Mailbag: incl. Why does good news lead to lower prices? January 19, 2025

23:26The approach I've taken to buying US shares is that we are long-term investors, and so haven't tried to time the market in terms of currency. My thinking has been I'll miss out on more potential price upside trying to wait for a favourable exchange rate than the benefit I would gain waiting for rates to move in my favour. Am I being too basic in my thinking and effectively paying more for the shares than I should have? Or have I listened to too many old episodes from the pod machine and now try to overcomplicate my investment decisions? Thanks for all the discussions, rants and invaluable information for capital R, capital I, retail investors.

24:03Full on. Thanks, Kiri. I do love the references that do show how this has been around for a while. Thanks, Kiri. That's awesome. What do you reckon, mate? Try and work out a good currency or just go and buy the best business as you can and let time do the rest? Yeah, look, I'll just add a little bit of colour to that, as analysts like to say. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we've ever suggested that you should time it. I think what we may have said in the past is that when the Aussie dollar is high, you might sort of be a little bit more biased towards overseas and vice versa. So I actually think you're not overcomplicating it at all.

24:42I mean, if you're a long-term investor, these are some of the best companies on the planet, right? And so you've got some money to invest. You're trying to put that aside for 10 years. And yeah, I wouldn't think twice about the exchange rate. However, I guess what we would say, and correct me if I'm wrong, mate, if your recollection is different, but it was more a case of, wow, the Aussie dollar tends to have this mean reversion quality to it. when it's at 50 cents, geez, I might just be a little bit more biased towards the home field advantage. And when it's at a dollar, you know, I might be just as aggressive as I can for US, but, but I'm not, I'm not trying to forecast or time.

25:21I'm just looking at the current, current landscape and saying, well, you know, the wind is in my sales at this point in time for US shares. So, whereas normally I might just sort of be 50, 50, maybe I'm 70, 30 at this point in time, if you get what I'm saying. And it sounds like I'm sort of speaking out of both sides of my mouth. Some people will be saying, well, that is timing. And I guess I would distinguish it, not to say I'm timing it in anticipation of what will come next, but just looking at the current situation and going, well, my Aussie, you know, the Pacific peso, as it's called, has got me more purchasing power in the US than it usually does.

26:01Does that mean It's going to go lower or higher or what? No, I have no clue, but that is a fact. And given that that is a fact, and it's just like at least relative to the historical context, I've got a bit more purchasing power. I might just try and take advantage of that because three years hence, who knows what it's going to be like, right? And same on the way out too. If you're at that more retirement phase and you're at a point where you're selling and you've got some shares overseas and you've got some shares at home, you just might, Like, oh gosh, I've got to sell some shares to pay for my living expenses.

26:34Wow, the Aussie dollar is 50 cents. I might sell some US shares because I'm going to get much more bang for my buck. So that's all we're saying. But look, all of that, if you were just to say to me, yeah, I hear that. That makes a bit of sense, but I'm just going to go 50-50 no matter what. I mean, the last person is going to criticize you because I really do think over the grand arc of time, it is going to be the quality of your company's investments that you make that are far more deterministic to your returns than whatever the exchange rate is going to be. So I'm not going to be overly critical if that's what you do.

27:09No, beautifully put, mate. I like that a lot. I'm going to say similar things to what Ram said and probably what he said before. I think, you know, when we invest, we want to invest in the things we think have the best upside potential, right? Now, I mean, judge for risk. Lottery's got the biggest upside potential, but it's not an investment, right? But, you know, when you look at two ideas, you're asking yourself, which one of you think is going to have the better future? In 10 years' time, which company am I going to be gladdest I bought? That's kind of the question we always ask ourselves, right?

27:32And you don't necessarily phrase it that way, but anytime you buy shares in company A, you're kind of implicitly or explicitly saying, well, it's better than companies B, C, and D, otherwise you'd buy those instead. And trust me, I'm getting somewhere on this one. So I've got two companies to choose. I can choose A or B. A is in Australia, B is in the US. Now, if the returns are the same, well, like, again, I'm assuming you can be that accurate. Of course you can't. But, you know, conceptually, if the choices were the same, you might go, oh, it doesn't matter which one I buy. And then you've got to step back and you've kind of asked the question you've answered yourself already, Kiri, saying, well, I own Amazon and CrowdStrike and I own Amazon shares, as everyone knows, Arista, Procore, why do I own them?

28:06Because I think they're going to do really, really well. Now, if they're going to do as well as Woolies, but you've got a currency to deal with, you probably want to buy Woolies. If they're going to be 5 % better than Woolies, you might still look at the currency and go, well, I don't know, I'll buy Woolies. At some point, and I'm just using those two as an example, by the way, I'm not saying you should buy either. At some point you say, I think the future of these companies are so bright that it will offset any currency risk that I'm taking. And that's kind of conceptually a way of thinking. Don't do the math.

