Mailbag: incl. Leaning into the ‘nuance’ of investing. July 23, 2023

0:07Welcome to Motley Fool Money, our very special Sunday Mailbag edition. Now, it's very possible I'm back in harness by now, but just in case, we decided to pre-record one last episode, and this is that. I say we, it's about me, Scott Phillips, and him, Andrew Strawman Page. How are you, mate? I'm good. Welcome back, if you're back. Exactly. Or if I'm not, then I should be back by now, because it should have been midweek-ish. I'm driving back from Uluru, the long way through Queensland, with a mate. We're dropping the families at the airport. We're going to get back for school and we're taking the long way home, which should have been a fun trip.

0:49So assuming no horrible breakdowns or something else, that's why we're pre-recording this one because if it all goes pear-shaped, I could be on the side of the road in Bourke or Toowoomba or somewhere else right now. But hopefully I'm not. Hopefully I am back in the saddle. But yes, we wanted to make sure that our loyal, faithful listeners got every bit of content we could provide. So hence, one last pre-record. In saying that, if you have some questions, now is a great time because we've pretty much emptied the mailbag. This is the end of the end of the end of everything we've got. If you want a question answered, you need to throw it in the mailbag.

1:21And the way to do that is to go to info, I-N-F-O at fool.com.au. Go to all the socials. Andrew is still exclusive on Elon's favorite toy, Twitter, at Sage underscore Simeon, at Strawman Invest. He's probably on some Bitcoin-based, you know, distributed chat social network thing at some point, but that's going to die. Let's be honest. You'll get me on Twitter or Insta at TMF Scott P. The Motley Fool is at The Motley Fool AU. And on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash Scott Phillips money. Now, Andrew, we got a question from Ed. Let's kick it off with Ed's question. He said, first of all, thanks for the pods.

1:59Scott, stop it. You know what I'm talking about, but because I know you'll humor yourself about it, if in doubt, ask Andrew. Andrew, just say, Strawman is a private online investment club. Hang on. Strawman. Or is it an online private investment club? Oh, no, what have I done? Which is it? No, no, disregard that. I'll go to strawman.com and check for myself. Nice one, Ed, I say. As I pat my own back. But seriously, Scott, please let it go. I love it, Ed. Thank you, mate. So I didn't ask you the question. You saved Andrew having to answer it because you answered it for him, Ed. Which one is it, though?

2:33Is it an online private investment company or a private online investment company? Yeah, six in one, half a dozen of the other. Whatever you prefer. He said potato, I said potato. Yep. All right. Ed says, so first, I started investing way back in 2002 based on the advice of a very good financial planner. One who has been an active advocate for fees for service and against commissions. Awesome. This period of investment saw me navigate the GFC, hold tight, survive a margin call. I'm not sure how good a financial planner he was if he got you a margin call, but that's a different question, Ed. And ultimately, sell well ahead in 2015.

3:08Wait for it, Andrew. to fund a mortgage for a residential property. In early 2020, I realized a major increase in income, invested heavily in the COVID downturn based on some foolish advice and quickly became a legend in my own mind, up 100 % throughout 2021. Then in capitals, he says, I am no longer a legend, full stop. My greatest lesson. I've learned an awful lot from FOMO he says in brackets like a mofo spax de-worsification outrageous over valuations though time may heal some of these lack of focus lack of discipline lack of a clear goal for example establishing what research i'll be happy with more importantly i've learned to stay the course and to query all advice robustly even foolish advice at times he says at a cost both ways just quietly i think that means sometimes he listened and we lost your money sometimes he orders and he lost money himself i'm not sure as a side note he says i remain so very mixed i both admire the commitment to the foolish philosophy yet remain exceptionally frustrated by this very same commitment which resulted in so many recommendations on non-profitable growth stocks in a range of technology focused portfolios during a period of historically high valuation i really feel the fool is currently standing with its pants down in many respects only time will tell if its pants are pulled up here in Australia and in the US.

4:41Gee, thanks, Ed, but harsh for fair. Okay, so super, he says. I'm not messing with my super. My target is market returns for the next 20 years. I'm in my mid-40s, he says. It's in a handful of broad indexes and solid good, says me, shares. ASX 300, Small Lords, US Total Market, NASDAQ, and some proven performers. Think Brickworks, Solpats, Macquarie. He says, and certainly no other banks. I average in fortnightly up to 90 % of the maximum concessional rate. No stress. I build a modest cash pool, 10 % of my remaining concessional cap, iteratively to top up when the opportunity presents. I sleep well at night, says Ed.

