speaking, if you approach it with good faith, it's super useful. And I guess my point is that it's not, yes, it's the writing it down so you can check it later. I actually think maybe as much of the value, I might argue more, but you might again disagree. A lot of the value is actually in actually having to go through it before you make the purchase and say why do i like we'll lose again oh let me okay what about okay well and it's harder to to kid yourself when you put down a paper and say here's what i'm thinking you can do it i mean anyone can write fiction right but um i find that a particularly useful part of that process as well no i i absolutely agree that is 100 it you i've always loved this quote from stephen king which was um writing is refined thinking i love that that's true what's what's going on inside your head at any given moment is just the cacophony of ideas and notions and i mean we always like to think it sort of coherently hangs on on some really nice structure it's sort of elegant and not but it's not until you try and put that onto a page that you realize how you will convince yourself it's more coherent than sometimes it is yeah and and that process forces you to bring coherency to it.

13:05And you will, I have certainly many times only, I've been really excited about an idea. I've heard about it. I had a little thought about it. You know, I'm in the shower, I'm driving, I'm thinking about it. It's like, oh, I love this idea. I'm going to put this on paper. And then you put it on paper and it's like, it just doesn't seem as good anymore. Or you realize that, oh, to strengthen this argument, I really need to say something about that. Okay, I'm going to go and look at that. Okay, that's not exactly what I thought. Well, let's have a look at this and you just the process even if i was to after going through the process tear it up burn it it's still an immensely valuable process and um what's the other one there's another one um i forget who said this but it was a writer and they said i write to discover what i know and i write to discover what i don't know that's clever and i just thought oh wow that is so beautiful yeah that's cool isn't it and and And I think half people listening will know this already to be true.

14:05But particularly in the investing context, just try it. Just try it. And remember that you yourself are going to be the most easy person to fool down the track. And this is also – so, yes, it is just getting your thinking clarified, but it is to also keep you in check. So, look, in terms of good habits, start writing stuff down. Keep a diary. I like that. i'm gonna i have one more thought talk mate then we'll get another one um it's like well it's kind of a it's partly a thought it's partly maybe it's maybe it's a broad umbrella kind of topic or or maybe it underpins everything we talk about maybe now and forever i'm just always amazed not overly surprised but kind of consistently scared by the research that tells us that almost all of our decisions are emotional decisions that we then rationalize anyway and i i kind of find i find that on one level freeing because you know humans are humans and we're all we're all you know um um we're all flawed in our own special ways but i have to say just that starting point of you know and by the way again i've said but there's four people listening oh no that's not me that's not me i wouldn't do that no i don't do that other people might do it i mightn't do it you know we all like it just the research is really overwhelmingly clear that most the vast vast boxes we make are because we have an emotional response to something and then we dress it up with with rationality and i i don't i don't i guess i say that for a couple of reasons one is don't give yourself too much credit um don't give yourself too much blame either when those things work or don't work recognize that you're you're flawed tim mentioned that the comedian muso does a great commencement speech it was uwa university of western australia oh yeah it's great um it's fantastic i watch it every probably once a year or so um but he just talks about the the luck and chance and circumstance and you know just not being too hard on yourself but not giving yourself too much of a rap and don't be too hard on other people for the same reason i think there's there's there's all of that um all that coming through i think at the at the same time you know and if you consider the the challenges of trying to be right trying to be rational again even when you've written down your thoughts right um one of the things the reason i'm mentioning in this context is just just check yourself when you're doing this process don't be kept try to be if you can your own critic because if i've gone you know what i think willies might be worth buying yeah i think it is actually let me go through a process see if it is or not i've already loaded the gun right i'm already looking for and you know this as well as i do ram when you're working with us you know we do we do a monthly recommendation of some of our some of our ideas right and once you've decided okay willies might be the wreck for this month you're like okay cool that's good okay Let me write about it.

16:43If you're just writing about the wreck, you are 100 times more confident in the wreck than you were when you decided to write it up. Why? Because the process of writing, if you're not careful, can actually just be a massive exercise in confirmation bias, right? Why do I like Woolies? Oh, let me count the ways. Once I've thought of 25 reasons I like it, I like it a whole lot more. It's like you've been put on the affirmative side of the debating team. Right, it's exactly what it is. It's like, okay, I'm on that side? Okay, here's the argument. Oh, no, no, you're on the negative. Oh, okay, sorry, this is the argument.

