Mailbag, incl: Can you explain short-selling? November 30, 2025

25:07Let's go back to having 12 highly elite, self-interested political actors controlling the price and quantity of money. Like I just, I find that. That's different though to losing your money in the process. Even if the idea survives, and you've answered the question separately, but I don't think that personally, that says because we'll find a way to survive as a concept, as an idea, I agree with that. Yeah. It doesn't mean that, you know, I couldn't lose everything in the way through. You know, people invented money with stones and the stones became worthless. It didn't mean money was dead. It just meant, well, crap, I've just lost all my money, my value I thought I had in stones.

25:44The idea survived, but those who owned the stones found themselves effectively, you know, penniless. Yeah, but if the people won the stones could reinstate, if we can roll back two weeks before, then we would do it, yeah. That's why I think that's more important to one's answer, I suspect, than the idea at Sock, because the idea will survive. What I want to know is when the idea survives, am I made whole or mostly whole because of that rollback? Your answer is yes. If you and enough people agree or just sufficient enough, I mean, there are, people may have heard of things like Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision and all these other, let's be polite and call them altcoins.

26:21completely failed. Completely, like, you know, they are a rounding error in terms of market cap relative to Bitcoin because, not because a dictator or a king said, shall be so, just because when I say the market, I just mean the community just naturally aggregated around. That's why it's part of the, I was going to say, that's why it's such a big idea. It's one of the many reasons why it's such a big idea is because it is decentralised. It is only via consensus. I mean, just what a powerful idea, right? It's like, well, let's agree on how we want it to look. And as long as we all agree on it, that's what it will be.

27:03And you can only do that. You can only do that kind of trick once. Once the trick has been performed, it's kind of like, oh. That's why it's a one-time invention as well. You're going to lure me into a deep philosophical thing. Let's just move past that. I'm cutting you off. I mean, I would say this and then I'll shut up because I often get these kinds of things and my retort is really, look, I'm extremely confident that it's okay, but you need to be okay with that, right? And the only way you're going to be okay with it or otherwise is to do the work, you know? One random self-interested person who wants to pump their own bags on a podcast is not the person.

27:37I can probably help you point in the right direction, but don't trust verify, right? And if you can't get comfortable with it, absolutely don't touch it. And by the way, we love you asking your questions on the podcast, but ChatGPT is also your friend. Oh, yeah. In terms of explaining some of these things, if you want to dig into one or anyone listening, take what Ram said, start there, and then go and ask some of those questions because it's useful to bring out some of the stuff. Hey, one finishes off, mate, with a really fun question mark fact, but I do think it's fun. The Magnificent 7 is no longer a thing.

28:06They've been replaced with, I'm not going to tell you the acronym yet, but it's Broadcom, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia. I'm trying to do an acronym in my head. I did a little bit. Batman. Ah, the Batman index. One says, which you have to admit is the coolest so far, as much as I also hate these terms. I think Batman is pretty good actually. That is definitely better than the Magnificent Seven or Fang. What was the Aussie version of it? Wax. Wax. Wise Tech, Altium. Appen. What's the other A? Afterpay. Afterpay. Zero. Well done. All right, let's go to a question from Matt who says, hello to the infamous pod machine.

28:51What's between famous and infamous, right? Have you seen The Three Amigos? I have. Great movie. Very long time ago. It's kind of like more than famous. It's like really famous. I'm butchering the line. It's something like this. Like, oh, right. The infamous El Guapo. I'm a big fan of your podcast, says Matt. I love listening to your insightful conversations and entertaining rants. Don't encourage him. On my way to university, you're definitely more engaging than my professors. I should hope so, but I'm also... Low bar if they're economics professors. Now, Scott, you may not love hearing this, but at 24, bastard, I've already begun building up my portfolio over the past few years, mainly with ETFs.

29:34My question is, given my age, and I will say, Matt, we can't give you personal advice. Given my age, how would you recommend I determine the right distribution of my income between investments, savings, and other priorities? Right now, I allocate about 15 % of my income to my portfolio each month, with the rest going into savings to cover expenses and occasional travel while I'm studying. I'm set to graduate in 2026. Congratulations, mate. And I expect to travel less once I start working full time. At that stage, I want to focus more on investing, trying to save for a home, and maintaining a solid emergency fund.

30:10As such, how would you suggest balancing these goals? Thanks for taking the time to read my question. And yes, you're welcome to use my name on the show. Too late, Matt, we already have. Kind regards, Matt. Yeah, there you go. How does he balance investing, trying to save for a home, and maintaining a solid emergency fund, Ray? As with most things, it's an entirely personal decision. The way I've given what Matt sort of said there, he's obviously... Don't give me advice, Matt. I will say one more time, so we'll talk generally about 24 hours. But you're obviously a low-time preference individual.

30:43You've got a very worthy... What's that? What does low-time preference mean? It means that you can think long-term. Nice. Yeah. I think it's a Mises quote or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We are a very high-time preference society. We're all about instant gratification and there's a lot of social ills and economic ills that flow from that. And one day I'll have a few beers in me and I'll tell you all about them. But right now. Can I tell you, the After Hours podcast, I don't know if it could be more ranty and more over the top. Oh, yeah, you could. A lot of slurrier. A lot of slurrier and even more incoherent if you can imagine that.

31:22Especially an hour and a half if we start the beers earlier. It could deteriorate quite me. until we're hoarse and passed out.

31:32So I would dedicate as much as I possibly could to the investments. But you're right, you do need to account for your immediate, not only your immediate spending requirements but the unknown. Like it's all good and well to sort of have X dollars in a portfolio. But if something in your life happens and just so happens to align with a stock market crash, you know, which can happen, and you're a forced seller in that environment. I do think people, I often hear things like you should always have three years' worth of expenses in cash, which maybe is a bit overdone. Maybe in retirement that's different.

32:09Yeah, it is. But for someone who's in their 20s, I would imagine, you know, if you've got a buffer of six to 12 months, that's quite a good amount there because it's a dead weight on your portfolio. It really is. You might get something if you're working on a high interest savings account or something, but there's a big gap. Yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, I would lean into what will be termed riskier stuff when what they really just mean is more volatile stuff, which just generally means better performing, longer term kind of stuff, as much as you possibly can. But just remember that you're only in your 20s once and it goes by quick, man, I can tell you.

