Mailbag, incl: What questions would you answer before investing? July 19, 2026

23:54You know, an extra hit of vodka as you're starting to sober up. You know, we can argue about that, but I'm sure you're right. I think that's exactly what's going on. It's very simple. If printing bits of money or digits on a database could do anything in the real world, there wouldn't be poverty. Yeah, exactly. If so facto, you know, at some point someone's got to, like, grow some food and make some stuff. If that doesn't happen, like, I don't care how much quote unquote stimulus in numbers you throw around. It's just like, that's it. And that's the fallacy of our day that we think we actually, our collective delusion is that we can make an arbitrary man-made thing such as money have different numbers of zeros behind it.

24:36And that will fix things in the real world. It's such a, it's so laughably stupid. So I'm only going to say, I agree with you at stupid when you have thought it through properly. but I think most of us have actually had that thought at some point before we've been disfused of the notion. And that's not stupid to think of it in the first instance. It's stupid to hold that belief once you've been taught better. I'm not to agree with you again. Pauline Hanson was years ago criticised for doing exactly that, right? And I'm not a big Pauline Hanson fan. I don't think her policies or aptitude are up to snuff personally, and that's a personal criticism, I suppose.

25:11I don't mean it as a personal assault. I just don't think objectively that that's a good thing. but some of the stuff she gets tagged with, it's like, I don't mind people saying, well, can we just print some more money? And you go, you know what? That would make sense, but let me explain it to you. Oh, cool, thanks. You know, I think you say a lot, mate. Asking the dumb questions is really, really important because if you don't ask the dumb questions, you believe the dumb answers. And that's where you learn, right? If they're really dumb, then there's a very easy way to just retort them. You know, that's a stupid question.

25:39Let me tell you why. If it's more than that, then it's almost by definition, not a dumb question. It's like, well, it's a dumb question, but I need to spend six weeks and we need to go down a lot of rabbit holes. And then it's like, well, so it's a good question. Let's call it that. Well, the problem is with it as well, mate, is everything that you just said is true. But it's also that even I will begrudgingly acknowledge that it actually does kind of work in the short term. Yeah, correct. It kind of does. Well, even medium term, right? As long as we're all prepared to believe, it's, I mean, you know.

26:11It's just that it can't sustainably work. Because when I say it, it's just like, it's just maths, right? You can try and make two plus two equal five as much as you want. You can do anything. It just doesn't happen, right? And that's what's so alluring about it because it's just like, just this one last time. Just this one last time. We'll do this. We'll get out of it. Then we'll be okay. Yeah. And by the time everyone's like, oh. And nothing went wrong, so why couldn't we keep doing it? The answer is, well, because you kind of, you know. Or when things do go wrong, they're so distant in time and space is that it's hard to draw.

26:45I mean, I bang the table on it one more time. It's just like cost of living, cost of living. Where did this come from? And the best we can come up with is that people who run Woolies are greedy. Like that is literally the best we can do. And it's like, well, let me take you back more than three minutes and let's like draw a logical line between these. Like this happened and then that happened. It just wasn't immediate and it wasn't specific. But it doesn't mean it's, you know, it's like, again, I smoked a packet of cigarettes a day my whole life. You've done the same thing. I get lung cancer and you don't, you know.

27:20And we go, well, it's inconclusive. You know, who knows? Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. You know, it's just like, yeah, but stand back, look at it objectively, statistically. It's very obvious, I think. Can I add to your metaphor too, mate? It's not so much whether you got it or I didn't get it. But we've both been smoking for five years. I haven't got sick yet. You haven't got sick yet. It must still be okay. Let's have another cigarette. Ten years, I'm still okay. That's the better analogy. Twenty years, Gerald just died of lung cancer, but we're still okay. Well, that's only one out of three.

27:47We're still okay. Probably wasn't lung cancer anyway. Let's keep doing it. Forty years, okay, now I'm sick. Now you're sick. Most people who smoked are sick. Everybody, no, but most people, we can probably draw some reasonably causal lines. Dude, we went off the gold standard four years before I was born. This is a very interesting period of time. Yeah, but we're not that old. right like it's just like that is that is that is a big change and then it's just and people at the time were like oh that might you know rah rah rah and it's just like but it's it becomes a very hard argument to prosecute because people can say yeah but look it's okay this is always my this is all my like my frustration with many of the debates i've had with with property returns being being sustained in perpetuity right you know it's just sort of like i'll often make the case it's just like, yes, it's great, but they just physically can't grow.

28:37They can't double every seven years. They just can't because the economy doesn't double. Like at some point you're going to hit sort of natural sort of thresholds and you make all this argument and do it very clumsily and, you know, I just can't do it well because I can't convince anyone, so I'm clearly definitionally not doing it well. But because it's not – it's just like, well, as long as I've seen it, that's what it's done. You know, it's like it's just not very satisfying to say, yeah, but eventually it won't. it's like yeah well what did Kane say in the long run we're all dead you know if only there was a story about a turkey yes exactly go on roll the turkey story it's been a while roll the turkey story out I've got to make it more eloquent and better narrative but I anyway it was not mine it was who's the who's the guy who runs Merkel Markle is it Tom Garner Tom Gaynor.

29:33I think. Okay. Actually, I don't think it's neither of us. I expect it's older than that. But either way, let's assume it's yours. Andrew Page said. It's a story that cautions against recency bias. Yeah. And the story goes that the farmyard animals are all talking about the farmer. And some of them are a little less, you know, nice about the farmer. He's not that great a guy. And the turkey goes, what are you talking about? He like, I woke up in a beautifully clean nest. I've been fed every day. I've been given my antibiotics and my medicine. He's kept the foxes away. He's made sure that I've had everything that I could possibly need to be happy.

30:14And you're telling me that he doesn't have my best interests at heart. And it's only on Thanksgiving, it's an American story. It's only on Thanksgiving that he finds out that it's like, oh crap. Right. And it's just like the turkey was right. Like in their lived experience, there was nothing to suggest that. Once you go beyond the individual perspective and experience of that turkey and you look at it in a more holistic way, and the other animals who had been around for a while, they're like, well, there's been a lot more turkeys before you. I've had this conversation. It's been like memento. I've had this conversation with you before.