17:09That's right. You'll fit it. That's exactly what it is. And accept that you don't do it consciously. On a debating team, you're trying to find reasons because you're actually in that job, right? This is more insidious because it is, hey, I think I might like this one. Let me see if I do. You're literally already too late. Or at least if you're not careful, you're not critical of your own ideas, you're almost too late because you'll find every reason to like it. And the risks, are there any risks to Woolworths? Oh, no, it's big and it's dominant. And yeah, it's a bit expensive, but it's not too bad.

17:37And it's got good management. And so there's not really many risks at all. why do i like it well oh the brand and the stores and and this you know valuation is not too bad but gee i mean if it only can grow at this rate it could be good value and you just go through the process and i guess a bit of inside baseball at the fool and you know but also just to just to remind our listeners that you know just be so careful always remember that those psychological biases are at play all the time and your emotional decision making will trump your rational decision making every time and you'll never escape it completely so don't try but do try to minimize or deal with it and writing can be part of that process of do i really believe this is this really true um because you end up if you're not careful just just confirming your own your own ideas rather than genuinely interrogating them or genuinely for first principle saying do i like this business as much as i thought i might rather than oh look how much i love it that's amazing i'm sure my shares do you know it's even more insidious than that is after the fact when you've bought the shares or you've taken ownership of the shares in the case of a recommendation service, like, well, we're behind this now.

18:42Okay, we're on this team, we're on team bull. Okay, team bull we are. And then a bad piece of news comes out. Now, if you didn't own the shares, you go, that looks really bad. Glad I don't own that. If you own the shares, like, oh, no, it's not as bad as the market thinks and it's overreacting. And every investor becomes a long-term investor when the investment doesn't go the way that they want. You know, it's sort of, well, you know, I guess we all like to say we're long-term investors, but it's sort of like, well, down 30%, company not performing. It's like I'm a really long-term investor, give it 10 years and we'll do all kinds of stuff.

19:22As usual, the people in white lab coats have subjected all kinds of first-year psychology students to numbers of torturous, insidious kind of experiments. One of them is called the choice blindness experiment, which is really cool. So what they did, they showed a bunch of participants two faces and they said, which one is the most attractive face? Okay. Right, right. Go through a hundred of them. And then afterwards, I think at the next day they said, okay, we want you to explain why you chose that one. We're doing some study into human attractiveness. Okay, cool. I I really like that face. What they did though is in a statistically valid way, they mixed it up.

20:02So they had controls and blinds and all of that. But they mixed it up for a bunch of people. So they would show them the face that they didn't think was more attractive and then ask them to explain why that was. And of course people would go, oh, well, I explained that one because of this. I chose this one because it was like, even though they didn't choose that kind of stuff. So it's – and we're like convinced of it. Yes, exactly. We're convinced of it. Exactly. It's like, I guess I chose that one and now I will backfill. And that's exactly what it is. Anyway, so I don't need to overdo it necessarily, but just I think it's worth just always, always, always – I know Bitcoin is all about the money.

20:44In investing, it's all about the behavior, right? It's all about the behavior because it's – the way you apply what you know. and the way you manage your biology, other people's biologies and all that kind of stuff, seriously, seriously important because it just, you know, I'm never going to be smarter. I'm never going to have more computing power. I'm never going to have more access to information than anybody. Well, not than anybody else, but then, you know, the vast bulk of the market. So where does the advantage come from? For the individual investor, it comes from a couple of things. Firstly, the ability to think differently and the ability to think more long-term.

21:20Yes. like those two things frankly i don't want to say different i don't mean contrarian for the sake of it i just mean just have a look and have a think understand what's going on try and work out what comes next and the ability to think long term which is i don't have to worry about next month or the next quarter or next half like most fund managers do i can think out years now if i'm lucky and right shares start going up straight away and that's wonderful but as you and i've laughed about many times um between the two of us we are responsible for most share prices falling on most days when we buy those shares they tend to fall just because they do um that's that's going to keep happening.

