Mailbag, incl: How do I preserve my purchasing power? August 2, 2026

24:20I absolutely would if I was in this situation, I probably will do this when I'm retired, I think, I don't know yet, is go that income approach I talked about. So have a portfolio, generate the income and just focus on the income. In fact, in the service, again, it's not an ad, but we've had members every month, transfer some money from your portfolio to your personal bank account, and that becomes your payday. And that's the equivalent of an annuity. The portfolio keeps compounding over there. So that's the first thing I would do. Second thing, if that doesn't work, is think about a proportional allocation.

24:50And that might be, you might want to have X percent of your portfolio in cash, again, not cash cash, in a term deposit, just because when the market falls, no, it doesn't fall as if, I'll try and be both conservative, but also my preference. If you had 75 % shares and 25 % term deposits, you'll be fine. Again, assuming the capital value is high enough. And when it falls 50%, you'll only fall 37%. And that's not going to be great, but it's better. And you might feel better about that. It might let you slip a little bit more at night. So that kind of approach is maybe useful. If you really want to get out of the stock picking nervous bit, a couple of ETFs that track Australian and global markets, again, I'm not saying it's not going to fall, but you won't have the same sort of falls almost certainly, no guarantees, as during the GFC.

25:36It'll be volatile, but it won't be as volatile. And expect a 50 % fall, I would say, even with an ETF. Just be ready for it. I don't know. I'm not calling it, but... Well, actually, I am. I'm calling it. I am calling a 50 % crash at some stage. I bet a huge... Well, it happens every so often, right? Like, it's a bold person who goes, you know, markets have always had periods where they lose 50%, but I don't think it's ever going to happen again. I think, oh, really? How many times have they lost 50 % since 900, do you reckon? I don't know the answer to that question. I would have said maybe only once, that's all.

26:07but 50 % is a lot. Yeah, okay. Mungu's got that great line. It's like if you're the kind of investor that can't deal with a 50 % drawdown with equanimity, you deserve the mediocre returns you're going to get. This is going to sound like a humble brag. I don't mean it to be hopefully illustrative. I just said before I'm down 50 % from the high water mark, but I'm much higher than I was 10 years ago. Yeah. Much higher than I was five years ago. That's the beauty of it. Four years ago. Like, I'm not saying that to Brad, but I'm just saying that is the price you pay for very high returns. It's the volatility.

26:45It's the volatility. Lean into the volatility. That's why the returns are there, you know? It's kind of like we all want the high returns and no volatility. It's like, yeah, and be great if Santa was real as well, you know? It's just not that. The reason that so few people don't do so incredibly well with the share market, when it's all laid out for you. This is not a mystery that only you and me have been able to crack the Da Vinci code on this one and figure it out. Bring up the bloody bank card. It's there. It's right there. Like, wow, that's an incredible wealth compounding machine. Yeah. Oh, but it goes down 50%.

27:25Okay, 30%, whatever. Some big scary number on a periodic basis. Like, it's going to happen. and I just feel as though if you're right, I think the point you're making, which is a good one, and I should emphasize it more, is that if you know yourself that you won't handle that well and it will cause you stress, then there is a non-financial argument to be made and I get that. But just recognize the compromise that you are making. You are saying for the sake of what I think is reasonably called irrational fear, you are leaving very large sums of money on the table. And even if you say, but I don't need the money, it's sort of like, well, you know, friends or family or other people in the world that you could potentially help with.

28:08I mean, I don't know. I don't hear. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

28:20Hey, you'll appreciate this point, but I'll appreciate it more, Rem. So Nessie from Strawman writes in. Oh, Nessie. He says, hi Scott and Andrew. Scott, I love you more than Andrew now as I have three Motley Fool subscriptions and just the one Strawman won. He said, Braxtel, it is a premium subscription. So there you go. Damn right, Nessie. You say that, Nessie. Now what's going to happen around? I'm going to create another two products so you can buy three here so it can keep up. It's going to cost you money. You know that, right? I've got two questions for the almighty pod kings, says Nessie.

28:50Were kings enough? Didn't we want to be emperors or something at one point? You had a particular preference. I've always liked God King. I thought it had a nice ring to it. God King. Philosopher King, maybe. Philosopher King, that's what I was thinking, but God King works too. Immortal and all-powerful. With respect to the change in superannuation tax, or in all taxes, actually, first, the mention of losses being subject to indexation. This would make a 50 % loss over five years a very different proposition. I'll throw both questions, mate, because they're kind of relevant, and we might want to answer them separately altogether.

29:24Second, says Nessie, I don't mind the idea of indexation, to a point, although it does seem to be a disincentive for the average investor. Chris Bricky from The Australian had a good idea in his article, a tapered CGT discount. A 5 % discount for every year the asset is held, up to a maximum of 50%. This seems to encourage and reward long-term sound asset allocation. I'd appreciate your thoughts, gentlemen, says Nessie, and it's the first time we've been called that, but I appreciate it. Nessie from Strawman. Thanks, Nessie. really good questions. Indexation, mate. You go first. Okay, okay, cool.

29:57You can't, so there's self-interest and there's policy and I regularly say there's different things.

30:05There is a false equivalence being drawn between the indexation of loss and the indexation of gains. Nothing shouldn't happen yet. I'm just saying there's a false equivalence and the equivalence is this. If you go to index gains, surely it's fair to index losses as well. Okay. Makes perfect sense on the surface because you're treating two things the same way. Except remember that indexation is the indexation of the cost base. In other words, it's a benefit being provided to you if you make a profit. And then the indexation of the gains says, well, hang on, shouldn't I get indexation for my losses so that I can claim even more than I actually invested in the first place?

30:41Because they're both indexed. And that's where the equivalence breaks down. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. You couldn't do it. I don't know what Ram's thought is, so I'm interested to see what he says after I've finished here. but we kind of the way we the way the thought process indexation of gains makes it feel like there's something worse about the gain so an offsetting benefit against the loss the index action is actually a benefit so what it really says is the index action of gains really says if i am taxed less on my gains shouldn't i should i also be able to claim more losses when i lose money and that's where that breaks down because you're doing two very different things and it's really, it's really, really important to think through the mechanics of what that looks like.