32:46I can tell you. And you don't want to be the kind of person who, you know, wastes, not waste isn't the right word, but it's why I say it's a personal, it's a personal choice. There is a very, there is a balance between experiencing life and planning for the future. Yeah. Matt, I can't tell you what you should do. If I was 24 and I was going to start work full time, I'd sell some of your shares and go travelling, which is also not what you're supposed to say when you're someone like me because you're right can I tell you you'll look back on that for the rest of your life with incredible fondness yeah and you're right you won't have much time to travel when you're working full time dude wait till you have kids exactly it's over you made it the nicest possible way I made that in the with as much love no regrets get out of the way nevertheless anyone who's got kids out there right now is going uh-huh and if you're in the car and it's a bit awkward I'm sorry for that kids but, you know, mum and dad did have a life before you came along.

33:54So enjoy that, Matt. Take no trouble. Once you – I would even go three to six months or other six to 12, Ram. Yeah. Depends what your commitments are, Matt, and depends on your life circumstances, what options you've got. If you're living out of home and you can move back with mum and dad, you probably don't need as much money. If you've got a mortgage or some other loans to pay other than hex, then you might need more. If you're employable, you're probably okay. So, you know, it's your call, obviously. So generally speaking, three to six months is what I'd say for an emergency fund. You're right in retirement round, it gets longer because you're selling down capital otherwise to fund your living expense deliberately and you're choosing to live only off your income, off your investments, which is why you need to kind of have more cash in retirement, in my view.

34:35Once you do that, Matt, build up three to six months, invest as much as you can. Here's the real superpower, Matt, is something you haven't asked, which is what should you do? You should learn to be happy with less. right, which sounds obvious and simple and slightly socialist and communist and all those good things people want to accuse me of. The less you learn to live with, the more you can put aside. Comparison is the thief of joy, right? And so if you're going to compare yourself to people with fancier sports cars or shinier watches or something, you're only hurting yourself. And the stuff doesn't make, apparently, I wouldn't know from experience, but apparently it doesn't make you any happier.

35:18Yeah, Ram's got to make do with just the helicopter, the strongman corporate helicopter. So here's why it pays you twice, Matt. So firstly, you can save more because you're spending less. Secondly, after you've saved more, you don't need as much to live on because you've already got used to living on less. And so you kind of, you know, not only can you save more at the time, but you need less in overtime and you can frankly retire earlier. There's plenty of people who retire in their 40s and 50s who just kind of go, well, you got used to living a very, you know, enjoyable wonderful life where i took joy in the simple cheap you know free things and i don't need the new stuff so i don't need that much money before i retire i don't i don't have a 10 million nest egg because i'm used to living on whatever it is and again not not it's all you mentioned comparison is the thief of joy around it's a great quote um the other thing is if you make it deprivation you're gonna hate it right if you can learn to go you know what i love a swim at the beach, walk in the park, you know, and whatever else, and a Netflix subscription, right?

36:15Great, done. None of that costs very much. If you want to have the best car, the fanciest clothes, the new gadgets, then you're going to need more. So, yeah. So, invest as much as you can now for two reasons. One is if it works, hey, you're doing up living on this, great. Even if you don't, the compounding of value of that early investment cash will be phenomenal, Absolutely phenomenal. And so, yeah, start as early as you can, save as much as you can. Last one from me, Moran mentioned kids. When you have kids, you're probably not going to have the disposable income to actually put aside. And so if you can do some of your - There's no problem about it.

36:52So if you can do your investing early, then you may get to a point where you don't have to keep adding to the portfolio, which means either you didn't because you couldn't or you can spend more of your income when you're in your 30s and 40s and 50s because you've already done the saving in advance. So there's a couple of thoughts. So just is not part of the question, but a regret of mine, not a big regret, but again, I was someone who had really had the wrong mindset for the fiat economy that we live in. I paid off my Hex debt as soon as I could because I just didn't like the idea of debt and I paid the damn thing off.

37:25And I'm just like now that I know what I know, I just think why did I do that for? That is the dumbest thing. And it was even more generous back in my day. Yeah, it was. Right? But even now it's indexed. It's worth doing a little bit more than it does now, to be fair. Well, even now is I... Now, I'm basing this on Gemini, so I think it's right. But I think it's the lower... It's not that you get charged interest, but it increases with the lower of CPI or the wage price index. And so that basically means that you've got an interest-free loan. Like, why pay that back when the money... You can either pay it back and...

38:05Interest rate in real terms. In real terms. Sorry, yes. Sorry, yes. But if you think you can safely, reliably get a better rate of return than whatever the wage price is, let's go with that because that's going to be the lower. Follow on from our discussion on Friday. I just think it's, you know, do that until it becomes just like a no-brainer. In fact, you'll be forced to pay it off as your income rises in adulthood. But even then, I think even if you were earning like$160 ,000 a year, out of uni, you're still only 10 % of the loan has to be, or 10 % of your income has to be put towards it, I believe.

38:41So like debt is always seen as a bad thing, but I've increasingly of the view that when you have non-recourse, extremely cheap debt, and you have an easy ability to invest that in very high probability, attractive return assets, low risk assets, not necessarily non-volatile, but low risk in the true sense of the word, that's a better use of, that's a better use of the capital. Nicely done. Hey, question from Kunal. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, Kunal. If I'm not, my apologies in advance. Kunal says, hi, Scott and Ram. My question for you is, when do you decide to sell stocks? With stocks at all-time highs and some stocks, Kof Kof, NVIDIA and Palantir, for example, being 10 times where they were just a couple of years ago, how do you decide if now is the time to get off the train?

39:31The thesis isn't broken and, by all accounts, the companies are performing well, just trading at such high multiples of where they were two years ago. Is disconnection from the amount produced by a discounted cash flow the deciding factor? Kind regards, Kunal. Yeah, this is an easy one, conceptually incredibly difficult practically. Simple but not easy is what Buffett would say. I mean, the first thing to say, and I say this all the time and I will say it until the day I die, whether you're up or down makes no difference to your sell decision. It shouldn't. It does because we're human, but it shouldn't because the market doesn't know what you pay.

40:07It doesn't care what you pay. And it's got absolutely nothing to say of where to from here. You could have locked in profits from Netflix all along the way up, you know, Bitcoin all the way up from$1 to$90 ,000 US, right? Like it's just at any point. Or down from$105 ,000 to$85 ,000. Right, you know. But either way, it's irrelevant. Like it just doesn't make a difference. If the thesis is unchanged and the price still makes sense, why would you terminate such a wonderful relationship? There's only two reasons for me. One, the thesis is fundamentally broken, and that just means that the reason I bought it for is just completely changed.