30:50And I think that is, again, I've really got to get better with my quotes, but it's someone smarter than me once said that the one thing you can learn from history is that we don't learn from history. We don't learn from history. That's such a good line. I love it when people just, when they just nail that line, it's like, oh, that's perfect. So apparently, mate, it turns out the turkey illusion was originally the chicken illusion and it was first written about, apparently, according to Google AI, by Bertrand Russell in his 1912 problems of philosophy. and it's the Russell created the story to explain the problem of induction the logical flaw of a shoe that just because it has been repeated consistently in the past it will continue forever so there you go oh man Bertrand Russell is such a great thinker that's also if I can just pivot quickly into the major stuff ups I've seen with investors where I'm going to invest in the share market and I've often said the best thing that can happen to you when you first have that instinct is to have your face just plowed into the mud.

31:57Because what can happen, and I've seen it happen many times, is that I'm going to do that. And it just so happens, it's just a happenstance. You did it at the right point in time. You had a bit of luck. And just for whatever reason, everything you touch turned to gold. And all that does is just make you convinced that you are God's gift to the financial markets. And you're right. in your lived experience, that's exactly what's kind of happened until it's not. And it's very hard to sort of sit back and go, well, wait a second. Am I the smartest investor in the world or have I just been incredibly fortuitous?

32:32And if you're male in particular, it's very easy to sort of gravitate towards that first explanation. And if someone sort of says, hey, congrats, well, and don't begrudge anyone's success. You take the cards you're given and you play. You might be the dumbest poker player in the world. someone gives you four aces and a king, you know, like you're going to win, right? And you've just got to recognise that you've got to – teasing apart the elements of luck and skill is very much worth doing and recognising that there is lessons in the experience of others that have come before you is probably a good thing too, not just in investing, by the way.

33:09Yeah, I like that. I like that. And the longer the arc you look over, the better you can be informed. Yep. Yep. Second question from Russell. How conservative should a transition to retirement or retirement investment strategy be? I'm in the transition to retirement phase, says Russell, and most of the advice I see recommends playing it safe. But statistically, I may still have 20 good years ahead of me, which makes me question whether an overly conservative approach is the right one. Using simple numbers, let's assume I have a million dollars. Now, we will say, Russell, you know this is not going to be personal advice, but we will use your numbers because it seems like a rough number we can kind of work with.

33:45assume I have a million dollars and I want to draw 50 ,000 per year for 20 years. If the minimum expected return is roughly inflation, that amount should last. But because I do not need all of the money immediately, does it make sense for the entire balance to remain in low-risk assets? For example, one possible approach might be$250 ,000 in very low-risk assets to cover the first five years,$250 ,000 in medium-risk assets for the following five, and half a million bucks in higher risk assets for the later years, with risk gradually reduced over time. Am I missing something in that logic? I ask Russell.

34:18I have a high tolerance for short-term volatility and would likely be even more aggressive with long-term funds than this example suggests. Even a large fall in my upholdings, such as occurred with CSL, is within my tolerance, because I acknowledge it is only one part of a broader portfolio. Yours most humbly, Russell. Full on another 10 years, he says. Only 10, Russell? Come on. Ram and I will be young whippersnappers by then. Will we still be here banging on and shouting into the void at that point? And maybe you'll be listening, Russell. Maybe you won't be. I will start, mate, by just saying, Russell, if you only just started a transition to retirement, I'm going to pick your in the late 50s, early 60s probably.

34:56Actuarily, you're probably looking at 30 years, and I wouldn't rule out more than that because average life expectancies include things like infant mortality and misadventure in your 20s. Now, I hope you're going for even longer than that, Russell, but I don't have the numbers in front of me, but statistically, once you get to a certain age, your chance of getting, beating the average continues to grow, basically, by definition. So I don't know what your future will be, mate. Hopefully, you're here forever. But 20 good years, if I was 55 or 60, I'd be betting on 30. Again, on average, and I'd be planning to hit 30 to make sure that I did invest and live accordingly.

35:31What do you reckon, mate? How would you think about retirement? Let's say you retire tomorrow. You sell a straw man for the$15 billion it's apparently worth, and you decide to invest that to live the rest of your life. What do you think about the kind of risk approach and how to divvy that up and think about life expectancy and income and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, this one comes up a bit. It's a great question, Russell, and I think you've hit the nail on the head. I mean, so much of the accepted wisdom is just pure nonsense and poppycock. Like what they really, and you nailed it already by sort of saying, you know, by implicitly sort of separating risk and volatility.

36:08They're two very different things. I know everyone knows, but I just, I've got a contract with myself. I must distinguish between the two at every single opportunity. And so what people are saying there is that you don't want volatile assets when you're retired. And there actually is truth to that. Like, if you've only got a little bit of cash that's there and there's a 50 % drawdown, well, you know, and you need to spend the money, you can't wait for the recovery. So there's a great deal of sense in it. But I just always cringe when people sort of say, oh, I'm going to take a high-risk assets.

36:40I don't take any high-risk assets. And I own Bitcoin, man. I own pre-revenue. I own pre-profit companies. What, loss-making companies? Sorry, loss-making companies. But I'll look you dead in the eye with a completely straight face, hand on heart, and say they're low risk. Or at least relatively low risk. And the portfolio level is even lower, right? Because you're all thinking about the overall, yeah. So you've got to be careful with the definitions. And so the only sense that that makes the accepted wisdom is in the situation where you will need to draw the money and you might not have the opportunity for a recovery to occur.

37:17Then that's why I always go to the next point saying, Well, it depends as well. So you've gone with an example of$1 million. And under that$1 million scenario, given average costs of living and the rest of it, I would say definitely put some in something super boring and destined to underperform and bleed away through inflation, like a term deposit or something like that. Super boring, but it's there, right? If you were saying, Russell, I'm going to retire with$10 million, I'd be like, what are you doing? Invest all of it in quote unquote risky. You know what I mean? You can absolutely weather the door.

37:46And if you really just want pure sleep at night kind of factor, then go for a year or two with just some cash on the sidelines anyway. But, you know, Jeff Bezos doesn't have money in cash because of volatility. It doesn't really matter. It's arbitrary at that point. If you've got$10 ,000 and then we'll actually kind of come out the other side of the chasm there and go, actually, you know, just go high risk because you're not going to make it anyway in terms of your funding. So, yeah, I don't know. I won't crap on about it anymore. I would do it that way. Yeah, I've never been able to... A couple of things I need to codify properly, and this is one of them.