5:20I listen to you gentlemen. I remain unemotional about the current tech market upturn. He says, email written early June 23. Date snapping it. Good choice. In fact, I see it as an ideal reminder to not listen to the noise. Here then is my question. If I'm happy with my approach to super and largely with my approach to all investing now, yet remain any one of many of excited, joyous, frustrated, dismayed, indifferent or disgusted, depending on the investment in my portfolio outside of super, do you think an alignment of the approaches will alleviate these mixed emotions? is it even necessary given i sleep at night what about lower risk in super higher risk outside it i should point out that amongst my non-super rabble i have many high quality investments which i have topped up along the way but they represent only a portion he says 30 in terms of number yet far more in terms of value yet yet it depends and in the long term i'll be fine i think he's channeling you there ram i've phrased my question you see to get at the psychology and deviate from personal advice, of course.

6:25As an aside, I'm going to do some background on the people who ran Silicon Valley Bank into the ground. Do you think I'll be dismayed and find they all retain various positions on various boards? Or will I rejoice that the system has caught up with them? Keep it up. Thanks, Ed. That is a very thorough email, Ed. Thank you very much for the thoughts. Thank you for the Harsh But Fair thoughts about our recommendations over the last little while too. They have been a bit hit and miss in some of our services for a while. But Ram, let's go to Ed's particular questions. Let's start with the last one first.

6:56Silicon Valley Bank. Perp walk, time in jail, never to be served on a corporate board or a management position again? Or are they going to rise Phoenix like from the ashes, do you reckon? Well, the bank's gone. That's not coming back. But people will be fine. No one's going to jail. Look at the GFC. One dude went to jail out of all of that nonsense. You have to do a lot wrong, don't you? Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's a nuanced thing. They actually weren't insolvent. It was sort of a literal bank run, right? It sort of sapped out all of their deposits and that sort of forced them to having to sell.

7:39It was a timing problem rather than a solvency problem. Yeah, so they didn't actually do – look, you can question the rules, but they didn't break any rules. and that's probably the biggest risk right or the biggest issue i reckon like as much as we want to focus because we kind of we we love we love the gladiators and we love the bit of blood sport we kind of focus on the people and there's not to say they shouldn't be focused on because i i think it's pretty clear they mismanaged the bank for exactly that reason they yeah they set the circumstances up that meant a run was was you know we could run on the duration duration mismatch was the error not a legal error but a strategic error imaginary yeah totally but as you say i I think that's where we don't focus enough.

8:18I will say, let me tangent for a second, Offhead's question. You know the whole PwC scandal. Now, it's four weeks later after we were recording this, or five weeks, so anything could happen in the meantime, God knows what happens. What frustrates me about PwC is that we're focusing on one consulting group and one thing they allegedly did wrong. And what will happen is, if night follows day, PwC will cauterize the wound, they'll fire some people, they'll say, see, we're fixed, we're changed, we're going to move on. And what it doesn't do is, it doesn't change the inherent relationship or the incentives that exist in that business and i think that's the reason i raise that is a because it frustrates a hell out of me b because i think that's the thing we're seeing i mean silica valley bank happened what 15 years after the gfc because the circumstances still remain in place to allow that to happen but by definition the regulators you talked about the laws the the legislators you know if they've done different things at the time with the GFC and then subsequently, the circumstances may not have existed for this to even happen in the first place.

9:17Yep. No, absolutely. They wound back a lot of the protections. The reality is, is that banking is an insanely profitable endeavor. You know, it really is. I take your money. I pay you bugger all for that, for the privilege. That's right. And I invested over there at much higher rates. You know, the old saying is you borrow at three, lend at six, and you're on the golf course by three. That was sort of like the old boys club. It makes you sick to your stomach, doesn't it? But that's kind of it. So you get to literally, literally create money and get a return on that. So that's great. Banking is actually a really important service.

9:58Credit creation has actually been a wonderful tailwind for economic growth. But just to sort of quote Peter Parker's uncle, with great power, with great power comes great responsibility. And so I don't begrudge, we want banks to be profitable. We want them to be viable. We don't want them to be super profitable, but we want them to earn a margin and be there and to make it sort of worthwhile and ultimately just sort of viable. But I kind of think that the deal should be with society, with us, which is, okay, we kind of need you guys and current way that the world is sort of structured, but you can't do this, this, this or this.