40:45Most likely that means I bought this because I thought it was going to be a company with a much brighter future that now becomes apparent or seems apparent. So it's just not the quality that I thought it was. okay, I probably don't need to own it. The other one is that it's just too good a price to pass up. I don't mean it's a little bit overvalued because valuation is a dark art and no one will really know what it's quote unquote really worth. But when it gets so ridiculously silly that there's just such a massive opportunity cost in staying on it, like let's say Nvidia went up 10x from here without any change in its sales growth expectations.

41:28It's like, it's not that you can't do well from there, but the odds of you being able to do well from there is very, very hard. And the asymmetry goes against you. It's like there's much more downside than upside, in which case, take cash as a holding position. Like, just get me out of that because it's not going to do much. In fact, it's going to bleed slowly, but it's certainly going to hold its value over the short term. And now I can put that into something that has a far better risk return dynamic. So sometimes when things get super, super silly in that, I will sell. I took some money off the table with Catapult recently and with Stealth recently.

42:03And I really like those companies, you know, but it's just, that was, it was a, and there's also the third one I should have mentioned is a weighting consideration. Like sometimes the best problem in the world to have, I think so good when it happens. An investment goes so well that, you know, you wake up one day and it's like 40 % of your portfolio. And it's like, yeah, okay. Even if the value still seems reasonable and the quality still seems reasonable, it's just like that's a lot of eggs in one basket. Other than that, yeah, don't have. I just think you, people always, I've made plenty of dumb investments.

42:44I've lost on several occasions, at least one or twice I've lost everything. And on a lot of occasions, I've lost half. I don't lose a second sleep and there's not an ounce of regret in any of that. What keeps me awake at night and makes me want to punch myself in the face every time I think about it and the demons come at night and they revisit me is the time that I sold a 30 % profit. And if I did nothing and if I just went into a coma for 10 years, I would now be worth multiples of what, that's what keeps me awake at night, right? It's like you idiot. And you know what? But in those examples, the reason in almost all of them I sold was because I'm in a profit.

43:24It seems expensive. It seems expensive. What I bought, you never go broke taking a profit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The market looks scary. The market always looks scary. The macro backdrop looks scary. The macro backdrop always looks scary. And I sold. And if I didn't, I would have basically by selling the opportunity, what I paid was incredible returns foregone. And I just had to do nothing. Yeah. It's painful. I completely agree. I'm trying to think what I can add to what Ram said. I mean, yeah, if it is simply a case of I own these shares, should I sell them, without a portfolio weighting issue or a better place for the money issue, it's just a question of do I think I can beat the market from here?

44:09And why beat the market? Because you can buy an ETF and get the market return. So you're only – the bogey is – there was a time when there was no ETFs where you basically just got to say, hey, I've got to try and make up something that resembles an index or try and buy some stocks that might go up. Maybe I'll beat the All Lords. These days you can literally invest in the All Lords with the ASX 300. So that is a very active and live bogey for you to chase. If you can beat it, beat it. If you can't beat it, then don't. The better approach to my mind is you mentioned discounted cash flow. Whatever evaluation method you want to choose, some use those.

44:45I'm happy to just use PEs or something, whatever you want to do, whatever you're using. Yeah. Is it at a price where market beating performance is likely from here? And to Ram's point, please ignore two years ago. It doesn't matter. And here's a really simple theoretical example. I'm going to use CBA because it's just fun, right, because Ram hates it and it's just fun baiting him. So CBA currently, I just looked it up, is$155 a share as we record this. Now let's say it had gone and it didn't, but let's say the price had crashed a year ago down to$5 and then it got from$5 to$100 over the first six months of the last year.

45:24You might say, it's up 20-fold in value. It's up too much. I can't hold the shares at$100. And they go to$154. Let's say they were$200 a year ago. They fell to$100. Well, I'm not going to sell them. I'm not going to buy them because they're falling. You can find any excuse in historical data to buy or not buy. I will say, I will say, if you're going to use charts for anything, do ask yourself what it's telling you about how people are thinking because, not because you want to try and guess what the market's doing next. We were going to talk about Drone Shield on Friday, but Ram had a very quick conversation about inflation and an hour and a half later we had to finish the podcast.

46:01I'm kidding, it was me too. And, yeah, you know, that was a story stock, right? Now, there are things going on, but at some point you look at that, at least ask yourself, what is this picture telling me about what investors are thinking? Now, it doesn't really matter what they're thinking other than as a kind of a – it's a bit of an orange flag for me. Just kind of like maybe the results are great. By the way, NVIDIA's results are spectacularly good, like stupidly good. We've tried a video previous on the podcast. Basically, I don't have an investment view on. I don't earn the shares. I wouldn't buy them at today's price, but I wouldn't – I wouldn't have a year ago, right?

46:38That's it, right? And I wish I had. Yes, exactly. We still have a fortunate way through it. So, yeah, I can't have much more other than don't use historical prices to make your decision. Yes, DCF, if that's your thing. Whatever it is, from here, can it beat the market? Is it likely to beat the market? No, for sure. Is it likely to based on the current price? Now, if you think NVIDIA, and by the way, NVIDIA's PE, I'm going to look it up, I'm pretty sure it's like 50. Now, that's not cheap by any stretch. It's also, by the way, half of what technology one is true. 80, yeah. It's actually potentially very cheap if they can sustain their rate of earnings growth.

47:10Right. And so don't – my point, though, is that they have tripled in price, you tell me, over the last couple of years. I'm on that. The last five years, they've gone from$13 to$180. They're up, what's that, 15 fold? 15 X, yeah, something like that. And they're still in a P of 44. Now, five years ago, right? Now, obviously, my point is earnings have grown massively during that period of time because back then at 1 15th of the price the PE would have been three based on this year's earnings right now it wasn't three then it was probably 50 or something because the earnings have grown phenomenally so I'm not saying you should buy it I'm not saying you should sell it I'm definitely not giving you any advice on Nvidia but just remember it's not about the past about the future from here can it grow can the share price grow to beat the market in all probability over five plus years I don't know with Nvidia I wouldn't bet against it I I wouldn't bet on it.

48:05It's the too hard basket for me. But don't do anything at all. Price is halved or doubled. It doesn't matter. As Ram said, it only matters what comes from here. Your too hard basket should be the fullest basket, I would say, as a general rule, because you're not that good. And I say that to myself as much as it might. No one's that good. Like anyone who has a high conviction view on, I'm going to say, even more than 30 stocks, unless you are a full-time, hardcore investing nerd that just eats this for breakfast. I mean, no reasonable person is going to be able to have that deep and detailed of you.