38:25There's two axes for me, Russell. There is your income-producing assets, and there is the need to sell down the capital. And I've used the example before, and I apologise for continuing to reference Motley Fool products. I'm not selling them at all. We have a service called Motley Fool Everlasting Income, and we invested a million dollars, funnily enough, in that portfolio back in 2017. And the aim of that portfolio was 100 % invested in shares. And the idea was our contention, and frankly, we're now more than nine years in and it's worked out so far. So again, notwithstanding the induction bias we just talked about before, so far so good.

39:08The idea was we didn't need any, we have a small amount of cash to basically smooth out the cash flow bumps from dividends. And I'll give you some details just for the fun of it. So we originally had many bucks. We kept$40 ,000 in cash and we invested the remaining 960. And the idea was we'd aim to never sell a single share to fund the income. But we would have the income come through dividends over that period of time. Now, it's not for everybody. You can have a growth portfolio and sell down parts of your shares at different times. It's just the way we chose to do it for members who wanted that particular solution.

39:40Got frank credits as well. so there's reasons why it makes sense for some people. But broadly, that was the idea. Now, we've got 96 % invested in shares, which most people would advise us as a high-risk asset, right? It's volatile and up and down. The reality is because we're not selling shares to fund the income, we don't care whether the share price is volatile. It's immaterial. And we've got enough money in the account and we keep enough money in the account so that even if dividends were reduced for an extended period of time, we'd sell more than enough cash and more than enough buffer to not need to sell anything to fund the income.

40:12Now, we've always reserved the right to if everything went to the absolute worst case scenario, we might have to sell some shares to pay the income if that's what it comes to. I think that chance is remarkably unlikely because we have 19 different companies. If they all reduce their dividends by enough and for long enough to soak up our entire cash buffer, I don't know what odds you give on that, but it's really, really long. And so that's the approach we took. In other words, we've got 96 % in long-term growth assets or at least, you know, not to be growth shares, but I think people would agree with shares are a growth asset.

40:42And that's where we run the service. So if you've got enough income generation, you don't necessarily need much cash on the sidelines at all. You can have, and again, Russell, I'm saying you should do, please don't take this as personal advice. I suspect when I retire, I will have a year's cash, a year's expenses in cash, and I will have a portfolio that is largely dividend generating and hopefully more than enough to pay my living expenses. And so I kind of, and by the way, that service we created, I literally did something to my mother-in-law. It was like, hey, I've got this retirement lump sum.

41:14What can we do? I said, well, here's kind of what I'd do. And so we did. And then we turned that into a service because we kind of went, how the members might want that as well. So it really depends, Russell. Now, that might be too rich for some people's blood. Some people don't want the volatility. They can't deal with the ups and downs. They don't want the stress. And if that's you, that's cool. Plenty of people buy annuities to basically say, make it all go away. I wouldn't, but I don't. If that's what you need to do individually, then go for it. If that helps you, like retirement's to be enjoyed, right?

41:39Not to be stressed about. So do whatever gets you through in the least stressed way is probably a really good start, right? The old sleep at night test. But in that case, Russell, I think for me personally, I wouldn't have personally, and I'm not saying you should do this, I wouldn't have a quarter of my portfolio with very low risk assets for the first five years because I'm going to have enough income generation through dividends that I don't need to. I'm not looking at the capital value as the source of funding for that retirement. Does that make sense, Ram? Turn off mute, Andrew. Yes, it does make perfect sense.

42:11It's all right. It's your first podcast. By the time you get to 10 years in, you'll absolutely nail it. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

42:25Let's get a question from Christine. I love this. Dear Scott and Andrew, long-time female listener, first time asking a question. Thank you, Christine, for listening. Thank you for being a female listener. I get in trouble with female and woman and stuff unless I go back down that rabbit hole. If you'd self-identify, Christine, I'm happy to call you a female listener. And we love our female listeners. You're a female for a long time or just a listener while being a female for a long time? So you can unpack that in various different ways. Can't assume anything these days, my friend, is all I'm saying.

42:52And with that, I instantly regret opening my mouth and please continue. you you can almost hear the switches going off and the end of our career as podcasters welcome back to our last hour this is why I'm not in comedy there's a very good reason for it you got you should comedy is the only place you actually do that's where you should be that's where you go like oh I'm just being funny it's like you'll find your audience it doesn't yeah please start talking as quickly as possible next week I'll be doing a monologue podcast so that'll be fun Christine says I've been listening to your podcast since I first started investing a few years ago.

43:28Well done. Because I wanted what money I had to be working for me. And I did not have the Australian obsession with property ownership. Although rental insecurity recently pushed me to buy my own place. Andrew, it feels your pain, Christine. Oh, Christine, we are so kindred spirits. Yes. I got into investing in individual companies for a while, but then realized how much disagreement there is amongst the professionals about what is a buy, sell or hold. That I wondered why I, a relative novice without hours to research companies, thought I could trust my calculations and assessment of a business's fundamentals.

44:00I will say, Christine, this is hot. We'd have to generalise on gender basis, speaking of Ram, asking about people's periods of time. Living in the past, man. Move forward. Okay. That is, I was going to say it's such a female thing, which sounds both negative and kind of condescending. Blokes don't generally share that uncertainty, Christine. We don't want to be pretty sure that we know we're really good at this stuff and our egos tend to write checks. I mean, obviously, right? Exactly. It's a much more female thing to go, maybe I'm not as good as those blokes think they are. Yeah, anyway. Maybe you are, Christine, maybe you're not, but I just wanted to throw that in while we were talking about it.

44:37Nothing more powerful than a man's own sense of self-worth, right? It's pathetic. Oh, it really is. It really is. Thank you for putting up with us. It's the best thing I can say. Alright, that's going to make some blokes annoyed too, by the way. And guys, if you're annoyed by that, just chill out a little bit. Just a little bit. All right. So I kept my portfolio to a few ETFs, says Christine, and subscribed to ShareAdvisor for individual... I think you're even smarter than I thought you were. Subscribe to ShareAdvisor for individual company recommendations. So far, they have steered me quite well.

45:05Thank you, Christine. I didn't actually see that was coming. That sounds like I was setting it up. Anyway, my question had nothing to do with that. And feel free not to read that out. Now you tell me. As I've said, say things at the top, people. By the time I get halfway through your question, it's the first time I've read it. He's going to Ron Burgundy the hell out of these things. He's just going to read whatever's in front of him. So classy, San Diego. I'm so sending in a question. Just see how I can get away with it. See how far I get through and forward with it. Andrew was all right about Bitcoin.