28:33Don't try and tie yourself in knots calculating this stuff. But when you think it through, that's what you're really asking yourself is if the overseas company has a better than average chance of beating the Australian company, then go with that. Now, it also stands for reason that when the Australian dollar is below the long-term average against the US, you kind of need better performance to justify that maths, right? If you think Woolies and Amazon are both going to grow at 10 % a year, but the currency is lower than normal, again, these things tend to mean revert, no guarantees, no promises.

29:03But the lower the dollar is, the better the US opportunity needs to be relative to an Australian opportunity. Similarly, if the dollar's high, the Australian opportunity better be better than the US opportunity, otherwise it's worth investing in the US. So I kind of think about it, it's a bit like tax. Don't minimise tax, maximize your after-tax return. And in this case, we kind of do the same. Don't worry about the exchange rate. Just maximize your after exchange rate return. So my approach, the lower the dollar is, the more confident I have to be that my US idea is going to beat the Australian idea.

29:32And that's all it is, really. So would I worry about it? So the honest answer is I have not seen any Australian dollars to the US in a while. And partly that's because my US portfolio is already larger than my Australian portfolio by a bit. So I don't kind of feel the need to diversify for its own sake. but also it's very I could sell any Australian company tomorrow and buy a US company if I preferred to at 62 and a half odd US cents when we're recording this I don't feel great about that now for all I know the long-term average of the dollar could be 50 cents and I could be getting a great deal of investing it now that's the other thing you don't know the future right at about 70 75 cents I don't care either way and above sort of 75 cents I'm probably actively looking for US opportunities and it's not because again not only invest in the US or only invest here, just the weighting of how much outperformance I want to get to offset the currency risk just changes.

30:21Does that make sense, Ryan? Yeah, it absolutely does. I don't want to complicate it, but that's just how I think about it for what it's worth. Yeah, and it's – the only thing I pause on is what you already just mentioned, which is we have in everything we said, we have an implicit assumption that it will continue to be a mean reversion. Yeah, exactly. that the future will look exactly like the past. Yeah. Now, we do that a lot, actually. Let's be real here. We tend to sort of say that the share market tends to sort of grow at a total return basis, you know, 9%, 10%, 11%, depending on exactly how you want to measure it.

30:59And we just assume that that's going to be the case going forward. Maybe it won't, right? And, I mean, we do it as humans all the time. We're pattern-matching animals. And I notice that every day the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Now, after 10 ,000 years of human civilization and our current model of the universe and solar system, I'm pretty confident that that's going to continue. Yeah, right. And then you've got way at the other end of the spectrum. It's just all, you know, I saw three white doves and the stock market went up the other day. And I'm going to imply some kind of correlation that's there.

31:36It's completely bubkis. Speaking of astrology? You know what I mean? Exactly. Some of these things, like when we talk about mean reversion of an FX pair or of a market return, it isn't – let's be real. It's not guaranteed. And even if it is guaranteed, maybe it takes 20 years to mean revert, in which case it's just so pointlessly long-term as to not make any difference. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. But it is predicated on a really long history. So, again, guarantee is definitely not the right word, but it's not an unreasonable, I would argue, it's not an unreasonable expectation. And so that's what we're framing it up as.

32:15You made the point about long-term too, mate. Just to finish this one for me, again, feel free to jump in afterwards. But, Kiri, the other thing is the exchange rate matters less the longer you hold the shares. If you're wrong by 10 % about the exchange rate, I say wrong in inverted commas, but over 10 years, 1 % a year, and that's so close. I mean, that's bigger than the margin of error. You know, I'm not going to be able to tell whether Willys or Amazon are going to do better and by what margin over what extended period of time. So if I'm wrong in air quotes about the exchange rate or even right about it over 10 years and it gives me 1 % a year, that's nice and I'll take it.

32:49But you can't forecast, you can't expect it. And that's, you know, no one's going to be right within 1 % of anything at any point ever. So if I was investing in money back next year, I wouldn't invest in foreign currency shares no matter the level because I don't know what it's going to be at that point. If I'm investing for 10 plus years, then I kind of, as much as I just said, I haven't seen any money over the US and I haven't. If I found a great investment, I would do it now if I knew my timeframe was long because it just doesn't, the longer you do it, the less it matters. So that's kind of the other thing to think about.

33:17So if your timeframe is genuinely, decade plus, decades preferably, then whatever you get right or wrong at the exchange rate, it's probably not going to matter relative to the growth of that company and the success of your valuation of that company. If Amazon is going to be a$5 ,000 stock in 20 years, the exchange rate is not going to matter, right? Now, I wouldn't want to be buying Telstra and betting on the currency because there's a more chance the currency has a better impact. So growth will – a faster-growing company and a longer timeframe is very likely to put currency in third, fourth, or fifth position if you take that approach.