21:51The ability to think long-term and actually see the long-term potential of some of this stuff is really important. Yep. Yep. 100%. Give me another one, mate. What's another healthy habit for investors to have? I like, this is probably just a nice safe one, but just read regularly. I don't think you need to have, well, I was going to say, I don't want to shill for them because I actually think the quality is reducing. But the AFR, I read the AFR every, I don't, when I say, I don't read it cover to cover. I've got an online subscription. I open it up, what's happening. And I just read, you know, I think a lot of the takes are great, but I, what are other people talking about?

22:32That is a source of information that is very widely read across the investment community. Even, I just want to see what, what is the content that other people are absorbing and what, how that might sort of color things. But I, I'm trying to walk back a little bit for it because it sounds like i'm advocating for a paid for subscription i don't think you have to do that at all there's there's all kinds of free information out there and a lot of it is bad this is the other part that's tricky is you've you've got to be pretty finely tuned with your filters not so fine-tuned that you become a cynic or everything's a terrible take but just or it's an echo chamber where you don't actually take your new ideas yes yeah absolutely right and and um but it's just it's never gonna well it's more almost never going to be a negative You're not going to be worse off by being widely read on any subject matter.

23:22You know? You really are. You're really not. And to broaden that out a bit too, I don't think – in fact, it probably wants to go the other direction. You don't want it to be the topical newsy kind of stuff, but rather the evergreen kind of stuff. Yeah, totally. You know, where you just read – and here's a really cool one – reread some of the great investment books that were written 30 years ago. right and i've read them all you've read them all um but some of them i read 15 years ago and i i can tell you are that this book is sort of about that and he or she talks about this but i guarantee you in fact i know in certain circumstances where i have reread things more recently yes i remember a bunch of stuff but i'm also a very different person than i was 10 or 15 years ago so what i take away from that book as someone who's got a bit more experience under their belt and some hard-fought lessons that have been had.

24:17You read it with different eyes and you come away with it stronger. So it's something that you want to do regularly, I think, just to bring you back to the really important concepts, but also to be able to understand those concepts at a far deeper level than what you may have when you were brand new and green to these kinds of things. Yes. That's a great example. You saw mine. I reread. It was going to be mine. after you said read it or at least you've written down reread it's like oh no you've got it great no i i think that's right i think i'll draw back to investing itself you know there's the i'm pretty sure it's a peter lynch quote the best stock to buy may be the one you already own yep um the best book to read is maybe the one you've already read yep i think is equally as true i think i think so there's a couple of things i think it's really important to work it's really so firstly there is no there is no formula let me let me say that to give you one right so so start with that the there is always room to learn new things you know widening the circle of competence as we've talked about many times so i don't want to dissuade people from reading too much stuff that being said i think it's really important to work out why you're reading and what you're trying to get out of it i've said i've said lots of times that um i i've stop reading most business biographies right and and i kind of call it with apologies to those who would have to i'll use the euphemism they are business adult movies uh in other words it's you know the order of success adult movies same kind of idea like hey let's let's take this thing this person did really really well and we kind of instinctively or told overtly we could be that person or you know what can we learn from that success most of what you learn is they worked hard like everyone else and they were lucky like not very many other people and that's it and i don't take a single thing away this people really get their backs up when i say this because people get their backs like i own what i did or are you saying that person's not smart or you know they have a real visceral reaction to it which is interesting in itself quite frankly as i so just kind of keep keep your eye on that for yourself and see if you're someone who's having that reaction because that might tell you some things about yourself or not but have a think about that but for me it's that idea of um you know what i really have to learn from those people they're not nothing so don't get me wrong i still read some of them but a lot of it is just it's a combination of again success adult movies and just straight out rubbernecking and you know just just kind of you know the the peek over the fence i wonder what that person do i wonder what their life was i want to and that that's normal humans are curious animals it's okay but i actually find it kind of not even misleading just almost almost you know read read a business biography the way you would read a tabloid magazine right read it for the entertainment don't read it for the lessons necessarily now some are great um and there's a really good bios i have loved and learned really some really cool things from but what the reason i bring that up is take the lessons and meld them into what you already know to ram your point kind of of you know going back and looking at something five, 10, 15 years later and picking up the stuff you missed at the time.