45:31And by the way, he's very smart and very clever. Trauma's actually worth more than you think it is, Scott. All right. My question is about the growing amounts of people and therefore money being invested via ETFs and whether you think we have anything to worry about when a few big companies, i.e. BlackRock, Vanguard, First State, are accruing large numbers of shares in these big companies. Yes, they're being bought on behalf of investors buying units in ETFs, but presumably it is the ETF companies who retain the shareholder voting rights. Superficially, this feels okay. They have vested interest in companies and hence the ETFs they manage, performing well and driving the purchase of more units in their ETF, resulting in more money from fees for them.

46:11You've got the incentives, right? But, in capital letters, when these ETF-owning companies have large shareholdings in large companies, what are the impacts on the average consumer, i.e. most of the population, on things like competition? For example, is the incentive for one big bank to outperform another reduced when the largest shareholder of one is the same of the rest of them? I try not to be pessimistic, well done, but could this also negatively impact, say, workers' rights if those holding the most votes are possibly only interested in the bottom line, whereas individual investors, or at least a portion of them, owning units in the ETFs may not have the same profit at all costs mentality.

46:51I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Am I overthinking the amount of potential influence an increasing ETF market share gives the big players? What am I missing? Fool on Christine. Always very thoughtful, Christine. Well done. Thank you for listening. Thank you for writing in. We appreciate the question, mate. And as I said, massive, massive props to our female listeners. Not because they're any better or worse and the blokes just because it's nice because our industry is full of guys and guys tend to be investors. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah. What do you reckon, mate? This one comes up all the time and it's a good one.

47:20I get it. It's tough. It's actually tough. I think the alarmism that's out there is overdone. There's probably a degree of truth. It's one of those things where at enough of an extreme, it becomes an issue. I don't know where that line is. Now, I don't believe that these ETF custodians exercise their voting rights. It depends on the custodian and the jurisdiction. You might know, do you, mate? I don't think they always do. No. I'm actually not sure. You keep talking about looking up, actually. I actually don't. Well, maybe if they can, they don't tend to. But, yeah, you can paint a scenario where it gets, again, at enough of an extreme with enough of a concentrated ownership in one custodian who happens to take it upon themselves to be very almost activist in their investing style, then yeah, I totally feel that.

48:16The other thing, though, is that we usually point out here is that it's one of those terms that kind of takes a bit of unpacking, but it's this idea that price is being set on the margin. There is enough now and probably for a good period of time where there is... You can't downplay the role of the sheer volume of money just rolling into anything that's in the ASX 200 or something like that. But that's not the only factor. There's plenty of people who are active investors who will sell at a high enough price, who will short at a high enough price, who will walk away and reallocate at different opportunities.

48:55And the reason that you can make that assertion with incredible confidence is that you can look at CSL. Speaking, Russell mentioned CSL before. One of the biggest stocks in the market. Like, has there been a relentless bid underneath that due to ETF flows? Uh-huh. It's not like the 199th biggest company in the ASX 200. It's, I don't know what it is, top 10. It's up there. Or used to be anyway. It might be less now, but yes, it's big. And lots of examples of that. And because there is enough sellers. And then don't forget that as those sellers push the price down and the weighting drops, then the ETFs are forced to sell.

49:34They don't have it. So there's a reflexivity. I'm using that word a lot, not intentionally. In fact, they may not sell actually because the weighting already falls by definition. So they're holding and falls in the same way. So they don't tend to trade either way. It's only investors redeeming or adding money that causes them to transact at all. Because the weighting of CES, if it was 5 % of the market, and now it's 3%, that'll happen to the weighting within the ETF itself. They don't need to take an action to make any difference. Oh, gosh, I really, really put my foot in it there. Yes, that is...

50:02No, no, no. The relative size is just... My head is in my palms. Yes, that is absolutely true. So it's one of those things too where it's like, to what degree it is... Well, you've got to also look at the person who's prosecuting the case, because usually the person prosecuting the case in my world is like active fund managers. You will never find a stronger opponent to passive index investing than an active fund manager. It'll destroy the market. It'll destroy the world. Price discovery goes out the window. This could never be good for anybody. So, you know, don't ask the barber if you need a haircut is the saying.

50:46But to whatever degree it is a factor, and I said at the outset that it is a factor, I just don't know if it's a big enough factor that would undercut the value proposition of a passive index investing. Now, as I said at the beginning, at a point where I know where that is, then yes. But for me, I don't lose any sleep over it. No. Apparently, some ETFs are actually letting their individual investors vote or share their voting intentions based on thematic stuff. So if you have a vote on whatever, an ESG issues, for example, or governance issues, you can kind of, you know, you can indicate to your ETF provider how you want to vote.

51:22Apparently, they do vote, mate, in company elections and AGMs, but they vote apparently, again, this is all sort of secondhand research, so I haven't looked through the source detail, on their own internal stewardship policies. In other words, when you buy the ETF, you know what they're going to do. It's going to be different for different providers. Correct. And probably not particularly, I mean, these guys are not activist ETF owners who are trying to do this or that or the other, right? They're not trying to vote to make Commonwealth Bank be less harsh with NAB so they both make a bit more money.

51:48It's not. In fact, they're more likely to do the other, frankly, given where they sit. They kind of know their responsibilities. And particularly, I will say particularly Vanguard. I don't mean to denigrate anyone else. These guys are not for profit. There's nothing in it for them. They're not trying to do anything other than responsibly deliver the market return. And the market return will be the market return regardless, right? So that's, as Ram said, at some point maybe it's important, maybe it's not. Here's some numbers I pulled up on Gemini, mate, and again, without checking the data. You know, people talk about price discovery.

52:18Oh, we need lots of activity in the market. If there's not activity in the market, we'll never know what the right price is. Trading volumes were one-tenth of what they were last year in 1996. One-tenth. Wow. Now, that's neither good nor bad, except that let's say ETFs were 50 % of the market. Let's say that meant the trading volume was half of what it is now. that would still make it five times larger than it was in 1996. And it wasn't like we had a dysfunctional market in 1996 where no one knew what the price of BHP shares should be. And so I just think it's really important when people talk about it.