33:51I don't know if it was you who coined this phrase. If you did, it's brilliant, and I've stolen it, and I use it all the time, which is that growth covers a lot of sins. I did actually. Well, I think I did. Yeah, I think so. I don't believe I sold it for someone else, but it's possible. Look, I'll credit you with it because it's so spot on in the sense that if you've got growth, and I'm talking about growth in earnings here on a per share basis, if that's strong enough, that will – let me – I'll back up. We would normally say that paying over the odds in terms of a PE or some kind of metric like that is usually not a good strategy, right?

34:27Like statistically, you're sailing into the wind with that. But when the growth is just like eye-wateringly insane, like the E at the bottom of the denominator grows so fast as to bring that PE down very, very quickly without the price falling. In fact, with the price actually rising. Like, you know what I mean? So it's sort of like that is – so what you were getting at when you sort of coined this phrase was is that when you've got, let's go with Telstra or AMP or any other quote-unquote blue-chip company that's struggling to grow and find relevance. Even the supermarkets, really. Oh, you have to be spot on with your valuation because there's just a lot of margin.

35:09There is no future where Woolies grows a compound 20 % per annum for 10 years. Like, I'm not criticizing. It's just impossible virtually unless they go overseas and just have insane success, right? which possible I suppose but it's very very very very unlikely at the same time if I there's some small cap company like a pro medicus from five years ago which you know is growing at 20 compound and has the runway to do that for for decades don't overthink the valuation right like it does I mean I'm not saying valuation valuation always matters like you know you could have easily overpaid for even an incredible company.

35:48But it's just that that growth will be the far more dominant factor. And it's the same thing here with what you're getting at in terms of FX. So as opposed to a PE multiple or something, if you're going overseas in the US and you're going to invest in Walmart or something that's not likely to grow extremely fast, then you really need to worry about it. You're growing in some hyper growth thing that's going to take over the world or, you know, well on its way to overtaking the world. I think that's the more dominant factor. So put it through that lens as well, I guess is what I'm saying. I like that, mate.

36:26Very well done. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

36:36Sam sent us a message. Hi, Scott and Andrew. I have a question for ye olde pod machine. I like that, Sam. Thank you. I'm a relatively new investor, says Sam. Something that continues to perplex me is when seemingly good news is reported by a company, subsequently followed by their stock price falling. Can this simply be explained by the fact that even though the news may have been good, it didn't reach the expectations priced in by the market? That answers your own question. There you go. Even if this is the case, Sam, if a company beats on their earnings report but doesn't beat by the lofty expectations set by the market, shouldn't a long-term investor jump at this chance to buy that dip since the fundamentals of the company are still intact and moving in the right direction?

37:16I've seen a similar phenomena play out during M &A discussions. It seems to me that merger would often help a company run more efficiently since redundant departments can be done away with. However, I've seen a number of times now when the merger rumors are floated, one of the two companies' share prices often takes a tumble. Please help me square this circle or in brackets, circle this square. Why does purportedly good news sometimes actually get taken for bad news in the market? Thank you both for the intelligent, level-headed podcast you provide each week. I'm in the US and sometimes question myself.

37:48That's why I admittedly prefer this podcast to the American Motley Fool Pod. Oh, gee, sorry. I think it may have something to do with vicariously experiencing another culture while learning about something I'm interested in. But maybe it's just the charming accents and common use of the words mate and cheers, which I'm now trying to import over to the US. Anyhow, cheers, mates. Sam. I love that, Sam. That's awesome. What's going on with share prices, mate? You nailed it, Sam. I mean, yeah, it's all about expectations, right? So the market is forever looking forward, and that's all it's doing. And why wouldn't it?

38:23Like, you don't get the earnings growth that happened previously. So that part is more straightforward.

38:35But what I would say is when it – just the bit of the nuance you had there is, Like what if it did outperform but not as much as others were expecting and it did that? I would strongly encourage you. This is hard to do. But don't frame your decisions around what other people expected and how the company did relative to their expectations. Do it to your expectations. And that puts a lot more pressure on you and that requires a lot more responsibility. But it's kind of the, if you think about it, It's the only way you can beat the market is to think independently because definitionally if all you do, and I'm not saying, I'm really not trying to put your words in your mouth here, but someone could interpret it in the way that like, well, if all you're doing is basing your decisions on others' opinions and how the company performed relative or not to that, It's sort of, it's, there's no input from you other than some assumption that they will continue to be wrong in their consensus expectation and that you can profit from that, which may or may not be right, depending on how good the consensus is at the time.