48:42So there's nothing, there's no shame in the too high basket. Before we move on, one other dimension to this I wanted to add, and I mention it because it's something I definitely struggle with, and that's the concept of thesis creep. Yeah. Thesis creep is this phenomena where you buy a share for a particular reason. And as the facts change, whether it's how you understand the business and the opportunity where the new information is released by the company, whether just everything stays the same but the price changes, what we do and particularly it's pernicious on the way down is that we will, by baby steps, adjust our thesis in an attempt to preserve our ego.

49:25So I bought this because I thought it was going to grow at least 10 % per annum for many, many years. And I thought that this current multiple was very reasonable in light of that expectation. And then all of a sudden something comes out of left field, like, oh, okay, earnings went backwards. That wasn't part of my thesis. Yeah, but the share price has come down. So I guess that still fits now and I can, yeah, it still makes sense. And you want to be right. You do not want to admit that you were wrong. No one does, right? And so you're just like, well, I still like it. and you've been public about it and you've spoken to friends and family about it, you know, like they love to remind you and I've had a lot of texts on Bitcoin recently.

50:06Like, you know, and then so you go, oh, yeah, but no, that was always, and you'll just start tricking yourself. So one of the things that we often talk about and it's worth throwing in here very quickly is just write your investment pieces down. It always sounds like this big onerous process and frankly, it should be somewhat onerous because life's not that easy. but you know even if it's a one page half a page I am buying this stock because I think this is a good value because whatever you rationalise it any way you want to put any narrative around it you want hopefully it's a good objectively based one but it needs to be like any good scientific theory it needs to be falsifiable and that way if something happens and you can look well let's open up the Google Doc what did I say well that's not true anymore sell Sell right then and then.

50:55Now, you can change your mind and go, I'm going to reformulate it, but just trying to reformulate it while you're an owner will not, you will not have clear unbiased thinking. You will if you sell it. It's such a cathartic, I've often thought about the, in fact, I've told you, this might have been a year or so ago on the pod, when I restructured a portfolio, I ended up selling a bunch of stuff. And when I bought back, I didn't buy back in the same way. Now, why? Why wouldn't I? Unless I was kidding myself as to what I thought of those companies and the relative weightings that they held in my portfolio.

51:31Nothing's changed. It was a pure administrative tax thing that I had to kind of do. Yeah, that's a good point. And once I had sold and my brokerage account had cash, I was like, well, maybe I'll buy a bit more of this one and maybe I actually won't buy back into that one. I'll buy back. Why wouldn't I do that anyway? Well, because I'm a male and the ego is the size of Christmas. and I didn't want to admit I was wrong on a whole bunch of things. That's why. But I know, I deeply, deeply know this to be true and yet I was still convincing myself otherwise. So the struggle is real. Yeah, it really is.

52:09Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

52:19Hey, here's a question from an anonymous listener who doesn't say at the top anything, but they do say thanks Anonymous at the bottom so you get away with it. Hey Scoot and Rambo. I've asked, I want to see, AI's got to be able to produce an Andrew Page Rambo morph. I'm tipping. I'll see Andrew Page slash Slice Delone as Rambo. I've asked a few questions before since Anonymous but this one involves too many personal details. I assume that means that's why you're saying Anonymous. Don't worry, not looking for personal financial advice. I'm in my mid-twenties. Sorry Scott, I'll accept the hate. You're goddamn right you will.

52:51Over the past five years, I bought a small six-figure share portfolio with the help of both yourselves and the podcast. 70 % ETFs, the rest roughly 15 individual companies. Hold on, mate. Earlier this year, I decided to take the plunge and buy my first home, in brackets, no, not a, quotes, property, end quote. And I'm glad I did because next year... No, no, no, you didn't buy a home. You got on the property ladder. Get the wording right. There we go. You're in the market. That's another end of a page of bait. I'm glad I did because next year my partner and I will welcome our first child into the world.

53:25Very exciting. That's awesome. Not enough people in their 20s having kids. Well done. Despite my earlier comments. My question is, what do I do now? Now, we can't tell you what you should do. We'll talk generally. Before the house repayments, I was investing around 50 % of my take-home pay. Well done. But obviously now that's not possible. Besides, I'll need to save for the pending bub. Will adding small amounts move the dial? or do I just let what's in there now run? I enjoy investing, but if I can't add to my portfolio constantly, should I consider consolidating? Maybe sell the individual holdings and put it all into ETFs.

54:00I understand this all sounds like one massive humble brag. That's not my intention. I've worked extremely hard for it all. No major leg ups to mention. I hope my story can inspire at least one person that you can do what you put your mind to. Your thoughts, please, gentlemen. And an honest question that finishes with, Love the podcast and the work you both do to help us be more financially informed. And I would be an avid listener of the Beer, Biltong and Trees podcast. Keep me posted. Kind regards, Anonymous. No plans yet, but never say never. Never say never. Well, I would do this because this is not advice.

54:33If I could wind back the clock and find myself in that situation. If you could turn back time. If I could turn back time, yes. If you could find a way. I wouldn't give it all to you, I tell you that much. But would you sit astride a massive naval gun? No one needs that mental image. There's another AI job. Even the Cher mental image is not doing it for me. Andrew, start going, Andrew. All right. Oh, what an outfit. My goodness. Kids, look it up. Yeah, look it up. I would minimise, this is going to be controversial, I would minimise my mortgage repayments. and I would take every spare dollar I could to invest in shares.

55:19For all the reasons I've sort of hinted at and actually said directly before, it's just it's a non-recourse loan as long as you can comfortably, when I say comfortably, you know, confidently perhaps is a better word, provide the repayments. Because, again, the big picture idea here is that with inflation, and refer to our Friday episode if you want my thoughts on that. For a short conversation on inflation. For a short conversation on inflation, I would suspect that the real size of that mortgage is going to diminish pretty substantially over the next 30 years just because of inflation. So why not take full advantage of that and take the capital that would otherwise be used to repay the mortgage and put that into assets that have a very good chance of beating inflation?

56:05Buffer first? I'm not saying get some equity or something, some extra in the redraw just in case? you say pay minimum but I'm only worried about not having enough to then kind of make the unexpected. No that's really the rub here. I certainly I'm so glad you said that. I'm certainly not advocating for being up to the eyeballs where a quarter percent rate rise is going to knock you out of the water. Like that is just you do not be that. And I don't know where that line is. You'll have to figure that out for yourself. But I do think that the days of repaying it as quickly as you can is detrimental too.