27:22It's partly from experience. It's partly because you get to integrate the other stuff you've learned in the meantime. Yeah, true. And that's what I love about investing is one of the very few things where the longer you do it, the better you get. I mean, that's true in most pursuits. And eventually that stops, right? You play rugby league till you're 32 and then your body gives out or whatever it is. As an investor, yes, eventually you hit senility, but it's decades and decades away. And knowledge is cumulative. So when I read, one of my favorite rereads, good to great, great reread. um i reread the letters of warren buffett about once a year i listened to again i think i said the other day a while ago now poor charlie's almanac the other which is the charlie munger stuff just brilliant and and none of this is new and different um necessarily it's all the same stuff but kind of i've used the analogy as well before it's like going to church on sunday right the sermons aren't any different um there's no extra books in the bible i've all of a sudden discovered they're just bringing out some of the key things and reminding you of what you need to know and that's kind of as much as there is to it yes you want to add some new ideas when they come up i am pretty sure that there's not that many new ideas quite honestly so um just be a little bit careful about the new stuff because i don't want to i don't want to be the curmudgeon so nothing there's nothing new nothing new that being said i'm not sure there's much new i'm not sure i think i said the other day you put ben graham in in you know 2024 he might struggle but 1970s warren buffett would be completely fine today if you just literally plonked him in um you know we can all refined our processes and whatever but the principles of investing don't change all that much and so i would i would encourage our listeners to go to those things that are the canon is the canon for a reason right um sometimes sometimes things get cliched because they are and maybe they're not as useful as they once were and you need to be able to discard some of that stuff uh but buffett munger and lynch and fisher and graham uh they are no less relevant now some of their examples are dated but the ideas uh i know it's less relevant they used to be so i I agree with you, mate.

29:14I think Reread was going to be mine. It's a really, really important one. I'm going to throw one in. Before you move on to – Oh, sorry. Away from reading. Yeah, I just – The other thing I would encourage is if you can read stuff from people who disagree with you. Yeah. One, because if you're like me, you're just like a sucker for punishment. You like to hate read various people because you just like to shake your fist at the sky. Yeah. But it's good to expose yourself to the other side of the argument because, again, just to – I think what you'll subconsciously do is you're like, oh, I like this company.

29:52Oh, that person wrote a glowing report. Yeah, they're right. Oh, yeah, brilliant. So, look, I've read all this extra stuff. But you've only read stuff from the people who are covering it and like it also. Read the other stuff and take that seriously. Gosh, maybe they're right. Maybe I need to focus more on that kind of thing. You'll find, particularly in the social media age of Reddit or any number of sites, there'll be stuff out there, someone saying an opinion. a lot of it will be rubbish. You've got to make your peace off this too, by the way, because if you're worried as soon as you find a contrasting viewer, you're never going to hold anything, right?

30:21Exactly. But, yeah, I mean, sometimes there are good points that are made and you want to have a good objective argument as to why it's not the case or at least why it's not as significant as the other side might believe. But you want to know what it is and you want to, you know, again, Charlie mentioned Munger, right? You want to be able to articulate the bear case better than the bears. And if you can't, then you've got no business holding it. It doesn't mean that you have to believe it, but you have to be aware of it. So, yeah, I just wanted to add that. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

31:02I want to throw a thought which is very modern and very new and very – It was just something different entirely, but you mentioned that. So I'm going to stick with reading-ish. I'm going to call it information gathering more broadly. I would encourage our listeners to avoid the rabbit holes. And I guess what I mean by that is one of the great things about social media is that we can go and find our own tribe and our own people and our own thoughts and our own whatevers, right? And that can be great, except as we all know politically, it's led to more increased tribalism and other things. as an investor you've got to be really careful because i don't know if an investor actually just in life the you know there's the old quote that you become like the five people you spend most time with um i would suspect that your views tend to mold to the social media accounts you most often follow or the the kind of self-referencing uh threads that you end up getting into and i just I guess it's worth just calling it out because social media, you know, read widely is different from read a lot of the thing that someone's saying.