31:21And the word indexation is overused. Here's the numbers and here's where I, so I don't think we should index losses and I'm not exactly Robinson Crusoe. There's not many people who agree with me, mostly for self-interest, I suspect. Here's the thing. Let's say I invest a hundred bucks and I double my money. So a hundred bucks invested, I make another hundred bucks of profit and I do it over 10 years and the inflation during that period of time is 30%. I know they're too low for rambler. So I pay tax on the$70 gain. So I've got a$30 benefit. Now, it's a justified benefit because there was inflation, but I can effectively sequester some of my gains away from being taxed.

32:00So that's the benefit you've got. And then people say, well, what if I invest another$100 over there and lost it? And I hold that asset for five years before I sell it. Shouldn't I somehow be able to claim$130 worth of losses because there was 30 % inflation during that time? and I can't personally get my head around a scenario that says the government should say to me, A, I'm going to give you a discount on your gain, and B, I'm going to give you even more money because you lost$100, but you took so long to lose it, I'm going to give you another$30 benefit because you lost it over such a long period of time.

32:32I understand how my index section on both feels fair and even and equitable and real and reasonable, but logically when you think that – I hope I made the example clear. If I haven't ran more, if you disagree, throw it at me because I'd love to hear it. But when I think through that process, I'm like, government's giving me more of a loss than I actually lost because it took a long time to lose the money. That's kind of weird to me. And again, remember, we're not saying you paid more tax, you should get more losses. You paid less tax, and you also should get to claim more losses. So I'm winning on both.

33:02If I lose, I win. If I make money, I win. I just can't get my head around other than because people want it to be true and they want the discount. and it feels on first blush that should be even and equal and fair and comparable. I get the kind of idea of index both a couple of ways, wouldn't you? I think my answer hopefully explains why I don't think we should. But, Ram, what do you think? Do you have a different view? No, look, I'm not a mile away from you. Honestly, this whole discussion in the wake of the budget, it feels like it should be something that would really fire me up and I'm not a fan of it.

33:34Let me be very clear. I'm not a fan. I don't think it's good policy overall in a lot of different ways. All of it or if it's it? Oh, the whole dog's breakfast of the whole budget. I just don't fan off, really. I feel as though we're very much tinkering while Rome is burning and then we're having all of these, like, discussions around the fine-tuning of just how dumb it all is. Like, it's sort of like we can make it slightly less dumb or slightly more dumb, but we're still in the realm of dumb. But I need to make my peace with that because, you know, wholesale rebuilding of the tax code is just not on the cards.

34:09And that's kind of the question is the individual pieces they've changed. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. But that's why I don't have a burning – for me it's kind of like, speaking of doctors, right, here's a patient that's sick and I'm suggesting a few things that will make you slightly less sick. You should do them, right? Why wouldn't you do it? It makes you better. But it's like you should probably do this thing over here that will kill you. That's what I would do. And so it's sort of like when I want to direct the rage, I direct it more, even if it's a flight of fancy that unfortunately will never happen.

34:42It's kind of like it feels, I just can't get past what is logically, rationally the best solution. So in all of that being said, mate, I think you made a really good point with that. I don't strongly disagree. I do expect more and more and more taxes. and I really don't – actually, what shifts me more – shifts, I said, shifts me more. I do wonder that, yep. Although the other thing too. Maybe you slipped because of the cup of the lip, you're going. Yeah, that's right. Is that – I don't know. Maybe it's just my little social media echo chamber. but it feels as though there's a real change in the zeitgeist where as a country we've always had a tall poppy syndrome issue in this country and many parts of the world.

35:40It's not a uniquely Australian thing, but it's sort of like anyone who's made money needs to be punished. It's almost there's a tinge of that. No one's saying that out loud. And it's sort of like there's a lot of troubles in the world and I'm blaming, you know, a couple of high profile billion, and I've got no love for most of the billionaires in this country. Do not get me wrong. I mean, screw them all. Not all, but most, you know, I think they're very pleasant people. But it's sort of like it belies, I think it reveals a misunderstanding of what it is that makes wealth and prosperity. and it's kind of like we're like, oh, if you've saved and invested and made money, then you've got to put more in.

36:25It's unfair. It's like there's a lot of wrinkles and nuance and complications to that. It's like when you start thinking through the counterpoint there, the opposite view, it's sort of like that leads you to a place where everyone's really, really, really even and even like we're all equally poor. And I don't mean poor because we don't have as many Netflix subscriptions or that. I mean like real Paul. And it's just like, like exhibit ABC and through to like Z is, is like much of the developing world, which, which perpetually fails to develop. Yeah. Despite incredible natural bounty resources, capable, smart, hardworking people.

37:06Like, why is that? You know, there, there, there is, there is, and then there's the other, which I love to talk about, you know, whether it's South Korea or it's Singapore or Hong Kong, or indeed even China, which is only communistic in name and political allegiance. You know, it's just sort of like there is, it feels as though what we want to do in this country is all we can think of is investing in a house and anything that's made through money, through business, which is evil or corporation evil, we need to tax and you need to be happy about it and you need to be thankful that we've given you the opportunity.

37:41I'm probably reading more into it than is actually there. Yeah, yeah. But do you get that sense? And it's sort of like there's a spectrum and we're not right at the end of it, but it feels like we're stepping towards this kind of thing where, and the thing I like to really remind people of, you know, is like, you know, Elon will come up or Gina will come up or Jerry Harvey will come up. It's like these are the people that are in your field of vision. What you don't see is that the vast, vast majority of businesses out there are small businesses. You know, Ted's, my usual example, Ted's plumbing, you know, Gary's hairdressing, you know, Linda's lawn mowing service, or even the small and medium enterprise businesses, you know, which might be doing several million dollars in revenue.

38:26It's sort of like the engine of jobs, the engine of productivity, the engine of wealth. And it's like, my God, people have saved, risked it all, come out the other end. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay tax, don't get me wrong, But I'm just like, they're almost treated as if it's unfair or you've, your wealth has, people I think have a very fixed pie mindset. And so if you have done well, the only way you have done well is by taking money away from someone else. No one conceives that the pie can grow. Like you can have more and everyone else can have some more as well, right? Like the proportions might shift, but it's like, that is what we need to sort of drive for here.

39:08and it just feels like everything is going that way where it's sort of like, you know what, if we only tax the rich a lot more, we would solve all of our problems. And again, there's nuance in here, so I've got to be careful with this. I'm not saying the tax scales are right. I actually think maybe the rich should pay a little bit more in tax, but it's more the narrative around it. You know, we were talking off air. We didn't get to it because I crept on too long on Friday, but Paris Farms in the news, you know, A family-run business built over decades now just cracked$100 million in sales. A billion in sales.