52:52Might there be less volume? Might there be less price discovery? Might there be less activity? Yes, yes and yes. Would that be a disaster for anybody? If you're a day trader, maybe. If you're trying to be an algorithmic, high-frequency trader, maybe. For the rest of us, you know, People make a lot of money in 1996. We didn't need to 10X the trading volume so all of a sudden make the share market work. So I just, and again, these are Gemini numbers. I haven't sourced them. They come out from ASIC, but I haven't. Feels directionally correct. Right, and just nothing's changed. I mean, maybe spreads are slightly smaller, but who cares?

53:24I'm buying shares once a month, once every two months or three months. I'm selling shares once a year. I'm like, do I care what this, I mean, is lower spread better than higher spread? Sure. Is it going to be even slightly impactful on my returns over any extended period of time, is close enough to zero to be a rounding error, right? It's just not relevant. So there are some people for whom, everyone's different, right? I don't mean to be overly critical. If you like the idea that spreads are smaller and price discovery is better and the market's more efficient, these motherhood statements, that's cool.

53:53I mean, I call motherhood, I'm being a bit pejorative, right? My point is, unless it matters, it doesn't matter. And so it's kind of like, would I like a more efficient market and a less efficient market? Yes, given the choice, sure. Would I like price discovery to be better rather than worse? Yeah, sure, of course, directionally. Yeah, yeah. Is it in the top 150 of my concerns as an investor? No. Top 300? I don't know, maybe, because I can't think of 299 others that I put before it, but there's certainly a dozen and three dozen I put first, right? Buy the right companies, invest for the long term, keep your fees low, keep your brokerage costs low, frankly, more than bloody price discovery.

54:26Like, of all the things I'm going to bother thinking about, make sure regulation is good. Make sure the ASX isn't screwing individual investors. Fix up data. Make sure companies are more transparent. Make sure there's less insider trade. Of all the things I'm going to change, I just, you know, and I'm not, by the way, Christine, we're not at for a second dismissing your question. It's a very, very good question. But having thought about the implications, man, I mean, there's a lot I can get worked up about, as you'll know from my social media feed. This is not one of them. I just, I will say I couldn't care less.

54:55It's just such a non-issue to my mind. No, again, it's not worth asking about, Christine. It absolutely is. Having thought about it, I just, I don't, I can't worry about it. There's only one point with everything you said there that I disagree with. Oh, please go. You said, I'm all for more efficient markets. Right. Selfishly, no thanks. Less efficient. Fair. The more efficient markets are, the less opportunity there is for people who like to pick stocks. That's good talking about other people, Ram, not just myself. If that doesn't apply to you, that's okay too. I love small caps. I love inefficient markets.

55:33Yeah, yeah. Everyone says, I want a great company at a super cheap price. It's like, well, you better not want an efficient market, right? Because that's kind of what it means, right? I want to buy something really good at a stupidly cheap price, and then I want to be able to sell it later at a stupidly expensive price, and let's bring on as much inefficiency as the market can muster. Hopefully everyone's wrong for a very, very long time. Yes, but not too long. That's right. Long enough so I can build my position and then let it be more efficient very quickly. And then sanity can, yeah. So there's an Augustine inquiry, right?

56:05Give me chastity of it not yet. Give me a market efficiency, just not yet. Yes, yes, yes. There you go. That's a motto for our podcast, I suspect. Such a great saying, yeah. All right, let's finish with one from Keith, mate. And this is about evaluation stuff, which I really like. It'd be fun to get our teeth into. We don't do specifics, as you know, Keith, but it'd be a bit of fun. Dear Scott and Andrew, thank you for your wise words of wisdom. There must be a few, I suppose. We've done a lot of podcasts. Three, Keith, four, I'm not sure. Have you heard of the infinite monkey hypothesis? We haven't been typewriting for anywhere near long enough, mate.

56:38We're not even close to that yet. That's true. Your podcasts have helped inspire my investing journey. Well, that's kind of cool. And I'm forever grateful. Here is some background information about myself. Oh, don't do that because actually I'm not even going to. All right. Although he does say I'm in my early 30s. Yes, a bastard. Yes, Keith. Yes, you are. I wanted to start allocating 5 % of my portfolio into individual shares, he says. but I'm not sure how to go about researching these and what to look for. I've been eyeing CSL and ProMedicus shares because they are both in healthcare. He's in healthcare by the way, that was one of the details I missed earlier.

57:11And I thought I might have a better chance of understanding them. I've tried to do my own research. What does the business do or sell? What is the company's mission? What moats do they have? What is their market share and potential addressable market? What is management like? Founder, shares in the company? what is the bull and bear case the metrics profit margins retention p ratio return on equity revenue growth and earnings per share growth how much debt does the company have and how manageable is it EBIT to interest net debt to EBITDA and what returns i could expect based off an ai generated DCF the conclusion i got to was that pro medicus is a stronger business and growing rapidly but too expensive to get a decent return from while csl's growth will probably be slow but the shares were relatively cheap.

57:54My questions for you both. One, what questions would you want to answer before investing in a business? And how detailed would your knowledge need to be before investing? Two, how do you go about finding answers to these questions? Or three, any views on the company? I assume it's CSL and ProMedicus, Keith. Thank you again and keep up the good work. Kind regards, Keith. Keith, you are a bastard, but you ask good questions. So I will allow it this time around. But if you could be older next time, that'd be much, much appreciated. There's some pretty good numbers and pretty good metrics in there, mate.

58:24And this is a piece of string question. It depends on the company. It depends on the circumstances. And one thing I will say, or start by saying is knowledge is cumulative. So the new questions you and I would ask are not the questions we would ask if we were 20 and starting from scratch, because we kind of, not because they're smart, just to be better and for all, we know some of the answers to those questions already. So it's hard to say what questions. We've touched the stove on more than one occasion and we know that some parts of it are hot. But also the background stuff, we just kind of, you know, you kind of get what they do and you kind of get the market and you get...

58:50So a lot of... I only say that, Keith, because... And then you still get it wrong. But this is long. And that's our problem. Yeah. The stuff you should know better is depressing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So what questions do you want to answer, mate? How do you address Keith's question? You're right to say, you know, how long is a piece of string here? I mean, this is diabolically hard. I think particularly people with a sort of a left brain kind of focus, we like to think that the answer and the solution is just a matter of gathering enough data. Doing more stuff. Yeah, yeah. That's definitely where I started from.