56:39If the pure goal is wealth maximisation, I would say that you're better off having it to a degree where you can be not hyper-stressed and not undone by one unexpected rate increase or a loss of a job. So you're right, mate. You definitely want a buffer in there. But at the same time, don't make my mistake of paying it off as quickly as you can, which I did with the first house, right? It's sort of like that would have in hindsight, if I had just redirected that money towards an ETF, I would be far better off. Such is the nature of our fiat economy. You know, it's just like you kind of, it is the rational play in an irrational system.

57:18So I would do that. And I know that's controversial. A lot of people would tell you to pay it off as quickly as you can. Now to the point, you don't actually have as much capacity either way because your expenses are about to go up dramatically. So you might not have it. I certainly wouldn't throw in the towel. Don't forget, whatever it is, what did you say, six figures? Yeah. In a portfolio and you've got the deposit? Keep it there. Even$50 a week or$20 a week might not sound a lot, but it's not nothing and I would still try and do that where I can. But I wouldn't give up on it. I know you're not saying this, but I wouldn't give up on it because I can't add fresh capital to it.

57:55Because remember, my story just told, I could liquidate that tomorrow, have$100 ,000 in cash and allocate it to anything I wanted to allocate it to. So you're still going to be able to scratch that active investor itch. It just will require you to sell something rather than to wait for fresh capital to come in to buy it, which in a little bit counterintuitive way, it's not a bad thing because that constraint will probably help instill a bit of rigor and discipline around selling decisions that's not normally there because of all the behavioral shortcomings that we have as humans. So you can be a hyperactive investor with not a cent of new capital coming in because you've got that money to manage.

58:36So when something gets stupidly, let me put it this way. Whenever you find yourself noticing an opportunity that is superior, significantly superior to what you're holding, and even with taking any kind of tax hit makes sense to change, you should do that. and I would do it that way and just, yeah, just only pay off the degree of the house that gives you a degree of comfort. If you start with a small six-figure portfolio, I'm going to call 100 grand for the fun of it, and you're 24, when you're 66, that'll be 42 years away, which I've chosen deliberately because if your money gains 10 % a year, you'll double it about every seven years.

59:14Lots of numbers there. Rule of 72, you divide your return into 72 and that tells you how many years it takes to double or conversely divide the number of years and tells you what the return is going to be. If you were able to get 10 % a year, and I'm just picking a number. I'll call it 8 % a year. I'll do nine times instead. No, I'll confuse myself. If you've got 10 % a year, you'll double six times in 42 years. That takes your 100 grand portfolio to$6.4 million. That is phenomenal. In fact, if you didn't want to retire before 66, you wouldn't need to add another cent to your portfolio. You need to have$6 million at retirement.

59:54Now,$6 million is not going to be worth$6 million today. You decide what's the right number for you. I guess I'm just making the point that effectively, if you never added another dollar to your portfolio for the rest of your life, you'd be perfectly fine. So that's a good problem to have. To Graham's point. Can I just very quickly interject? That's why you don't pay off the house as quickly as you can either. Right. Because the house in real terms is not going to, well, some people will disagree. Probably not. I mean, you know, I don't think it's in real terms going to have the same kind of upside sort of potential there.

1:00:25I agree. So in terms of numbers, I mean, add when you can because you might as well, but also at some point you've got enough in your nest egg to not have to need to unless you want to and that gives you life choices, which is lovely.

1:00:43I wouldn't I think your decision of what investments to hold will owe more should owe more, not Cassie, you should do anonymous should owe more to your ability, interest and time you can put into your investing if you're like dude I've got a kid and a house and a job and I don't know, then go ETFs because if you haven't got the time and interest to pick stocks, don't do it because holding individual companies in that context, if you're not going to look at them, is pretty negligent at some point, right? And that's true regardless of your family situation or whatever. Correct. So if you haven't got the time, you're not going to have the time, then that's an easy decision.

1:01:23If you have got the time and you like it and you think you might be pretty good at it because you've built it over five years and maybe you've learned some things, you'll learn a lot more, you'll make a lot more mistakes, by the way, there's absolutely no reason to consolidate for the sake of it. There is nothing because money will compound. A dollar compound is the same as$100, as$1 ,000 is$1 million. Right? 10 % a year, you're adding 10 % to each of those numbers no matter what. For the same reason, 70 % ETFs and 30 % individual companies is going to compound at the same rate if you've chosen them well, regardless of whether you've got$1 ,000 or$1 ,000 or$100 ,000.

1:01:54So that's kind of how I would think about the decision. The RAM support is great. Forced scarcity is a wonderful thing because it makes you really think about where your money is going. So I don't mind that either, but I wouldn't – there's no need to change your investment portfolio composition just because you're not going to add more money in the near future at all, zero reason. Unless, and again, if you've got 15 companies and one is 29%, the other 14 or 1%, 0.100 % each, then again, think about allocations. But that again is Ram's point before. That happens no matter what situation and what stage of life you're in.

1:02:30So build the portfolio. You've got six figures. You can have a very, very nicely constructed portfolio with one ETF, five ETFs, five ETFs and 15 companies, whatever, however you want to build it. There is no reason why, given the money you've got and the interest you seem to have, there's no reason to change for the sake of it. But if you are going to have – if I knew I was going to be stupid busy over the next five years and couldn't pay attention to my investments, I'd probably sell them and put them in an ETF. It's not tax notwithstanding because, you know, do I like companies I own? Yeah. Do I want to have to hope that in five years' time I open that magic box and they're all of a sudden doing well?

1:03:06Now, I'm a long-term investor. I invest with a five-year horizon, but I keep an eye on them over that period of time, and when something stops making sense, I sell it, either too high or too low, whatever. Yeah, hope that helps. Yeah, nice. Nothing to add. Hey, question from Jared. Hello, Scott and Andrew. Firstly, thank you for answering my last question a little while ago, despite refusing to bend the knee. Now, Jared, you'd be pushing it, except you then say, and to show my respect and thanks, I am currently bending the knee as I unload the required amount of verbal diarrhea of compliments this time around.

1:03:36Good man. Thoroughly enjoying the weekly episodes as well as the Good Oil podcast. Thanks for listening. You guys are doing a great job mixing some entertainment and education on all things share investing. In all sincerity, what, you weren't being sincere? I've learned more about share investing, listening to your podcast and being a member of Dividend Investor. That's nice. And reading some of your book suggestions than through any other means. So thank you. There you go. now on to my question why am i short it's bad enough i'm a short ass in real life excuse my language but it's jared's language but now i find out the shares i own are being shorted as well i sort of get the concept of shorting shares but i sort of don't i was hoping you may be able to give a brief explanation from your perspective why shares are shorted how it's done he says borrowing shares to sell from someone else apparently and why i'm not interested at all and doing it myself, but I've had Domino's shares on my watch list.