39:43Sorry, a billion in sales. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. My God, I'll buy an order of magnitude. You know, and it's like my wife used to work there when she was younger. You know, it's like you think of the jobs they've created. You think of, you know, it's just like this is a one. Why aren't we celebrating these people? Now, if there's a crony capitalistic angle here because they use political affiliation to gain unfair competitive advantage, if they've manipulated a credit system in order to gain access to capital that other people don't have access there's great unfairness and things to be angry about in in all of that but in terms of creating wealth and sharing that wealth and yes even keeping most of that wealth as a bad thing that must be stopped you're like the laffer curve is a real thing now now people on the right take it too far for those that don't know the laffer curve suggests that there's a point at which you raise taxes and it's counterproductive to the tax base.

40:37Because at a point people just stop, it takes the incentive away and people just leave. Now, as I say, people over-egg that because I think it's not as prominent as, you know, not all of us can just pick up and move to Dubai, right? So there is a silliness to it. Nevertheless. They also run the left-hand of the curve, by the way, where you increase tax rates and tax revenues do increase. So everyone's talking about the point in which it changes, not the point in which it doesn't change. Maybe we could go further. 100%. Exactly. But it is nevertheless something to be mindful of, right? And it's just sort of, there's a lot of egregious unfairness in the system that we have.

41:14But it's just sort of like, you can't tax your way to prosperity. You just can't. And if you can, please show me an example once, just one, just one in all of recorded history where that's been the case. So it feels like whenever you start saying this, it's like, it's just ideologically laden talking points. But I like to come back to empiricism and observation and just like, well, we can test this. Everyone's got an opinion, but we can actually look at the data. And the data doesn't – what the data says is at the very least, you know, there is a very strong correlation.

41:52And I'm rambling at this point. I just worry too much with all of that stuff. It leads to a dark place, a very dark place. I think you're right. I do think it's important to separate that from the actual announcements made because it's kind of like people say, I've had this indexation conversation, the capital gains conversation, and the feedback from people who don't like the tax, and frankly, I'll be a little bit straight here, they pretend they don't like the tax for reasons that, frankly, is more about self-interest than what they're actually pretending it's about. Yeah, they don't like paying more tax.

42:26And that's okay. I don't either. No one does. But to be honest about it, right, if you're going to do it. Not you, them. They say, oh, it's a bad tax because I'll be saying it'd help home ownership. How does putting a CGT higher at home ownership help? Sorry, putting CGT on shares help home ownership. And it doesn't. And so the line is objectively bad or at least at best half truth because they say we're returning the CGT to an exception to help housing affordability. So, well, no, you're not. You might even, even if it did help housing, possibly might. We talked about it on Friday. Maybe it is helping.

42:55But regardless, it's not helping. That's no reason to do it on shares. And for the government to ignore that and just pretend it's all about that is treat us like idiots. But that also doesn't make it a bad decision or a bad tax or a bad change. And so both things can be true at the same time. And what you can't do is say, and not you are doing this, mate, but why I want people to be careful is it becomes a little bit slippery so far for like we can't increase any taxes because if we do, we'll increase all the taxes all the way and we'll become China. So could it happen? Yes. Directionally, is it happening?

43:23Yes. Is the language dodgy? Yes. Is this also a reasonable and defensible tax change? In my view, yes, those things are all absolutely true at the same time. So I think your point is absolutely valid. It's something we should be talking about. We need to be careful about how we think about economic value creation, which is really what you're talking about, and you said it more eloquently than I did. But just that idea of, you know, we're talking about productivity. We're talking about living standards. Who works on productivity? Yes, individually, I might. The person who comes up with the new mousetrap, the better mousetrap, the person who comes up with something people want to buy, they are doing a service.

43:56Now, not altruistically, they want to make money doing it, and again, they deserve to if they create enough value, but there's no sense in which businesses not being businesses, people not getting rich because of the value they're creating, as long as it's not done through breaking the law or exploiting monopoly positions or lack of competition or something else, then they deserve the gains they make. So to my mind, the tax indexation, back to your question, Nessie, I think it's very hard for me to logically support letting someone claim more than they actually lost as a tax deduction. I just don't understand how that's reasonable.

44:35But Ram's absolutely right that we also need to just check the language that's being used and make sure that most people understand. And my starting point, by the way, on capital gains tax, which you'd know about directly, Nessie, But it's simply I don't personally think that capital should be taxed concessionally compared to labour income. I just don't. And that's somewhere between a moral and ethical and ideological viewpoint. Why do I think that? Just because I think in terms of – I've talked about this before. The proportion of burden sharing for the national budget in any given year, I earn 100 grand in capital gains.

45:11Andrew earns 100 grand in income, labour income. Andrew pays more tax than I do. I think I have the capacity to pay more and probably should pay more. If that means Andrew could also pay less, by the way, because we readjust the scales in both directions, I think that's even more useful. My personal view and others have different views. There's no objective truth to this one. It's just a view, a worldview. As an investor, as someone who wants to retire and make a living out of capital growth and income from shares, I personally don't think it's right for me to pay less tax than someone who's working a physical labour.

45:43I don't mean physical, just heart blue collar, I mean, it's doing a job for the same amount of money. I think I should pay proportionally the same rate. And that's just my, with annexation for the reason we talked about, by the way. But that's just my view. And that's not because the rich are bad people or business are bad people or billionaires are bad people. It's no value just on the people at all. It's just a question of, we're going to contribute to the tax burden in some proportional way, and what is the right proportion? And in my mind, I shouldn't get a discount, discount, arbitrary discount, just because my way of earning an income is down one particular path and someone's is a different path.

46:19It doesn't ring true to me to do it that way. Other people have a different view and they're totally entitled to it, but that's my take. So a couple of things. So yeah, sorry, it's so far off the question, Nessie, but it is, I just go after the original point, you've got to zoom out here. So I did some gurgling while there. So the, what is it called? HILDA, the household income and labor dynamics survey. So the average effective tax rate for a full-time worker in 2011 was about 15.7 % of their income. And today it's 20%. It's all adjusted and normalized and rah, rah, rah. HILDA is great, by the way.