59:21And it's not that. I mean, let me walk that back. Yes, I mean, try and have a complete, a holistic picture as you possibly can. But you'll never have the full picture. It's impossible to have the full picture. Even if I had a family office with a$10 million annual budget and I could hire an army of analysts and had the best supercomputers in the world, I will never, ever, ever have the answers. So you do - Are you using the budget for your family office? Maybe. Obviously job cuts at the page for the office. We're cutting back. Oh, man, brutal. I'm taking over, I suspect. But, you know, it's sort of you operate as an investor in an arena of uncertainty and it's just the way of the game.

1:00:09And so that's the first point to make. The other one, the other illusion, which is very alluring when you're younger or not necessarily younger, just when you're new to investing is that there exists a set of metrics that will like even if you sort of, okay, it's probabilistic. But if I have this set of metrics, I can really put the odds in my favor. And I have gone to the point now, I think, I don't think there are. There's certainly some things that I think are important and that are worth looking at. and for certain sectors and certain types of companies that are perhaps more important than others and the rest of it.

1:00:43But also there too, there is no – that's why I'm never that worried about any kind of particular software package that will just crack it. And also I can just have the observation of like, well, if that existed, someone would have done it by now and cleaned up the entire markets and in the process of cleaning up markets, actually making them hyper-efficient and therefore getting rid of all volatility and everything being priced to perfection on all future cash flows. It just doesn't happen. And the nature of the beast is such that it can almost never happen. Well, not almost. It can't ever happen.

1:01:15So here you are in this very uncomfortable thing. It's like, well, I don't really know what to look at. I can never form a full picture. And as full a picture as I can do, there are some metrics that are better than others, and I'm just going to have to make a gut call at one stage. I'm actually thinking the other day, I write an article on this on just how I've been saying recently vibe investing in a sort of joking like derogatory kind of way but i actually think all investing is vibe investing when i when i really think about it you you can you can cloak it in an illusion of you know objectivity and the rest of it but at a point you're going to make a call you're going to make a call why i have an unknowable future yeah oh but i invest in berkshire hathaway and yeah but that's because you like this and you just you're extrapolating certain things and you're just like, there's a vibe.

1:01:59There's a vibe that's in there and it's very uncomfortable to people who like to be very objective with things. So another very frustrating answer to your question. So how do I do it? Well, I really got to the point now, well, the first thing to say is just dive on in. 5 % of your portfolio, what can go wrong? Like, honestly, what can go wrong? You can send it all to zero and I doubt it very much, given how careful you appear to be. But even if you do - Emotion loses 5%, right, yeah. Yeah, 5%. I'm not saying it's a great outcome, but it's not the end of the world. And that's really the only way of doing it.

1:02:39The analogy I like to give is that you can play poker all day long with play money and it's absolutely useless. It doesn't, I'm the world's best poker player with play money. I just suck when any kind of real money is on the table because it's just different. And I think you just have to throw yourself in there and you have to do all the dumb things and you have to have all the dumb luck and you have to go through it all and have the lesson and then have the lesson again and then have the lesson 500th time in a row. And it's just there's no shortcutting that kind of process. So, again, that's a journey that very few people will be happily embark on.

1:03:18And then other than that, and this is going to be a vague answer, I really just let my curiosity lead me. Oh, that looks interesting. What do they do? Oh, that's kind of cool. How do they make money on that? What's the problem that they're solving? Oh, is there another way to solve it? What have people been doing through till now? Oh, they did that. Well, why is this better? Okay. And you just keep going and you keep going. And all the quote unquote dumb questions, how does that work? I don't know. What's this? And, you know, it's much, much easier these days with some of these AI tools and Google and all the rest of it and challenges and risks with that as well.

1:03:53I'm not saying it's a panacea, but, you know, you're not having to read the Encyclopedia Britannica and every bit of research that you do. But you, and I know I always say this as well, is that 90 % of the time I get to a point where it's like, I just don't know. And I'm really waiting for that fat bitch, right? I'm really waiting for that thing to come along to my mind. It's just sort of like, while I can never be sure, this is ticking all the heuristics. I feel as though I've got a reasonable understanding of the business to the point that I could have a conversation with the CEO and not embarrass myself.

1:04:30You know, that's a pretty good bar, I think. It doesn't mean you understand it implicitly, but you can ask them about things that are important and gauge their response. I mean, that is a reasonable litmus test. And then at that point, I size entirely on my view of quality and value. And the higher the quality, the better the value, the bigger the allocation. And I'll tend to go pretty hard. I've got no problem with having double-digit weightings in my portfolio, if and when situations like that come along. But for the most part, I guess what I really want to do is disavow anyone of any notion that I am approaching this with some hyper degree of process and thorough deep research.

1:05:17I mean, I do have a process and I do like to do research, but there's not something that I could print out for you to do it. It's really just asking questions, asking questions, reading a bit more about that, figuring that out, listening to what other people say, what do they think? What's this? And then at the end of that process, either going, I don't know, it's too hard. Or yes, I feel as though I've got a view either one way or the other. And then I put my chips on the table and then I cross my fingers. But I also do it very much in a portfolio level where if, not if, when I am wrong, because I'm going to be wrong very often, at least 40 % of the time, probably 50, 55, 60 % of the time, that I am protected by my wider portfolio.

1:06:02and then in fact that is implied within the strategy is that I will be striking out a lot of the time. As long as I get a few home runs in there, everything will be all right overall. And it's very touchy-feely and thisy and thaty and I don't know what else to say. I'm a little embarrassed to sort of lay it out as I have, but it's just the God's honest truth for how I do it. I would love to say, I've got a spreadsheet. Go here, do this. Return on equity has got to be above 40 % and I never go with a debt to equity more than 80%. And that's exactly how I used to invest and wasn't i i feel as i'm a much better investor than i was when i did it that way sorry mate that was all right no not at all i that's great i can't add much to it um you've talked about before the kind of meme with the bell curve of you know um i know nothing i know everything i know nothing or or the kind of start with the pe go to complex and end up i got the pe again whatever whatever version of effectively the more you learn the less you realize you know is kind of key right and there's a lot of arrogance and a lot of people get stuck in the i have lots of things in the spreadsheet i've told before and relatively recently i think the example of when i was on tv with a bloke who was like i know the forecasts are rubbish but what else do i put in the in the spreadsheet and it's kind of like he's the quiet bit out loud and there is so much and i've also used the example of the the psychology research that give people five data points ask them to make a guess and then rate your answer rate their certainty and they get the guess that they make a guess and the certainty is really low you give 20 data points ask them to make a guess and ask them to rate their certainty the guess is no more accurate but their certainty goes through the roof because we have more information we somehow feel more informed and i think that's so then we forget we forget the the other element to it as well which is that everyone else has got the same information oh totally right exactly yeah yeah yeah you're putting new things in the spreadsheet only you only you know right yeah um which again is really Really, really unfulfilling.