10:40Yeah. And everyone will cry foul. Oh, we can't. But well, you know, just don't do it then, right? But there'll be plenty of, as long as there is a margin to be made, someone will do it. And that's what it should be. And so I definitely think that, you know, we need better delineation between traditional banking services and investment banking as well. There used to be a literal, you couldn't do both. No. And the lobbyists managed to convince government it was necessary and possible and worthwhile without taking too much risk and guess what turns out you know sophistication and and whatever there's a whole rant there about the capture of government by by vested interests which we're not going to have time to go into but suffice it to say had they just done what the you know it's funny there's not a lot new in investing there's a lot new in life um Charlie Munger famously quotes Ben Franklin who lived a couple hundred years ago and tries to live by those maxims and you kind of think you know what for all things we think we've invented in the meantime we have like you know society the inventions of society are phenomenal i'm not sure there are too many new principles or too many new ways of actually behaving ethically and responsibly that weren't known 400 years ago right like it's not actually that hard you've just got to say that sounds like yeah maybe you know the idea removing red tape is is attractive if the red tape is genuinely just painful for its own sake it's there for a good reason then that's there for a good reason leave the red tape alone yep Yeah, put proper incentives in place.

12:01A while back there was changes to the law where boards were directly responsible for the health and safety of employees. And so guess what? Every company presentation, particularly for mining and industrial companies, zero accidents and they make a big deal about it. The annual reports, it is there. And guess what? They genuinely try to minimize that. Why? Because they're on the hook for it if something goes wrong. And so when there is a very little risk and downside to me personally as someone in a position of authority as a key decision maker, and there's a huge upside to be made if I want to sort of push things in the wrong direction, I might not do it.

12:47You might not do it. 80 % of people might not do it. But enough people will do it if the conditions are there, right? It's sort of like chances are things won't go completely pear-shaped on my watch. I stand to score an incredible bonus. Worst, worst case scenario, I lose my job and I pop up on another board in a few years' time and I've still got my millions of dollars. It's kind of like we always talk about risk-reward in this game. And so it is a very bastardized sort of risk-reward kind of setup that we have. So, you know, if you were to make the board directly responsible for improper, you know, judicial management of other people's capital, I reckon you'd see some changes.

13:30Funny, you know, I - Not going to happen. No, it's not. If you track this back, here's the thing. The management are appointed by the board. The board are appointed and retained by the shareholders. The shareholders in most large organizations tend to be a bunch of short-term funds who really don't care about the long-term future of the business. generally with massive exceptions and etc etc uh it's it either you change the regulations or you change the shareholding or both um yeah it's also why i love founder owned businesses businesses that are going to run businesses businesses where the the ceo or the board or both have large amounts of their wealth tied up in these companies um you know because it's just you know we talk about independent directors and independent directors are supposed to be people who haven't been engaged with the company that long.

14:16And, you know, we've ranted before of the SEC in the US. By their rules, Warren Buffett's not an independent director, nor does Charlie Munger. It's like, so hang on, you're telling me we should get rid of Buffett and Munger and hire some professional director on four other boards who has a nice CV, a shiny suit and some good connections. And that's a better, you know, it's madness. It is, isn't it? And you kind of think about, that's what's missing is the incentives piece. There's an academic reality of, what if they didn't have any skin in the game on this thing? Then they'd make, you know, independent judgments.

14:42Well, actually, no. they're going to make not independent is the wrong word right it's like are they genuinely aligned with with shareholders well if they own a decent amount of shares and you know this is their thing you know you can be sure that's why buffett's putting his son as the new chairman when buffett's no longer running the business he says look you know this it's it's his job to meant to care about the future of the company my legacy my artwork gets passed down to my son he's going to look after this as the chair because he cares more than anyone else does for those for those reasons right and it's that kind of stuff that matters hey um let's move on to the second part of the question because otherwise we'll still be talking about this in an hour's time uh i think ed's question is interesting mate about you know what to do inside super versus what to do outside super and it strikes me ed's kind of taking this kind of reasonably um you know he said super's great it's the outside super stuff where he's taking a different view he's been a little more growthy he's been a little more ambitious and it maybe hasn't worked out as well as he wanted it to compared to his super so he's kind of saying well you know what's the what should he do?

15:43Should he be saying an approach is an approach and the structure doesn't matter? Or should he be saying super is for conservative retirement, the other stuff I can take some chances on? And he says, as you will say, it depends and in the long term he'll be fine. But other than that, what do you recommend? What's your thought about super versus non-super investing and whether or not they should be the same or different or how to think about those two buckets? I personally think it should be the same. I mean, regardless of the sort of tax structure, I just want to make the best investments I possibly can.