46:56If you're a data nerd, jump in, HILDA. It's really cool. Oh, it's great stuff there. So it's objectively true that we're paying more and more in tax. I made the point in previous pods, I have zero problem with that. What matters is, like in anything, look through an economic lens, is what do I pay versus what do I get back? So you can't just look at the tax and go good or bad. Yes, that's so true, mate. Is it relevant? If you could promise me a country where I paid 90 % tax, but then I had free housing, food, all of the things, and to a higher sense, I will happily do that. I'll take this to 10%.

47:31I'll buy it on my discretionary purchases the way I want to. Everything else is coming from me. You've got to look at, so I think, again, it can't be too myopic here, but I would make the argument, I don't think it's too profound a thing to sort of say that our effective take-home tax has gone considerably up for the average worker, but it hasn't doubled in terms of service delivery. It just hasn't, right? I don't know what the exact number is, but I know it hasn't doubled. And so there is why there's this creeping sort of phenomena that I do get very nervous about. So just to put some numbers on these things, because sometimes we just sort of talk our book is sort of like, oh, I think it's bad.

48:12And look, here's some numbers that are bad.

48:17What was the other point I was going to make? Sorry, man. Oh, just to your point too, this is going well off topic, but I remember you saying that point before and it really did ponder and think about it. I actually don't even know if I agree or disagree, But I guess one of the questions I have is that the example that you give is a point in time example. And what you, the person who has$100 ,000 in capital had to earn the money and then invest it. And so they earned the money, they paid the tax and they put it at risk and they got a return. So it's kind of like we're taxing it at every, it's like all the memes that are around at the moment.

48:56It's sort of like, you know, you earn a job, get taxed on that. You spend your money, you get taxed on that. You transfer some money, you get taxed on that. Oh, you made an investment, you get taxed on that, and then you die and you get taxed on that. Tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. And I'm like, oh, so you don't like tax? Like, no. But I mean, for the love of God here, people, like these things have gotten a little bit out of control. And the thing that I think is very obvious but very easy to miss is that there is a flow to these things. All returns are downstream of investment.

49:29All investment is downstream of saving. All saving is downstream of income. One leads to the other. And you might say, oh, but you inherited all your money. Well, then we're just talking into generation. It is more complex than this. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I really do say that I said at the start, I don't know, actually, I'm still sort of mulling this over and wrestling with it in my head. But I guess it's one question I have unanswered in regard to your example is that, well, actually, you're paying tax on tax. You're paying tax on things that have already paid tax. It feels a little bit egregious to then be taxed again.

50:08Can I pull the capital out of that one? I agree with you on most parts. I've got two thoughts. First is GST is tax on tax. Yeah, that's true. But capital gains are only tax on the gain you make on the capital you invest, not the actual capital. Not the actual. That's a good point. Your dollar income isn't taxed twice. Your dollar income is taxed. Your half-tax income is then not even taxed, but any gains it makes are taxed. So it's not quite the same thing. It is true of petrol exercise and beer exercise and GST and that kind of stuff. So I would make that point, which is kind of different because it's new value creation, whereas GST is just spending, for example.

50:43But I take the general point. That's a good point. Ironically, here's the controversy. I'm not advocating this at all, right? You don't see everything's downstream of income. There's actually an argument, and I'm not making this point. I'm not making this argument at all, but just as a thought experiment, that labor income should actually be taxed more lightly than capital rather than even at the same rate. because the point about the income being generated in the first instance to do all the other things, including live and spend and invest and everything else, is actually the first gate to go through.

51:11So if you were to design a society, and again, I'm not advocating for this at all, you might say, actually, let's tax income more lightly than capital because it is the first step in the start. I would say that. Yeah, I wouldn't tax income at all. And before this change, income was taxed more heavily than capital. Now it's going to be the same as capital. There's an argument that takes it more lightly than capital, which would actually change it even further, which would annoy everyone listening who's best. Shut up, Philip. Stop talking. Shut up. I'm not making the case at all, but I am just saying this.

51:40It's not going to happen. This is all just naval gazing. I like your – because it's all about – you're really good, mate, at understanding the mechanisms, and I think that point is exactly right. It's like what – we want to incentivize. Not even incentivize. We don't want to disincentivize. I'm not a big fan of that. That's the key. I'm seeing a government incentivize. Everyone says, so government should build new various house train or they should do this. Because people wouldn't do anything without some kind of governmental incentive. Another profit motive is there. Anyway, stop disincentivizing stuff.

52:07But I think just your point about the mechanism, the idea of kind of getting to the start line or even off the start line, you can't invest without money, again, inheritance aside. And what do you do to get money to invest? We've got to work. Okay, well, then if I'm working, that arguably, potentially, should be taxed even more lightly, which is give the workers a chance to actually have something left at the end of the day. And then if they want to spend that, they can pay GST potentially other than the double taxing thing. Or they can invest it. But it's kind of getting to the point of like let's get the wheel moving.

52:38It's that first turn of the wheel. Consumption is what we should tax. It's much harder than the second and tenth. Consumption is what we should tax. And I include more broadly in that a land tax is a whole other discussion. Yeah, we're talking about it. It's complicated. But living on land is consuming. It's complicated. But I would not want to disincentivize people saving and investing their money. And investing your money is risking it to not having the money. Exactly. Again, the stats are really stark. Most businesses fail, you know, and it's sort of like you make the point that there's just starry-eyed, you know, people who will just do it no matter what, right?

53:24And thank God. Because they can't help themselves but do it. Can't help themselves. But there's a lot of, you know, it's the things that have sort of done on the margin there. And I would just say, show me the incentive. I'll show you the outcome. I would do everything I could as emperor of Australia to make investing as attractive as possible. And investing in the true old-fashioned sense of the word. Not the modern, financialized, speculative. in the way it's kind of viewed. You said as attractive as possible. Incentives or avoiding disincentives? Sorry, no, very, very good point. Avoiding disincentives.

54:04No, you're right. You've got to be precise with this stuff and you're right. This is so far beyond your question. Surprisingly for us. You know, it's like with negative gearing. We made the point before. It was a very hot button topic. You know, everyone's got a view on it. Well, we'll see what happens. Now it's gone, but I don't think it's going to solve the problem. I think it's going to help. I mean, again, it's just like if it's going to help, then do it. I don't want to be too perfectionist with all of this stuff. But we as a nation and as a people, we devote way too much attention to these point issues that are not important.