1:04:30I own them, for the record, for a long time and finally purchased them a few weeks ago when the price was absolutely smashed. And in my view, the valuation and upside are too compelling to ignore. A few weeks later, I'm reading they are now one of the most shorted stocks. Something like 17 % of total shares are short positions, if I understand it correctly. 16.4%. I just looked it up. There you go. Research 101, you're welcome. A few weeks later, I'm reading that now. Sorry, sorry again. Is this something to take notice of or ignore? People are obviously shorting a stock for a reason. I guess if they're purely just trying to make a quick buck on the short-term price fluctuations of a company, then I'm probably not going to take much notice of it.

1:05:10Although maybe it's a red flag that an investor needs to revisit their investment thesis to see if something has been missed in the original analysis. I don't really know, but I do want to use this as a learning opportunity on how to handle these scenarios. Many thanks in advance, gents. keep up the great work. Cheers, Jared. What is shorting round? Why do people do it? People do it for the same reason they go long, which is to make money. And that's what they're trying to do. Except rather than betting that a share price will go up, they're betting that a share price will go down. You can do that with various derivative instruments.

1:05:44But if you just want to be a pure, you know, short seller, what you do is I say, hey, Scott, can I have some of your domino shares, I'll pay them back to you so you don't lose anything. You'll get whatever. You've got 100 shares, give me 100 shares. I'll give them back to you at a future point in time. But I'm going to sell them when I get them, and that means I've got to buy them back in the future to give them to you. Why would I give you my shares? Because I'll pay you some interest as well. Oh, now I'm interested. So I get the exposure of opening the shares, and I get something on top of that for the privilege of lending them to you.

1:06:16So there's a carry cost for me. So this is where shorting is generally got a higher degree of difficulty than being long. If I'm long a stock, I can be infinitely patient. I probably won't be and I probably shouldn't be, but I can be. Like there's no, it doesn't cost, opportunity cost, which is a real cost, but let's not go there. And so you're not using leverage just for the sake of it. Yeah, and so I'm not using leverage. I can wait for the thesis to play out. I can wait for the thesis to play out if I'm short, but I need to pay interest to you on a regular basis. Watch Dumb Money. I think it's a great move.

1:06:53I really enjoyed it. It's about the GameStop phenomena and that's what undid the hedge fund that was there. Basically they went short and not only do you have to pay interest but you need to lodge a certain amount of collateral against what you've borrowed as well. And that meant that as the price moved against you, you need to keep fronting up more and more capital. So this was the meme, right? It's like, let's bank. Who was it? Citadel? Citadel, Roosevelt. I forget. Oh, sure. We'll find out. Some amoral, politically connected. Isn't it nice that if you own a hedge fund that you can get the exchange to remove the buy button to stop people moving against your short position?

1:07:34Anyway, you can watch the movie. But, yeah, that's what it is in a nutshell. It's funny with people going short. for whatever reason, investors as a general rule on average don't have a great track record. But we tend to assume that shorters have a really good track record. Like there's a whole bunch of people who go long on stuff. It's like, yeah, good for them. I guess they think the stock's going up. As soon as there's any short interest, like, oh, what's going on? They must know something. Crazy, right? Yeah. Like they don't know. And I haven't done the numbers, but I'm pretty sure I would bet a pretty sizable amount of money that statistically the average short seller does know better than the average long investor.

1:08:11In fact, possibly worse because they've got to pay the carry on the way through. I dare say so. So look, Domino's has been at the top of that list or near the top of the list for a long time. It's up 60 % in the last month or so. Yeah. So there are some shorters in there that are really not doing it. Depends on when you place the short, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. But, I mean, I don't pay any, I pay, well, no, I don't pay zero attention to it. I certainly don't go out of my way to find it. But if I've got a stock and someone on the other side is one of the more heavily shorted stocks, It probably sharpens the pencils a little bit to go, why?

1:08:45Like, Munger is one of my favourite quotes I always talk about. You know, you want to understand the bear case better than the bears. So I was like, okay, well, clearly it's different if someone expresses a negative opinion than if someone expresses a negative opinion and puts real money on the line. Like, I value that opinion much more. You know, it's a tax on BS, as has been said. So it will make me think, okay, well, I don't know why, but obviously a lot of people think that this is going to go down. Why is that? It won't change my mind in and of itself, but it will probably make me want to dig a little bit deeper.

1:09:20What's interesting is that when you look at, and you don't really know, right, because you can't go around and interview every person in the market, and you don't even know who these people are most of the time as well. But it strikes me that a lot of the time the things that are being shorted are not because it's going to zero, it's a corporate fraud, which are the best shorts to do because you can only go to zero, right? Whereas upside is at least in theory unlimited.

1:09:51I've done it again. You think frauds are good reasons to go short? I think you've got to talk about valuations. If it's valuations, thank you, mate. Gosh. Sorry? Coffee. I need no coffee. So if you're buying it, so I think Domino's is 10 % overvalued, each to their own, but to me that is like a crazy weak thesis for going short because even if you're right, the market might not recognise you're right. And the old saying is the market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent. It was really particularly true with leverage and with shorting. So anyway, I'm rambling at this point.

1:10:27I wouldn't pay much attention to it other than to take note of it and try and understand what's behind it. But you've got to as an investor, even without this stuff, you've got to be very comfortable with large groups of people disagreeing with you. Yes, that was what I was going to make, yeah. If everyone agrees with you, then that's actually when I'm more worried, right? Like it's almost impossible to get outsized market-beating returns by always hugging the consensus. You need a variant perception to get the outsized return. I'll pass it to you, mate, because I'm alive. No, you're right. I'm going to check out from there.

1:10:58If everybody loves the stock already, there's no upside on the price because it's already built in. And so this is any time, this is the, you've got to get your hitter. I'm not contrarian for the sake of it, but you always have to be. I'm saying it sweet out of both sides of my mouth. Why? Because every time you buy a stock, you have to say the market is wrong. I am going to disagree with the, not every single investor, but the group kind of weighted price that you get is what the market thinks. because if they didn't, someone else would go and buy the shares already. So you're saying I bought – I'll use CBA again just to trigger RAM.