16:13Yeah. Right. So the distinction for me is what do I feel I want access to before I'm 75 by the time they raise it when I get there. Which is going to happen, right? Yeah. That's the main consideration for me. I've got a pile of money that I've – a pile of money, wouldn't that be nice? I've got a bit of money that I've – I've got a sweet pool full of money, says Andrew, Moneybags page. I was just whinging to you about my latest electricity bill and the rest of it. That's right. There's not, you know, whatever's there. It's a question of, you know, is this for the ultra long term or is just this for, well, it's always long term for me.

16:52But, you know, I do like having money outside of super because my circumstances might change. I might actually want to buy or be in a position to buy a house at some point in time. So for me, that's the delineating factor is when do I need access to it? Other than that, I pretty much approach it the same way. Is your investing strategy any different, mate? I do have a lot more. I don't have any ETFs directly outside of Super, but I do have it in Super. I do tend to keep it pretty easier, I suppose. It doesn't require as much fiddling. I use Australian Super, the member direct option, which allows me to sort of buy direct amongst the top 300.

17:35So, you know, I've got a bit more flexibility like that. And I just do tend to – I try not to fiddle too much as a general rule, but it's that stuff I really want sort of as low fiddle requirement. But it's not miles away. There's a lot of overlap in many other respects. Yeah, I'm actually probably even more than you from the sound of it. I think my super and non-super is almost, it's not identical at all. I have US shares in my own name that I don't have in my super fund because just honestly, it's just a hassle because I have an SMSF and just a US account I can't be bothered with. And I probably should, but you know, so I have US shares only in my own name.

18:14That being said, I want to say 90 plus percent of my positions are overlapping in the two different structures. They are different weightings because I bought them at different times, interestingly enough. So I could sell down some of my bigger holdings I've had for a long time, and they've done actually relatively well. I could sell those down and reallocate, but I didn't. When I put money in super, for example, in SMSF, I haven't taken a bigger chunk if I bought them later just because one of them is that's where the market's got to. Now, that's a degree of self-denial and crazy magical thinking because if I'm happy to have 10 % of company A in my personal fund but 5 % in super, There's no real reason that should be true with one exception, which is I do kind of consider them both the same pool of money.

18:59Obviously, keep outside as you do, Andrew, to make sure I've got flexibility. But I look at my total portfolio and say, okay, well, there's 10 % in company, A, in my personal account, 5 % in the other account, total, total, okay, well, I'll just pretend the numbers are the same. 7.5 % in total, that's my total exposure to that as a proportion of my total portfolio. And so there's a bit of that. That's kind of how I think about it. So if something's worth buying for super, it's worth buying for my personal account and vice versa in my mind. I don't always buy them all at the same time. I don't always buy the same amount of each, but I don't have any distinction between the two.

19:29I would just, we talked before, I think it was actually on Friday, might've been the week before, about if you're someone who just needs to have a bit of play money just to keep the rest of the money safe, then so be it. And so if that's you, Ed, or there's someone listening, feel free to do something like that. To my mind, I don't necessarily think your investment approach should be different for the two buckets, unless your horizons are different, which Andrew just kind of mentioned for him and potentially a house. You know, I've got hopefully, I mean, you know, fingers crossed, a couple of decades left of doing this thing and then some sort of retirement, part-time, full-time, whatever I end up doing.

20:06And, you know, I think my best investments are my best investments. I don't, here's the other thing, by the way, if you're in a, if you're reasonably young and you are, I'd like to believe you are, Ed, because you're in your 40s and you're younger than me. So I'm going to assume you're young. but if that's if that's you if that's the case then you don't need to be taking undue risks or even you've said yourself you learned a few things about yourself about what sort of returns you really want I think you should absolutely go for the most the highest return you can get reasonably get right because that's what we're here for otherwise buy an index but I also would say don't don't be like a sort of a sort of tortoise and hare you've I think you've probably learned that lesson so maybe you I'm telling you this after the fact but for anyone else listening don't feel like i'm gonna go for 25 returns my personal account because i can afford to because it's high growth and it's higher risk and i'll just keep my super safe that money is going to spend exactly the same when you're 67 or 75 as andrew says when we finally retire um so don't you don't feel in my view anyway don't fall for the temptation to feel like you have to or you should take more risk in one or less risk in the other they are both you know retirement funding in theory or maybe for some other purpose like a house or something else but generally speaking for me it's it's the same approach the same mentality the same risk reward trade-off i don't so i don't think it's useful theoretically as an investor again if you need to have some play money then so be it but generally speaking if you ask me best best practice i would say all the money is going to be used at some point later in your life um you want it in the best investments you can find taking undue risk for high but unlikely reward is probably not a not the smartest strategy in the world.