54:38It's just sort of like outside of a holistic view. It really is tinkering. And I know it's stupid because that's all you can do because no one's going to wholesale redesign the whole thing. Can I just give one shout-out, Nessie? Please. because everyone's ranked on straw man. And they've done a 86 % 12-month return on their portfolio. 28 % over six months. I'll go and send you a question. Yeah, yeah. And definitely well in the black too since inception. So I'll give it a shout out because it's no easy feat. And I can tell you my 12-month return is not that Nessie. So well done, mate. That's really impressive.

55:17Very, very well done. To the second part of Nessie's question, mate, about the indexational point, I've got two views on this, Nessie. I've got an investing view and I've got a policy view. Speaking of incentives, I really – we talk about the long-term thing because the government introduced the 50 % discount and said only if you have a long-term gain, which was called over a year, right? And people like me and probably you, Nessie, and I'm sure Ram at the time, went, oh, cool. Incentivizing people for investing for the longer term makes – it's good for investors. It's a good thing to do. We think long-term investing wins.

55:47It's a good outcome. So from an investing perspective, I agree with you and I agree with Chris Bricky, Nessie. From a policy perspective, I don't reckon government is in or should be in, back to the incentivization thing, the business of saying you are taxless because you're being a good investor in the way I think you should be. And I say that as someone who thinks you should invest for 10 years. So I would benefit, I hope Motley Fool members, I hope Straw members would benefit from a tapered discount where the longer we held our shares, the less tax we pay. It makes perfect sense. I think it's a really good way to invest.

56:19I think it'd be a government overreach to start saying, if you invest the way I think you should, you will get a tax benefit from it. So, and that's a principled view, and I agree with what would happen here. And so I would benefit, and I think people would benefit, and Australians would benefit. So there's an argument to say you should do it. There's a question about the role of government. I'm not a small government guy, as Ram's already said about the higher or lower. I'm a right-sizer government guy based on what governments do better than the rest of us and that we want and need. That's what government should do, and whatever that costs, it costs.

56:47so I'm not arguing against government involvement I just I mean does government start you know applying a GST based on the number of you know stars a food gets on the health scale do they you know start incentivising I don't know pick whatever your special interest is so I actually I would be happy with that Nessie if they did it I would benefit from it if they did it I think investors would do better if they did it do I think a government should be saying you should be a long-term investor I'm going to use the tax system to do that. I really don't. So that's just a personal view. I'm not strongly against it.

57:22I did it. I just more extended anything. You step in where there's ever market failure. Yeah, right. It begins middle. That's the entire thing. That's what we need. There is a function for that, an important function. But you just don't need to be involved in things you're not good at, like logically, right? I mean, I personally, again, everyone, I might differ here. I do think it's worthwhile government educationally help people choose better foods, for example, or encouraging people to eat well, frankly, selfishly, because it means there's less strain on the health system, but also if the health and safety and security of your nation, the wellbeing of your nation is kind of what government's there for, promoting that wellbeing is a positive thing.

58:00So I'm not against, I wouldn't say just market failure, mate. For me, there's a role in government education and, I mean, broad-ed, not capital-ed. Yeah, see, that's interesting. I mean, I kind of do, but then the subtitle there is as long as it's a good government. There's plenty of education campaigns in North Korea. Let me just say that, right? And that's a silly example, but not that silly. That's a good example. So it's kind of like that for me is the Hayekian sort of view of it all. It's kind of like it is very, very good and effective with very smart, farsighted, capable, intelligent, ethical, honest people.

58:38It's like, okay, so you're talking about humans that don't exist at this point. But yes, I do take the point. I do take the point. And I'm not even sure what the approach is. All right. Let's go to a finish off with a question from Victor, mate, who says, hi, Scott Andrew. You might get three questions in this episode. It's a record. I'm not sure we'll get this one finished. Two and a half. First, thank you for the podcast and the endless entertainment and knowledge you both provide. Endless. I guess if you want to watch this on repeat, you're welcome to. I may have asked this before, but any chance of a live podcast?

59:08I thought maybe your thousandth episode would have been perfect for it. They're all live, man. If this is what comes out after editing, oh, my God. So, Victor, I will say we did a live one once up on the Gold Coast. I think we'd want to do another live one around, wouldn't we? We haven't had any plans for it, basically because we're not very organized. I was quietly crapping myself, frankly. I was a little bit nervous. It's very easy looking at you through a Zoom screen in my Ugg boots in the comfort of my office. And then you have, like, people looking at you. Real people. And all of a sudden I'm very self-aware of the nonsense I'm spouting.

59:46And so I did enjoy it, but I was pretty nervous. You'd be up for another one though, wouldn't you? Yeah, why not? All right. Throw yourself out there, yeah. We have zero plans, Victor. Well, every intent and zero plan, which probably defines this podcast pretty nicely, actually. But yes, so yes, hopefully. A bit of a unique one, which I'm not sure if either of you have come across before. I hold shares in a small ASX company called Straker, which I believe Andrew has some familiarity with, given he had a CEO interview with the founder a year or two ago on Strawman. Without being stock specific, you can't have it, but that's okay, a week before the full year report was due, they uncovered a potential, in brackets, alleged employee fraud that was up to$3 million USD.

1:00:29In proportion to the size of the company, this is pretty significant. Now, he's got some questions. Have you ever seen examples of this before? How did it play out? I can't think of anything that comes to mind specifically. There's been allegations of wrongdoing at different places and different things have happened. I don't know that the examples are useful because there's so few of them. They're probably not going to likely be indicative. Ram, if you have any, feel free. But here's the second and third questions. It feels harsh to blame the company, says Victor, given they are the victims of the alleged fraud.

1:01:02What are some questions you would have asked about governance in relation to preventing these types of things in future? And second, if this isn't a reflection of the underlying business, could it be a reflection on management? How would you think about this? Is it potentially, as said by Buffett, a business on the operating table moment? Regards, Victor. Now, also, this question was seen before I went on leave, so we're not going to talk about Straker in the real time, unless, Ram, you want to give an update. But kind of what's happened since May, Victor, I don't know, and I don't have anything useful to talk about.