32:10And think about, I'm loathe to mention any influences, particularly the controversial ones, because I'll annoy somebody. I don't really care that much, but I also don't want to have the point missed by using the example. By the way, it's a really, really random tangent. Please don't be someone who gets caught by the example, not the point. I've tweeted so regularly. Last Friday, I got really frustrated. I very rarely do on Twitter because it'll be pretty good. But I'd say, hey, here's an example of a thing. It's like, yeah, but the example is example, example is example, that's like, no, that wasn't, you missed the point.

32:41Now, maybe I could have communicated myself better, communicated better, sorry, explained myself better. But just when people kind of, you know, it becomes that idea of like, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but it's like, no, that was the illustration. This is not, that was not the point, you know? So just look, I've got to do a better job of communicating clearly, but also just be careful with that sort of communication. you don't just grab the example and miss the point being made you know um back to my point though i think the echo chamber the rabbit hole call it what you want just be careful on social media in particular um because it's very very easy to get dragged into a way of thinking or a mindset or whatever the doom and gloomers are like this right if you follow enough of those people on twitter and they go down their own personal rabbit holes and then you spend x days weeks months looking at that sort of stuff it was charlie munger actually speaking munger i had not really ever thought this clearly about it not surprising because munger's wasn't much clearer thinker than i am he talked about i think it was paranoia or it was something and i'm going to do it horrible justice i wasn't prepared for this it's just kind of become a stream of consciousness as i've been talking he talked about effectively protecting your own brain from i'm pretty sure it was paranoia at the time i think was the example he used but that only like once you unleash the hounds you kind of can't get them back and i just thought it was a really one of the one again speaking of i hadn't noticed it the first time around in the book um but coming back to it the second time and it just struck me towards the end of the book and just struck me that that's one of those things you know it's um you know i i could say to you around hey mate tell me if i ever get really irrational and then one day say scott you're really rational no i'm not i'm perfectly rational because I'm irrational and I can't hear it anymore.

34:21And once you kind of let go of that mental balance, and I don't even know, I'm not a psychologist, clearly, or a psychiatrist, I'm not sure how to actually avoid it other than just be really careful not to let yourself get dragged into... Conspiracy theorists are a great example of this, right? They see them everywhere and you can't tell them and they've gone. The anti-vaxxers are a similar group. Once you kind of started on that path and all you do is hear those people talk about that stuff, you just cease to have balance. And I think that mental, I guess balance is the best way I can come up with, can be really, really, really hard to get back once you've gone in that particular rabbit hole.

34:57Because it just becomes self-reinforcing in the ugliest of ways, in the most echo-chambering of ways from social media. So I don't know, Ram, I don't know if that makes any sense. I'm not necessarily relevant at this point in time. But I just thought I'd chuck it in because it just struck me when I read it. and just has stuck with me since that idea of protecting yourself kind of from being dragged down into those more extreme ideologies or viewpoints. Yes. Yes. And I chuckle because I've noticed that in myself recently. Welcome to therapy session then. I don't want to distract. I don't want to distract from the top.

35:37But, you know, people know that I'm kind of like this Bitcoin kind of thing. Yes. And it's kind of cool. And I'm trying to sort of, you know, learn as much as I can. Yeah. But there's the Venn diagram between people who like Bitcoin and people who are rabid libertarian and arco-capitalists is a pretty big overlap there, you know? I did mention Bitcoin in the week of losses in the last couple of days. And I paid for it for about 24 hours on my toilet seat. And look, I'm on board. I'm an orange card carrying member, right? I am. But it's like you get into these sort of tribal kind of things where to like this means you must also like eating steak.

36:17Yes, that is so true. You can't lean to the left and be a vegetarian and also like Bitcoin, right? Yes, yes. And I'm generalizing here and I'm only sort of pointing towards a sort of very vocal minority. Yeah. But you follow various people because you like what they say on one topic and then you start getting exposed to the other stuff that they think. And then you start thinking, well, if your thinking is that, to my mind, wrong on that, how can I trust what you say over there? Which is the other one, which is actually people say, well, I like what you said on that, so therefore I like what you're saying on everything.