21:39Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I would, I guess, one comment I would make is if you are going for that higher growth strategy outside of SIP, or it really doesn't matter where it is, I think what, they tend to be called high beta stocks. And that just means that they're more volatile than the average of the market. So what you tend to see there, even if you're doing it well, is that when markets are going up, you go up much more but when markets are going down you go down much more it's it's kind of just the way it goes yeah of course we know that you know on average the market goes up two out of every three years and one down one of every three as an average right so it does tend to work out pretty well over time but I think it's just worth emphasizing that that it is is if you are going to take that strategy, you're not necessarily wrong.

22:37Maybe I'm just saying this to make myself feel better. But you're not necessarily wrong if you've underperformed for a year or so because that's probably what you should have expected with that kind of strategy. That's a good point. You're definitely wrong if the businesses aren't performing well. Or if you realize you paid too much in the first place because both those things are true. Very true. Very true. But as I'm saying, even when done right, you will just see things move around to a much greater degree. And so it's just to sort of know that in advance. And there's nothing wrong with that.

23:09I mean, I very deliberately take that on because I kind of think, well, if the price of excess returns is excess volatility, I'll pay that price. But hopefully I'm going in eyes wide open with that expectation. And you expect the long term to still work out exactly. Yeah, it has so far. Here's one from Bryce who says, Hi, Andrew and Scott. I'm a lowly retail investor who is constantly envious of the opportunities that sophisticated slash wholesale investors have access to. The grass looks greener on the other side, says Bryce, and I find myself mournfully reading investment application forms of proven fund managers who have the requirement of a sophisticated investor certificate.

23:52Why wouldn't I want my money in the hands of experts, he asks. it seems strange that it appears to be a level of protection for investors who can't afford to take on more risk when any joe bloke and yolo all their money into some specky stock on a trading app without anyone batting an eyelid is there any way to get exposure to some of these funds this is maybe a fund manager etf question mark or am i doomed to watch from the sidelines until i either earn enough or have enough to become sophisticated cheers bryce ram i hate i hate sophisticated the label as much as I hate retail you know sophisticated just means retail is just the industry's way of calling you poor and sophisticated is the industry's way of calling you rich that's what it is right like that's how you'd explain it to a 12 year old and that'd be the most accurate way to explain it so there's nothing necessarily sophisticated about you if you're a trust fund baby right you just got a pile of cash therefore you're allowed to sort of play in that field um it's more to do with regulation than anything else and i know a few fundies and they just i only do wholesale not because they don't want access to retail but because they have to jump through a gazillion other hoops and there's a lot of costs and compliance issues that go around that so it's generally it's just like well i do i do a wholesale only because i just can't be bothered jumping through these insane regulatory hoops and they are insane it's um you Again, just not to go too much onto a tangent, we do need regulation, but I think there's been a bit of overreach in certain areas.

25:24The final point I would make is don't assume that these guys do better than you do or can do. So there's some wonderful wholesale funds out there for sophisticated investors that have done well, but that's true outside as well. There's also a majority that have underperformed and not done well, which are only accessible for sophisticated investors. So I don't have the data in front of me. I'm sure someone has done the research and looked back in time. And my guess would be the 80-20 rule in the sense that there's probably 20 % that have got some meaningful long-term track record of outperformance and the rest that don't.