1:01:31So we'll talk about the general issue, and, Ram, feel free to throw in Straker if you want. But if there's still legal cases. I've got no special insight into it. Only other than it was one of these companies, you know, I think between 2029, sorry, 2029, 2019 and last year, they doubled their revenue. They were doing some interesting. It was an interesting company, right? And yeah, and then someone was doing something silly. So whose fault is that? I can, and now I'll speak more broadly. I mean, there's still real business there. The capital structure may change radically, right? So the assets, the customers, you know, the IP, the staff, you know, they're all there.

1:02:13They're all providing, well, as of last year,$40 million worth of value to their customers, not to their shareholders, but to their customers, right? So I suspect that if there is any real business there, and it seems certainly that there is, that that will go on. It's just shareholders might be entirely wiped out by the recapitalization and how it's structured. So who knows? We'll see what goes on there. The question is who's to blame here? And I don't know anyone. Well, anyone on the outside knows. But there's two broad possibilities. The first is that there was just a supervillain insider who just mission impossible this, you know, and they just cracked the code and boom, boom, boom.

1:02:55And it was just no reasonable person could have prevented or seen it. And there's the other end of the spectrum, which is just like, my gosh, your fiscal control policies and there was just like a dog's breakfast. And you really should have had some guardrails in place for exactly this kind of situation. And you didn't and you were asleep at the wheel. And even though you didn't do it yourself, you allowed a big, you left a massive hole in the fence and some wolves came in. Like that's on you. You know, you can't say, oh, but the wolves ate all my chickens. It's not my fault. Yeah, but lock the bloody gate, you know.

1:03:28So I don't know what the situation is there, but to answer your question, and maybe this will come out in the fullness of time, if it was the former, then no, that's just one of those things. And it's why, by the way, not specifically, but generally, no matter how much conviction you have in a company, no matter how close to it you are, how much research you've done, how much you know it intimately, there is always an element of risk because you don't know what you don't know. and there'll be even people at the top and the auditors and the C-suite, the board and everyone at the top, the end of the company completely in the dark about something that's going on.

1:04:08Like Richard Pryor in Superman 3, right? Just writing the code with no one aware, right? And skewing the payroll system. So great movie, by the way. Richard Pryor was excellent. What am I saying here? So, so, so I think, I think that it, I think it's hard to draw lessons from this because you, it's happened to me before. I'm sure it'll happen again. I'm sure it's happened to most investors. If not, it's, it's likely to happen. Not often, but like at least once in your investing career, we just get blindsided by the total black swan left field kind of thing. It's like, you can't beat yourself up for what you couldn't have seen.

1:04:54And, and I, in that you can be disappointed. and you can be upset, but you can't bay for blood, I don't think. But the exception being is that, yes, you left the gate open and absolutely you should bay for blood. That was a stupid thing to do and you deserve to be held responsible for that. And I'm speaking again more generally beyond Straker here. I don't know, man. I'm rambling as usual. What's your thoughts? I try and be a little more, a little less keen for blood. and the reason I say that is because what you, it's the old, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me thing and it's also the idea of who, you know, the old biblical, let him without sin cast the first stone and why I'm saying that is not to excuse, if someone's done the wrong thing, they deserve to be punished entirely.

1:05:45If they've been actively defrauding the company or a company, not Donald Straker, but you know, whatever's gone on. Or three negligence allowed it to happen. Well, see, this is where my view is different, I think, because let's say you need to let it happen and the person did the thing, they took it away, and you were like, you should have had better controls and whatever in place. Now, what is the best thing? And remember, the company is not the people. It's an entity, right? So it's the people, absolutely, in one sense, but it's also Straker, you know, ASCO, STG, will be a company, you know, Willis is W.

1:06:18The company will exist in a matter of time. If you change every employee at Woolworths, the company would still operate. Maybe not as well, maybe better. But, you know, so the question really for me, honestly, is a bit of a, let's get rid of the absolute deliberate wrongdoers, right? Those who had acts of commission to, you know, do wrong by the company or its shareholder should absolutely go. The next question for me is, let's say Warren Buffett in 1967 screwed up Royalty at Berkshire Hathaway. And he placed an order for a gazillion yards of, I'm getting, I don't know, my textiles very well, a gazillion yards of calico and he actually had to only order a bazillion yards of calico instead.

1:06:57So he made a really big mistake and it was negligent because he didn't check it and he forgot to do something and whatever, whatever. And as a result, the company said, Warren, you're a very bad man. You let that happen. You shouldn't let it happen. It's on your watch. Sorry, mate. You're going to have to walk the plank. And then you ask yourself, are Berkshire Charles better or worse than Buffett getting fired in 1967? Or are they better for him to say, you screwed up. Hey, learn a lesson. Don't do it again. will fix the systems and processes, now get back on with work. And I'm not trying to be soft on the people involved.

1:07:23In fact, I'm doing the opposite and saying the question for me is simply what's in shareholders' best interests? So let's not talk about Straker. Let's say another company that had terrible internal controls. I'll give you an example not to bag a company. Motorcycle Holdings is a business that they basically made a mistake in duties they were collecting on behalf of a state government or two. They were supposed to collect certain duties on sale. They didn't collect those duties. And the government said, hey, where's the money? And most of our colleagues went, we forgot to collect them. We didn't put it in our system.

1:07:53The system wasn't designed to do that. We just screwed it up. Now, they're a small company going along their way. Someone just didn't either know or realize or the system didn't allow for it. It's going to cost them millions of dollars probably, right? It's a bad blue. And I could say, I want someone's head. I want revenge. Someone's going to have to pay. God damn you. What the hell's going on? And I'd be justified in feeling that way. What I'm going to ask, I'm not a shareholder, by the way. What I'm going to ask for a motorcycle holdings is not that, but rather, hey, have you learned from it?

1:08:22Have you done the work? And are the people involved still the best people to take the company forward? Now, if the answer is no, then yeah, suck them. Turns out John Smith is an idiot and we put him in charge of finance and that was a mistake. And he didn't do the work. He's been working from home and playing tiddlywinks seven hours a day and just kind of dialing in a Zoom call. He's fine. It's like, cool, go for it. Yes. If he's not the best person with the role, do it. Do I want vengeance just for the sake of vengeance? Am I better served by that? I don't think so. So it's a bit of a wishy-washy answer.

1:08:53It feels like I'm being all lovey-dovey. I'm not. I'm absolutely being completely self-interested, right? I'm literally saying, hey, I want to have the people of the company who are going to do best in future. And frankly, the person who's learned from the mistake, probably less likely to commit it again than the one who comes in fresh and makes their own mistakes from scratch. So, yeah, I don't have a strong view, but I would wield the scythe carefully because the only question really is who are the best people to take this business forward, not what vengeance can I extract because I lost some money.