1:11:33I think CBA at$160 is worth buying because I think the market's wrong about it. Because if I'm saying actually no, it's worth buying because the market's right. If the market's already right, where's the upside come from? How does the share price grow? If the market's already right, it's already priced it in perfectly. So you're buying at fair value, which is fine, but then buy an ETF. You know? There's no point buying at fair value. You want to buy something cheaper than it's worth because you want to get the upside if and when that value comes out. I'm not going to pay$100 for a$100 note. Right.

1:12:05So you have to be contrarian. Everyone says the$100 note you got in your hand, that's not worth$100. It's only worth$80. And you're going to go, no, I think it's worth$100. I'll pay$80 for that. That's fine. Yeah, every day. Now, obviously in the case of a$100 note. Now when someone gives you a share, a certificate instead, and says, you think it's worth$100, I think it's worth$80. What is it worth? Every time you buy, you are disagreeing with the crowd. Literally. Not every member of the crowd but the crowd as a whole. You are disagreeing, saying you are wrong, I am right, I'm going to make money doing this.

1:12:34So you absolutely have to be, to your point, mate, get very comfortable with people disagreeing. You mentioned short selling and kind of why people pay attention. That's the other thing that always gets me is when the headlines never scream, nobody, shorts, BHP. but they'll scream, short as 10 % BHP shares. So why do they report that? Why do we pay attention to it? Because fear, pessimism, disaster sells. Car crashes, you know, if it bleeds, it leads, right? We just can't help ourselves. And so when we see Andrew loves Bitcoin, we go, oh, okay, fair enough. When we hear Andrew hates CBA, it's like, oh, maybe there's something wrong with it.

1:13:16I better check that out. And it's just natural, right? That's natural to, I won't say natural. It's not good, but it's human nature. So don't, you know, you've got to do it because I'm doing it, Andrew does it, everyone does it. So pay less attention than you think you should. Pay less attention than other people think you should. But, and here's why, right? Domino's is 17 % short. I get iron shares. Who cares? BHP has probably got some short interest. I don't know what it is. Let's say it's zero just for fun. You can lose just as much money on BHP as Domino's. You can make just as much money on BHP as Domino's.

1:13:47no matter what the short positions currently are, the fact that no one's short BHP, that should be almost more of a worry, right? Because maybe the price is too high there because no one's short. If no one's short, everyone loves it. If everyone loves it, it's a pretty good chance that price is pretty high, right? Because the tide's all the way in. So maybe, I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but maybe you should be more worried about no shorting than lots of shorting. And by the way, if everyone's short and they're selling the shares, if they're wrong, by the way, when you short sell, again, you're borrowing, you're selling the shares.

1:14:16What does that do? It adds selling pressure. That's like all things being equal, push the price down, at least directionally. What does that mean? It means if they're wrong and you're right, you're getting an even better price because all that short selling is pushing the price down. Now, if they're right and you buy, you're in for a hiding. But if you're wrong, then there's an opportunity. So if they're wrong, so there's an opportunity. So, yeah, I don't know. There's a website, it's a short man I think it's called. Yeah. I haven't looked at that site in about. I just looked it up. Conservatively?

1:14:42Yeah. I'm going to say five years. I may have done some point for this podcast as a one-off. I don't care. I just don't care. Because, to Andrew's point, know the bear case better than the bears regardless of the short percentage. It doesn't help you. It'll trigger all of those behavioural biases and subconscious tricks that these do. Now, by the way, also don't read the uber bullish stuff. Don't fall in that trap either. Only reading the positive stuff about Domino's because that's not going to help you. As Andrew says, do your own work. Work out what you think the business is worth. Understand why you might be wrong and then compare it to the current price.

1:15:18If it's attractive, buy the shares. You'll be wrong sometimes. That's the other thing, right? Don't go out of your way to avoid being wrong, which sounds stupid to say, okay? You know the best way to avoid being wrong in shares? Don't buy any. What's that going to cost you? I try to. We just heard our previous anonymous questioner who's going to have maybe somewhere around$6 million by retirement if my assumption is old. How much of that do you lose saying, but what if I'm wrong? What if I get company X or Y or Z wrong? And that's not – that gain, by the way, is the market average, including all the rubbish companies.

1:15:49Andrew's already mentioned earlier in this podcast or Friday. You buy the ASX 300, you're getting a whole lot of absolute tripe. Yeah. And historically, you've still gained 9 % a year. So, you know, yeah. It's just so tempting, Jared, and I get it. I absolutely get it. I don't – I just don't care. I don't bother. I don't look. I can't remember the last time I looked. It was a very long time ago other than maybe I can't remember doing it for the pod but I may have at some point. Last time we took it out, you looked it up again rather than me. Yeah, couldn't care less. But the bare case or the downside, the risks, call them what you want, you absolutely need to know them but don't take other people's word for it like with buying.

1:16:29Buy and sell only if the price is indicating that's the right course of action for you. Have you ever been tempted, mate, to put your shares up? I didn't inhale. Have you ever to, now for something like your Berkshire, for example, I would imagine like you have zero intention of selling that anytime soon. Have you ever looked into that with your broker to sort of say, hey, if someone wants to borrow this and pay me interest? Knock themselves out. You know? I never have. I should. By the way, also just remember, I think the shorter has to cover dividends too, right? Yes, absolutely, yes. In terms of the carry, not only is the interest, but they've got to also give you the dividends on the way through.

1:17:13Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, because I'm lazy. I would happily do it with my Berkshire shares tomorrow. I'd do it with South Pat shares tomorrow. Yeah. I would, I mean, it's a dangerous-ish game because if you're locked out of actually selling when you want to or something happens, you want to make sure it's a company. Well, that's why I don't. Yeah. Because I've got a lot of small caps and I just, I don't, like anything could happen. But if it was something, it would only be a handful like, you know, like the Berkshires where you go. Well, I would never say never, but, you know, if you told me that I'm not allowed to sell for six months, but you'll give me, I don't know what the interest rates are paid, but if, you know, I'm an 8 % or 9 % interest, you might be tempted to do that, right?

1:17:50Maybe it's 2%. You're going to think, well. Yeah, I'm probably just too lazy to do it. Yes, in a heartbeat.

1:18:01I'm sometimes totally realistic for my own good. part of me would do it just so that when short sells his money I'm like the rest of me is kind of thinking I don't want to I don't want any part of short I don't like short selling we've had this conversation before I don't know as Kerry Packer DJs are going to degen my friend you can't stop them as Kerry Packer said we all have our price gentleman name yours at some price would I yes in a heartbeat I've never looked into I don't know what the rates are I don't know I can't imagine I can't imagine what a carrier for Berkshire would be. Is it higher with volatile stocks or riskier stocks?