1:07:54I would suck. I'm going to take everything Ram said. Just start with that, right? Go from there. The thing I would say adding to that is the best advantage for the individual investor to try and accrete, accumulate, deliver, develop is the ability to be not persuaded by the crowd. Not contrarian, but to be not persuaded by the crowd either way. and the second one is to develop the ability to wait and they are as squishy as ram's points about vibe investing right it's like add to vibe investing just chill out and just wait a bit you're like what that's the that's the advice what the hell we talked about um in a recent podcast the the covid period uh and it was earlier this one i can't remember and uh and we've tried i talked about being happy being an optimist and rude full of pessimists right we've talked about the oil price a month or so ago.

1:08:52And God knows what it's done since then, because this has been pre-recorded a month out. So I don't know what's happened since. All of those things happened. And yet the long-term trajectory is relatively unchanged and rarely changed. In other words, Woolies are going to sell more baked beans in five years than today in 99 % of scenarios. Right? And so if you can be patient, if you can be an independent of mind, Buffett talks about buying great businesses on the operating table. That's one way of doing it. But the same applies directly to any business. If I can see value that other people are ignoring, don't like, ignoring because of their short-term issues, are being impatient, whatever, I think the...

1:09:36I used to say, I think we used to say that Motley Fool, the biggest advantage of the individual investor is time. Because we're not beholden to quarterly, you know, fund manager reports and, you know, summaries and performance metrics, right? I think that's true. but I actually am becoming of the view I don't know if it's more important but maybe as important is the ability to think independently and to not have to follow the crowd that's really hard by the way because developing that takes a lot of hits right because you've got to have seen through a few of those go actually turns out dot dot dot whatever those things are and I would speculate I've never done the work and maybe I'm horribly wrong I would speculate if you found businesses that were perceived by you and maybe by the market, but generally by you as quality companies that had short-term troubles, I would suggest a basket of those beats the market nine times out of 10.

1:10:26Because the short-term troubles are normally just that. Unless there's something fundamentally broken or fundamentally changed, sometimes there is. Kodak went broke. So I'm not for a second saying by every business you've heard of that's down 50%. But I am saying, think about the way that kind of plays out. And I'll go back to your example, Russell. You asked about Prometicus and CSL. I think there's very... Oh, it was Keith, not Russell. Sorry, my apologies, Keith. I have never bought CSO, ProMedica shares. Ram has, and he did better than I do because he bought some. But the current price, a lot is expected of it.

1:11:00And when a lot is expected, that says the market is all in on this thing. And at that point, I suspect my ability to outperform the market by buying shares that people already love the hell out of, it's just relatively limited. because the good news is already priced in, right? It doesn't mean it can't do even better than that. It absolutely can. But I don't know, you know? Equally, on the same, let's go to a fast-growing company like Amazon, always the go-to example. I own shares, as everyone knows. Even when that looked expensive, it seemed likely to me that the size of the potential market and its growth and its focus on customers were kind of the heuristics that said, you know what?

1:11:35This thing could be bigger and better. Now, those two things feel like the same thing. Primaticers might get bigger and better as well. but it feels like all the... Let's do it for even more fun. SpaceX. God knows what's happening with the SpaceX share price in the last month. It could have doubled to half. It's a$2 trillion company on$18 billion in revenue and losing$5 billion a year. Now, it's got to do a lot to justify a$2 trillion market cap, at least at the time of recording. And maybe it will. But if I'm looking at risk and reward, if I'm looking at probabilistic outcomes, asymmetry, Ram's favorite word.

1:12:05It's a great word. I wish I'd come up with it first. If I buy SpaceX now and it goes well from here, I'll probably do okay. there's a chance i do well as a sponsor do incredibly well if it does a little bit less well than expected if it takes a little bit longer than expected even if it's a wonderful business that it feels pretty asymmetrical to me um the flip side of asymmetry is when you have a great company's beaten down is there a decent chance that a company like csl bounces back yeah is it going to every time no um but overall you know the the attributes that make david garden talks about winners tend to keep on winning i think that's true i would also say that long-term winners who lose it for a bit as long as nothing broken are likely to return to the winner circle and again not because i'm being cliched or just throwing kind of motherhood statements i think it's you know woollies was losing the cultural and bounced back cochlear had a product recall back in 2000 and i can't remember when and bounced back um you know sometimes occasionally this is will destroy a company, overall they'll do well.

1:13:09So I honestly think you've done all the right questions in terms of finding out the company, Keith. You've nailed that. Ram's talked about the vibe. I will just add the temperament. I think if you can kind of combine those three elements, I think you're genuinely in a pretty good place. Yeah. Yeah. It's part art, part science. Yes. Is the frustrating answer to it. I will say, I think that's a million percent right. In fact, it's more art than most people would happily acknowledge. That's what I mean about the middle of the bell curve. I've got all the formulas. I've done all the things. That's why I'm so sorry to everybody else.

1:13:43We're talking about variant perceptional edge. Where's your edge? Why are you going to be right when the rest of the market's wrong? Sometimes. Not every time, but sometimes. And the answer is usually maybe you've done a bit more work than everybody else. That's where I'm talking about small caps. Absolutely spot on. There's great opportunity there where looking where no one else is, probabilistically you have a better chance of finding something no one else finds. So there's that. But where is the edge? I think the edge is, honestly, being roughly right, rather precisely wrong when it comes to your calculations, having the temperament to see it through and not respond to daily, weekly, quarterly, yearly share price movements, and the ability to hold and let theses play out where sometimes there are short-term bumps in the road.