1:09:26And that's a bit of a counterintuitive kind of view, but if you want to make money, that's the only question for me. I don't disagree, mate. You have to look at these things on a case-by-case basis. There is the well-intentioned person who made an honest and easy mistake, and that's a very different category, to the person who was completely inept, that you knew they were inept, you handed them the keys to the car. You know, there is, oops, that was a silly, honest mistake, and there is, why did you give that chimpanzee an AK-47? Right, exactly. What did you think was going to happen in that scenario?

1:10:04And I think - But even then, also, let's say they did. Yeah. Yeah, it's your fault. It's not the monkey's fault. It's your fault. But also, are they going to do it again? I don't know. They're not going to be around to - I'm not going to have them on the board in my C-suite. But I'm just going to ask, if Buffett gives the monkey the AK-47 in 1967 - Well, he was an idiot, and he's clearly not capable. Well, that's the question, I suppose. That's the decision. I don't think it's the question. I mean, extreme example, obviously, no one gives a monkey an AK-47. I think for me it's just a question of – But that's why I use an extreme example to illustrate the point that if there is a spectrum – and we're on the same page.

1:10:40We're on the same page. You're just saying that, look, we can't pay for blood when human beings are fallible because it's going to happen all the time. It's a question of degree and it's a question of how dumb a move it was. And what does it say about your future abilities? I agree with that. I mean, the board that turns around and hires WB back after he just handed a, you know, a very powerful weapon to an animal that caused a lot of grief for a lot of people. I mean, that is just like, you know, like that is stupid. And that's a dumb example. It is a dumb example. No, but no, I take the play.

1:11:22I was talking metaphorically on the actual example, but yes, that's right. There's being forgiving and then there's kind of like, why are we doing this again for? And the other thing is we've got to give people the benefit of the doubt. Yes, second chances are important. But when there are literally tens and tens of millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of shareholders, this is the cut and thrust of the market. And it's sort of like, hey, a series of events unfolded in an unfortunate way, but you've got to go. You've got to go, man. And it's like, yeah, but, but, but, but, and it's like, well, look, in terms of all of the, you know, different degrees of unfairness in our society, a very, very high paid executive getting the flick after doing something dumb is like at the bottom of my list of to give a crap about when, when there's a thousand other sort of more egregious sort of things that, that happen in workplaces.

1:12:24I just think to me, the only question is, is this person still the best person for the job? Yeah, sure. I think that's my – you're right. But probably not if they did something really done. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yes, yes. But also, again, who was about sin, blah, blah, blah, right? It's like, you know, just the size of the screw-up and the likelihood of it being repeated and any circumstances. I just think, again, we lose money. We want someone to pay so we feel better about it. It's human nature, right? We just – you know, Avengers of Mind says the Lord and all that kind of stuff. The reason we have courts with independent judges rather than the victims making the decisions.

1:12:58So you kind of go, okay. The only question for me, as I said, is just simply, hey, that was dumb or that was bad or whatever, but do I benefit shells by keeping this person on or letting them go? And that's the only question. If shells are better off on balance for someone who does stupid things staying around, then keep them around because why would you cut off and spot your face? If, though, to Ram's point, it's so objectively stupid or you go, actually, it wasn't that stupid, but we have had a look at whether you write for the role. And frankly, even if we excuse this mistake, it's probably given us reason to reconsider and probably gone.

1:13:33That's cool too. I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. I just don't think you want to do it. To the question specifically that Victor asked, you already made the point. There's no lessons to be learned, I don't think. No. Mate, no. It's like the lessons of HIH and Enron. Remember all of the armchair quarterbacking that next day? But it was like the deception went right to the top. There was no way of like if you squinted at the financials, you would have actually seen all of the fraud. It was not in, it just was not in the public domain. You couldn't have seen it. You know, it's sort of like, and those things will happen.

1:14:05And I think you've just got to make your peace with that as being an always and ever-present background risk. You could buy a really solid house in a really solid neighbourhood and a sinkhole opens up tomorrow and swallows it. Who do we send to jail? Who do we send? No one. Did it suck? Yeah. Whose fault is it? No one's, really. Correct, correct, correct. Gods? Mother nature's? I don't know. It's not one's fault, right?

1:14:30The other thing I would actually extend the point, we're talking here about sort of corporate malfeasance and law-breaking and that kind of stuff. More commonly, you're going to see your wealth being destroyed by well-meaning idiots who haven't done anything wrong. Even that, I take that back. That's a bad statement. I just mean people who tried really hard in a very competitive arena on a global market, cutthroat, and things didn't go their way. Now, were they dumb? Were they evil? Did they break the law? No. No, actually, really bad outcomes happen all the time for very honest, hardworking, smart people all the time.

1:15:09And when it goes against you in that, you know what? It's just there's no one to blame. And it may be a little harder to hear, but, like, sometimes the blame, you just got to look in the mirror. Fair. I can tell you about all of the biggest losses I've made in investing. I absolutely can look myself dead in the eyes and say, well, I couldn't have known this, that, and the other, but I probably should have sold a lot earlier than I did. I bear a very big responsibility in that loss by trying to do things like loss aversion or dollar cost averaging or all these things that I thought I would do to make the loss not real, and then it went bad.

1:15:50And again, no one's broken the law. No one has been unethical. No one did anything dumb. It's just welcome to business. Welcome to business, my friend. And it's, by the way, it's why I think we need to be back on an earlier point. We need to be less critical and negative on people who haven't gone through the valley of death and come out through the other end and actually survived. And, you know, it's sort of like this is what these people are signing up for, you know. They finally make it out the other end and then we're going to like be, call them villains. Anyway, I think the other thing you'll find too, just from a psychology standpoint, is let's say you get, I like revenge movies, right?

1:16:31I love a good revenge movie. Like Kill Build is a real good homage to that. It doesn't bring satisfaction. It doesn't bring satisfaction. You know, you can be the blue-eyed samurai that just chases your nemesis to the ends of the earth and finally holds their severed head in your hands, and then what? Like, you're not happier. Like, you're really not. And when, and I don't say if, I say when these things happen to you on the market, don't hang on to it for too long. Learn the lesson. If there is a lesson to learn, sometimes there's not. Learn the lesson and move on. Yep. I love the point you make about, and this is again, so much of investing in psychology as always, right?