26:03So, yeah, I'm not a sophisticated investor. I don't have that on my driver's license, but I don't really lose any sleep over it as well. There's a lot of opportunity out there without access to that. Yeah, I mostly agree and partly disagree significantly, actually, mate, with you on this one. And I think we've kind of talked about this a little bit before. I agree about the arbitrary allocation between the two. It was up to me, I'd actually get rid of the sophisticated investor criteria altogether and make everyone meet the retail investor criteria and be done with it. um so i i don't think the to your point i don't think the i don't think the difference serves anyone particularly well right the the i mean you talk about being the retail stuff being overregulated that's probably true to some degree but i would also say that sophisticated air quotes sophisticated investors are also easy marks to your point because a they're not necessarily actually sophisticated they're just rich and b why again to your point about the good fund managers you know say i'm just going to take advantage of the lower regulation thanks and skip through this way the other guys say you mean i can raise money without like a prospectus or having to meet asset rules or that's it if i've got something that little less you know obviously um uh ideal justified a reasonable uh maybe even you know a little bit smelly i could go to the sophisticated investors air quotes sophisticated investors in other words find some rich trust fund kids as you said and say to them hey look at this great idea i'm doing this really cool ai thing it's going to be great and i haven't got a prospectus but if you've got more than a quarter of many dollars i can i can take your money okay that sounds exciting i'll do that you know and i think to my mind mate i think we should absolutely work out which retail investor i'll use that term deliberately in this case because it is the industry term rather than your preference for it i'd sometimes just mock you this time i'm doing it deliberately um you know some of those rules may need to be to roll back or change or repealed or improved or whatever but i think the too often the sophisticated investor tag is just used as an excuse not to do the things that actually should be a reasonable estimate or expectation i should say of what rules we would like to see in place to both make sure the market works well and protect investors from you know our prospectus is a prospectus for a reason you must have these things in it why because the regulators decided these things are important for investors to know uh to say to someone just because you have a certain amount of money you no longer need these or deserve these protections i think is part of the problem i agree with you mate in terms of access um you could have invested in let me pick three berkshire hathaway i own solpats i own west farmers i don't own 20 years ago and done spectacularly well without needing to pay fund manager stupid fees to get in on the occasional thing you see reported and your point about 80 20 meters i think absolutely right you see the one fund that does what's like oh i wish i had that one you know it's like the share that went well you know could i bought that one yeah did i maybe maybe not you know uh you're always gonna you're always gonna notice the ones that go really well and say gee i wish i had that and you won't necessarily see the ones that go badly and go, oh, thank God I wasn't a sophisticated investor and lost money on that thing.

29:01So I guess I really, Bryce, would encourage you personally, anyone listening, not to actually desperately desire too badly to be a sophisticated investor. I am not. I have no desire to be. If and when I get to that level of wealth and income, I won't be applying for a sophisticated investor exemption. I just don't want to. I don't. The value of that to me is not exactly zero, but I don't think it's any necessarily better or worse than being a standard retail investor. I like the fact companies have to disclose stuff. The one thing I would say very quickly is you say, Bryce, any Joe Blow can YOLO their money into some speccy stock.

29:38That's absolutely true, except the speccy stock by virtue of being listed on the exchange has to have at least met those criteria that ASIC requires for a retail investor to invest in. So the stock can still go badly, don't get me wrong, but they had to at least do the full prospectus and everything else. You could have a speccy stock or a speccy company in a wholesale market where the same dodgy company is the same, except there's even less disclosure. So it's not so much the investor's access to the investment idea itself. It's how much information the investment idea needs to provide to the investor before you're able to invest in it.

30:12Again, just be careful what you wish for. That's probably how I'd leave that one. Any thoughts on that, mate? I can wish that I would at least have the potential to be a sophisticated investor. There are worse problems in the world, aren't there, than whether you want to do it or not. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

30:38Mate, here's one from Ivan who says, Hi, guys. I'm so glad you have this podcast and can translate jargon into English to answer questions that are being asked. Also, ones that are slightly off topic including the old faithful about Strawman. And he gives us one of those rolling on the floor laughing emojis. So I think that's a good thing. I'm going to put that in a vote for... Laughing or crying? No, no, I put it down as a vote for my occasional question when I'm not sure about the company you work for, or the company you founded, strawman.com. He says, being a simple blue-collar worker, I'm confused.

31:11I don't have a home loan, but I do buy a lot of unleaded petrol. It's been stated many times that roughly a third of people have home loans and increasing interest rates directly affects them. I have no idea how many people can drive cars, but I'm guessing it's more than a third of people. Interest rate effects take time to flow into the community. Fuel can be increased in five minutes. If the objective is to remove money from the economy, does it make sense to use fuel and take a smaller amount from a larger number of people? I get that this is a job for politicians and they wouldn't want to do it because of the backlash, but let's face it.

31:46No one likes politicians anyway, says Ivan. This seems very simple. So what am I missing? Let the rant begin, Ivan. Thank you, Ivan. That's a very good one. I'm going to share, by the way, Ivan's auto signature on his email. He says, where you are in life may not be your fault. What you do next is. That's a bit of Sunday morning inspiration for us. He's in. It's good. Hey, what do you reckon, mate? Fuel instead of rates? Yeah, I have to really ponder that one. I mean, the really tricky thing with all of these is always the unintended consequences. Yes, exactly. And so on first hearing that, I kind of think, yeah, yeah.