1:14:23That's the big one. That's the big one. Yep. But I think it's all three. I think if you can combine those three, that's where the opportunity for the individual of Leicester is to beat the market. It's not going to be better calculations or formulas. Honestly, it's really, really not. In fact, here's the other thing, right? You do all those formulas, and you should do them, by the way, because there's some rubbish companies out there and it helps you get rid of the dross. So do it for sure. Whether it's those formulas or something else, you don't want to buy rubbish companies. It's just, you know, it's much easier for a company or an investor to do well with a quality company than try and buy a rubbish company at a cheap price and get out before it goes to hell in a handbasket.

1:14:53So my personal view, I wouldn't be playing in that space. But everyone's got the same formulas. So everyone's done the same work as you've done. And frankly, they're a better resource, to your point, Ram, analysts out there who've done the thing with better computers, faster than you. They've got better history than you. They've looked at the company more than you. They've talked to management more than you. And that will feel like some people, like I'm saying, the deck is stacked. It's absolutely not stacked. Because they've got all the same public information as you have. The difference is they're trying to put a number in a spreadsheet.

1:15:19Yeah, and they're trying to get a good return performance for the next fiscal year. Exactly. That's where those, I was going to say something nasty, people. Nice men and women. Yeah, they just, I mean, it everyone's trying to get rich quick and don't get me wrong i would prefer that to the alternative but i just don't know how to do it so as soon as you make your peace with that as soon as you can say yeah i just want to get rich slow you're out there by yourself right and it's just like you just you can't help but but compound away i i look at every successful investment i've ever made and i was too early it dropped after i bought it it floundered around for a couple of years and then one day I woke up and my face just melted as it went to the moon.

1:16:05It's like, oh, well done. Lucky you. It's like, well, it was a journey, man. And it often is. And I'm not saying that's the exception, right? I'm not saying that that happens all the time, but it's like, it's when I cherry pick the best of the best, the greatest hits of Andrew Page's investing career. It was not a single one of them was like, yeah, I thought this was going to happen and I picked the point at which it was about to start happening. No, absolutely not. I was like, I thought this has potential. And then I just looked like an idiot for very, very, very long amounts of time. And then when it started to go my way, I got out of my own way and tried to like not lock in a profit or do any of these things.

1:16:44It's like, hey, the company's winning in the way that I hoped it would win. Feels like it's continuing to win. I'm going to get out of the damn way. I'm just going to let it do its thing. At a point, it'll get to something which is just like, okay, that's silly. I'm out. I'm not playing this game anymore. But until that happens, you know, and it's just like, I don't really give a stuff what my three-month trailing return is or my 12-month Kager. This is such a nonsense kind of metric. There's nothing special about the fact except that the earth went around the sun one time. That's it. You know, like you show me any – I won't name the business because it's small and illiquid and the rest of it.

1:17:20We spoke to a CEO the other day, and I was really interested actually in the business. But he said something that really stuck with me. It's like, well, the market cap is$75 million, but let me tell you, we started the company 18 years ago and we've spent$150 million. And only now are we at the point of commercialization. Now, I don't know what the future holds, but let's, for the sake of argument, say that they hit it. They got this really cool, I don't want to give it away. I feel like when I say I don't want to give it away, it's like, oh, I'm sitting on this secret and I'm not going to tell.

1:17:53I don't want to mention it because it muddies the point and it could absolutely go the other way, right? There are still incredible amounts of risk on this thing. But my point is if it does go well, if it does go well, the people who bought in five years ago who had to sit through a number of capital raisings, who watched their share price get cut in half multiple times, they are going to be richer than Midas. It's going to make out like bandits. And everyone's going, how did you do it? How did you know? It's like, well, they didn't know the timing. They had to overcome a whole bunch of things and wait for the proposition to be de-risked over the time.

1:18:28They actually did the same thing ten other ways, and they all fell by the wayside and didn't fall out. This is how it goes. This is just how it goes. But I'm just saying look over, you know, I always like the metaphor of riding the motorcycle. You don't watch the road in front of you. I love that. Keep your eyes on the horizon. You know, look where the road is going, not where you are on the road right now. I can't emphasize it enough that that is the last refuge of the private investor because you don't have the smartest analysts at your disposal. You don't have the biggest supercomputers. You don't have access to management.

1:19:05But you've got patience. And that's something that the institutions will never have. And so that's what you said, mate. What's your edge? That's your edge. That's anyone's edge listening right now. And I'm not saying wait 20 years or something like that because, you know, none of us are that saintly and patient. I'm saying if you can look 24, 36 months out, you're almost going to have to struggle not to do extremely well. You know, and it's like they're the best. Buffett says, you know, we want great companies who are on the operating table. It's that idea of that company that's absolutely objectively having a hard time of it.

1:19:46Now, you're not going to hand wave it away. Oh, the market's irrational. Oh, it's just volatility. It's like, oh, no, that thing happened, and that's really bad, and revenues and profits are falling, and everyone's scared and selling out. Okay, that's interesting. I always say, ask yourself this. Is it structural or is it cyclical? If it's structural, then you can drop 50%, you can buy it, and you can drop another 90 % from there. Just don't go near it, right? So if it's cyclical, hello. It's funny because you even speak to some of the quote-unquote experts and they all know it's like, oh, there's nothing wrong with this business.

1:20:23Yeah. We'll buy it. Oh, I'm going to wait until there's a catalyst. I think it's just going to be lower and – Yeah. And then you start getting too cute with it all. And it's like if you think this is around in the future, if you think it is a bigger business in the future, and if you think the current price is good value relative to your view of the future, buy it. Buy it. Buy it right now. Go all in. Well, not all in. Just build the position. Or at the very least, start aggressively dollar cost averaging into that thing if it makes you feel a little bit better. And then know that after you've done that, that you're going to be twiddling your thumbs for what's going to feel like an eternity with your thumb up your backside while everyone laughs at you.

1:21:04And it's going to be the most painful thing in the world. But you're at a very serious risk of waking up one day going, oh, yeah, look how clever I was. do we need to talk about what twiddling your thumbs actually means I actually don't know what it means it's like doing the thumb thing you just mentioned where your thumb went up well you just said it would end up with your wife and I was thinking I don't think you know what that means whatever happens when your wife says go and twiddling your thumbs in the corner that's up to you, I'm okay with it what I'll say is just subscribe to my OnlyFans account and you'll find out and with that we are well and twiddling your thumbs complete the circle We're done.

1:21:41We're done. We will, the senses and common sense, and frankly the board of people who decide on good taste may or may not let us come back on Friday. If they do, more fool them, and we'll see you then. Until then, full on. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.