1:17:17Life is psychology. Yep. You make the point about the$3 million loss, which is obviously agreed. Obviously someone's done something wrong. And so what we're responding to is the one thing that we know and have a visceral response to. Imagine how many other$3 million losses were caused by all of the other things. Now, a crime is a crime. I'm not saying morally they're in any way comparable. and it may well be that, you know, a$30 theft if money was stolen, and again, no allegations, is a zero ROI. Most of the ROI it thinks. No one's trying to make money and losing it, right? But think about the number of times a business decision has gone bad and lost someone$3 million.

1:17:56Now, you can reasonably say, well, they gave it their best go and they got it wrong, and that's almost certainly true. How many times? Does the same person do it 14 times, once? If they did get it right on the second time or the 15th time, was it worth it? It depends how right they get it. What were the odds of success? What were the other things that were being done? Here's the other one, the counterfactual. What are the$3 million thefts that never happened, even though the oversight, for example, let's take that example. In 215 ASX companies, they have exactly the same rules on audit oversight and approvals, and one company money gets stolen.

1:18:29Think about data breaches in the modern age, right? How many companies the next day when Telstra or Optus or whoever does something dumb. Yeah, exactly. There's a swift board where he's like, we've got a problem with security, right? Right. And so think about the mistakes never made or the outcomes never eventuated. And again, you punish the person who potentially, I'm not saying you are saying this, Victor, but you could punish the person who let it happen. And you don't punish people who could let it happen but it didn't happen because you didn't find them. Now, we can be philosophical all the way up the wazoo in this conversation, right?

1:18:58The things that didn't happen, it did happen and the Donald Rumsfeld, no-no's and no-no's. but the reality is that we're responding and responding, reacting actually is a better word. And so just recognise our own human nature in that, not because we have to be fair at all, but again, it's that idea of what are we actually reacting or responding to? You might have made a fortune on a company with exactly the same shortcomings. You know, should we fire the person who left the door open but no one walked through it? I mean, maybe, but then, you know, how far do you take that? And so if you don't do that, the fact that someone walked through the door, is that justified as sacking?

1:19:36I mean, maybe. Again, for the same reason we've already talked about. But those counterfactuals of the one that happened that didn't get reported, the one that didn't happen but could have happened, or the one that happened and was reported. In those three circumstances. What about this one? Yeah. The one that could have happened, did happen, and paid off. So in other words, some stupid executive did the dumbest thing in the world. I go, hey, I've just taken the company Treasury and I've put it into Polymarket to bet on Trump's next tweet. It's like, what have you done, you idiot? Oh, no, it paid out 100 to 1.

1:20:12It's still the wrong thing to do, right? That's a really great point. And we know so much about investing too, doing the wrong things, getting lucky. It happens all the time. Anyway, I think we've done this one to death. But, yeah, so honestly, Victor. Great question. I'm pretty philosophical, mate. Like, it's just, there are a lot of punches to roll with. And it's 80-20 stuff. It's like, you know, could you have known, should you have known, would it have been worth the effort trying to find out? Would you have been right? You couldn't have known. I would answer that for you right now. You couldn't have known.

1:20:42You couldn't have known as a private retail shareholder. You couldn't have. I don't know. Unless you hire a private investigator and spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars bugging the offices and scrutiny, you know, hacking into people. It was like, how do you know? You couldn't know, and it sucks. For every single company, you might or might not have bought shares in as well, by the way. So not just that one. You'll have to earn that work in every company you owned or could have owned before you bought any of them because you have to do it if that's the rule you're using. So I get it, Victor.

1:21:10I get the intent. It sucks when you lose money too because you just want to find a dog to kick, right? Like I get it. It's like, oh, I've been robbed and literally robbed in this case if this was proven as an allegation. I need to blame someone so I feel better about the circumstance. and a bit of equity, a bit of a, that's really, really, really, really, really, really, really good crap, but it's going to happen. And it'll happen again at some point and it'll suck that time too. But also 98 % of the other times you'll make money and it's kind of just the way investing goes. I bet you, I don't even need to ask you because I know it's true.

1:21:41It's a bit dated now as an example, but how many times have you had a conversation in your career as a stock market dude where you're going to be making the case for stocks? And you're doing it in Australia, so you're pushing it uphill because everyone's property mad. And you're going, actually, you know, shares are pretty good and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And how many times has someone said, yeah, but what about HIH? With a little smug grin. What about ABC Learning? And you go. What about the tech crash? Yeah, it's just like you've found like literally the exception to the rule. Yes, yes, yes, exactly.

1:22:13And then you've used that as the reason is to not do it, you know. It's kind of like, it's like looking at it's like, well, well, Uncle Ted smoked four packets of cigarettes his day his whole life and he never died. So that's the evidence I'm going to base on my lifestyle choices going forward. It's just like, it's silly. And I think that's actually the bigger damage done is when these things happen, the erosion of trust from the greater unwashed for whatever, for desperate, whatever better term, you know, who then have their skepticism or cynicism reinforced about shares. It's all rigged. It's all dodgy.

1:22:45It's all made up. and it's like, yes, it was in that particular case. You are, but that's not true. And by avoiding it, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face because there is a massive engine of wealth creation that's here. But sure, let's pick on the one in a thousand examples of corporate fraud, you know. And more often than not, I mean, it's not even a corporate thing. It's not even an equity thing. I mean, how much dodginess is in the construction sector? Hello, Victorian listeners. You know, how much dodginess is there in government? You know, like, right? Like, it's just human beings forever and forevermore.

1:23:27There'll be a certain subset that are selfish, evil buggers. And it's always going to be the case. And then if that's what you're going to focus on outside of investing, but certainly in investing, it's just like there's never any reason to get out of bed at the end of the day. To be alert to it, be cognizant of it. But just don't hold that hate with you because the only victim ultimately will be yourself. That's great. We finished it, mate. I think we're done here. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being part of our newly, shortly, less longly pre-recorded podcast, which are kind of not quite live, but they're all live, as Andrew said.

1:24:02So work your way through that at an hour and 23 minutes in the podcast and then give yourself a few days off. We will be back on Friday with more conversations and on Sunday with more questions. And until then, have a great week and full on. Thanks for listening. 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.