1:18:38Yes. I wonder. Well, maybe it's the collateral. I don't know. I don't know. I've never looked into it myself. If you are going to, you've asked the question, it's just for our listeners. If you are going to do something like that, please be very careful. You've got to know that you know that you're going to stick with this thing. I mean, talking about long-term investment, it's like a term deposit, right? It's one thing to say, I'm never going to sell. It's one thing to say, you can't sell no matter what. It's like, oh, that's a whole level of commitment. So just be prepared if you've got to look into it.

1:19:05Yeah, I wouldn't have, I would take the money at some point. I don't know how much I would need to make it worthwhile. I probably, it's money for jam, so I probably should just do it anyway because I said I haven't sold a single Berkshire share ever and I've had them for a very long time, some of them, some not for quite as long, but yeah, I would. I probably wouldn't get around to it. I probably wouldn't bother. It's not exactly the case, but it's similar. If ever you're looking at things like Robin Hood and you're going, wow, free brokerage, what a great deal. The old saying is if it's free, then you're the product.

1:19:34Yes. And how does a company like that make money if they're not charging you commissions on trades? It's because they're doing things as I understand it. Partly it's lending out your securities for these purposes, but also because they're using your liquidity to provide private order books for hedge funds. Yeah. which is another way of just basically saying they're using you as exit liquidity. Yeah, you're right. They're literally front-running you. You're letting them front-run you. Yeah, you're letting the quote-unquote smart money front-run you. I mean, look, I actually, I don't know. I kind of can think that that's okay as long as you're sort of understanding of what is at risk.

1:20:17But again, just to you on GameStop, just because it's such a fascinating thing, I mean, they literally took away your ability to buy more of it. and I was like that's not a free and open market and they did that purely to protect Ken Griffin, right? And it's sort of like so there is a bit of a devil's bargain when you get into bed with players who you're not the customer, you're the product and, you know, with YouTube I'm comfortable with it because, okay, you're going to serve me a bunch of ads and you're going to track me around the internet. Okay. I mean other people draw the line there but for me it's like I'm okay with that.

1:20:51when it's actively, you know, the assets that I buy, they're as funny. That's not the right time. I guess it's legal. But we know there are issues that are going on with the securities that I hold and what you're doing behind the scenes. That's a bridge too far for me personally. And I would much rather just face a brokerage and know that that's not going on in the background. Yes. But good question, Jared. Love it. Hopefully that's a bit of a short tree ties on short selling. Get what I did there. Short, short, short. Like short as in not long and short as in. Concise, yes. I touched on it briefly but I'll emphasise the point here.

1:21:30The maximum you can do is go to zero. So usually people who do it as a living, they actually apply a bit of leverage on top of it. Because, I mean, again, I can buy a stock for$1 and there's plenty of stocks that do it. That'll go to$100. You know, I can't get that kind of return going short. So, anyway. No, good point. And, yeah. Limited upside and you've got a certain timeframe to be right and you've got to pay a carry and you've got to post collateral. And the dividend's on top of that. It's hard. It's super hard. It's not worth it. I mean, you know, do it if you want, but it's not investing.

1:22:09I agree. It's a gamble, to bet. It's a speculation, yeah. Yeah, which is, again, it's what it is. Short sellers will say that they're providing liquidity and helping in price discovery. Price discovery, for God. I just find that nice. Both true, by the way. Yeah, it's true. Just the weakest. But it's like that viral video of the real estate agent. It's like, do what you're going to do, man, but let's not pretend that you're saving lives here, right? Exactly. Like there's no higher moral calling that's at stake here. And it's incredible. You know, the other one is, oh, we help find frauds. And so people that lose money, I'm like, People lose 100%.

1:22:48If it's a fraud, it goes to zero. People lose 100 % of the money they put in. If they put it in at$5 or$15 or$25, they lose 100 % of what they put in. It doesn't, oh, the price doesn't get higher than it otherwise would have. So what? If you lose 100%, you put$1 ,000 in at$5 a share, $1 ,000 at$25 a share,$1 ,000 at$250 a share, how much do you lose when it goes to zero? $1 ,000. Yeah. It's just, it's a, people tell stories. They're as human as the rest of us. I'm sure I tell myself stories to make myself feel good about something. By the way, there's nothing necessarily even immoral about it.

1:23:17Some people think it is because it's betting on collapse or something. I think it's a little bit too puritanic, a little bit too simplistic. Yeah, no problem. I don't think it's – I've said to you before, mate, I wouldn't – Prime Minister for the year, I would stop short selling, not for any reason other than we just talked about the fact that people haven't brought attention to it. Same as those short reports, right? Breath of short reports about company X, Y, or Z, and people react to fear. Andrew loves Bitcoin. The shares – Bitcoin is up 0.1%. Andrew is shorting Commonwealth Bank. Commonwealth Bank shares fall 30%.

1:23:49It's like the same because we believe the fear. Fear seems smarter. Morgan Howells has got a great, we've mentioned him a couple of times, he's got a great line. Just fear, pessimism sounds smart. It just does. And we're biologically evolved to there's a line coming. Okay, I'm going to run. I'm not going to check. Are you sure? I don't think that's a line. I'll wait here. I'll wait. You go and I'll wait here and if it is a line, I'll run when I see it. It's like, no, dude, way too late then, right? Perfectly perfect. Of course we should. But that's exactly the challenge. That's why we've got to be so careful.

1:24:22I've said a million times, investing well is the ability to overcome our biological evolutionary impulses. That's exactly it. And this is a really, really key one of them. Yep. Mate, that's been a fun hour and 24 minutes. If I ask another question, we're here for two hours. I'm not going to. Yeah, so I was thinking we're getting close to it, aren't we? I'm going to keep them wanting more. That's how you do it. Just keep them on 10 talks, right? Keep them coming back. Thanks for listening. Thanks for having me. Hey, by the way, I said on Friday, I was going to mention at the beginning of the podcast today, now 24 minutes later, I've just realised.

1:24:51If you've got any questions for us, we are in Evergreen podcast pre-recording. Every podcast pre-recorded, as Andrew likes to say. But we are going to do some ahead of the Christmas season. We will do our level best to not miss a single episode. We've missed one our entire life when I was in hospital once. So other than that, we haven't yet missed an episode. We're going to try and get through Christmas and the new year. So any questions you've got, any topics you want us to cover, either evergreen topics or mailbag questions, now is a very, very, very good time to get in. Please do that for us.

1:25:19And in the meantime, have a great weekend and fool on. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.