39:51So what I try and do, and it's not easy, I just try and say, well, it's my money, my decision. What do I think is going to happen? And the real sweet spot is when you get a scenario where the consensus thinks one thing, you think another, and then the market delivers in the ballpark of your expectations. That's how you make money. It's like, oh. And the market then comes around to your way of thinking, right? Like, let them come to you. Don't go to them. You need to think independent and you need to sort of say, what do I think is going to happen? Yeah, right. But there's – I'm trying to think of – there's a couple of studies done on this as well.

40:29But if you just – you know, this is the least surprising stat you'll ever hear. But, you know, if you base all your decisions on consensus guidance, you underperform the market massively. I just do. Yeah. And the interpretation there would be, well, that's the consensus. So it's almost in definition in the price. And people tend to sort of be more optimistic than not most of the time. So it's just you're always going to fall short on that measure. So you have to be an independent thinker. You just have to be. And I always try and look at estimates. And in fact, not just estimates from brokers, just anyone.

41:03Like if I've got shares in a company or I'm thinking about buying shares in a company or thinking of selling shares in a company, I'm very interested in what other people think about it. But I'm not going to – I'm not – only to sort of test my own thinking. Have they raised a point that I haven't considered? Have they articulated the rationale or have they reasoned things in a way that is better to me. I'm always trying to second guess myself. You know, it's a very uncomfortable situation to be in, but you kind of have to sort of do that. So I'm not saying just ignore it altogether, but the decision at the end of the day must be based on your own viewpoint.

41:39There's a second part to the question, but I'll let you jump in there if you've got anything to say. No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I think, you know, we see it all the time. You know, by the way, when there's a bad result, the shares can go up because the market expected to be even worse and it wasn't quite as bad, right? So not as bad can make the share price go up, not as good can make the share price go down. The outlook is the other thing to think about. So it can be the case of a beat and they say, oh, well, the future expector, the market's pretty soft at the moment. We don't think next year's going to be quite as good.

42:09So to your point, the market's looking forward, as you've already said. So it's a combination of all those things, right? What happened? What did the market think would happen but also what has the company said about the future and how does market feel about that and again these are all inputs but your your point is absolutely right i wouldn't i would never buy the dip sam uh i mean this is about you but our motley full co-founder david gardner says only dips buy dips uh which was kind of you know his way of kind of you know buy if it's attractive ram's already said that um if the share price falls but it's already overvalued don't buy the dip if the share price was already attractive and it falls further and you got the money and it's best idea, then of course buy the dip, but don't do it just because it's dipped, right?

42:46Do it because you get a better price than you thought, and that price is really attractive based on your expectations, as Ram's already said. So that's absolutely the approach. Just ignore it. Know that it happens. Realize it's going to happen. Also too, by the way, any good or bad result may or may not be indicative of the long-term future, not even the outlook for the next six months, but the super long-term future. So think about that as well and where you want to be investing. Ignore the market noise. Pick a price. Buy at that price regardless of what the market does. But only think about why the market might have done what it's done, which is you may miss something.

43:20So, you know, if the enterprise drops. You know when you're so arrogant about it that it's just like, no, no, no, I'm always right. No, the market. I've known it. Look, I've been a bit like myself and I've seen other investors make that mistake where they are so cocksure and arrogant that it's sort of like when you are objectively wrong, you won't see it and you'll wave it away going, no, no, no, the market's an idiot. Oh, Mr. Markit, he's always stupid. I was like, well, not always. Maybe, that's right. Not always. Be careful. You need that self-reflection and you just need to go into it knowing, like mathematically, you are going to be wrong a lot in this game.

43:54And that's cool. The mistake isn't being wrong. The mistake is not recognizing you were wrong and plowing ahead. That's right. You know, and all that's the dumb thing to do, right? But you go, oh, I bought lots of this. Here's my investment thesis. I expected this, this, this, and this to happen. And it completely turned out not to be even close to true. And there's no redeeming factors. I'm out. Don't cry into your milk. This is a Tuesday in investing, right? It's just like, what happens? Get over it, right? That's the beauty of it too. Because I can break out my smartphone and go, and my money is now in another company.

44:30You know, it's the best thing in the world. Like just to hang on because like I don't, My ego can't face the reality of me being wrong. So it's not wrong until I sell and I'll start, you know, oh, you know, better value now and it's only a loss when you sell and all the usual tricks that we sort of say to ourselves to convince us otherwise. Like being on guard for all of that. But just I guess all I'm saying is, yeah, you're going to be wrong a lot when you are, dust yourself off, move on. And always your North Star is your own expectations. And this is, we've talked about this before on the pod too, but it's so hard because if something is a bargain on your rationale, it is implicitly saying the market, most of the participants out there totally disagree with you.

45:19investment bankers, analysts, economists, you know, all these very sophisticated market players and all of the other retail plebs that are out there like me, they all think that this share is worth 70 cents. And here I am saying, I think it's worth$2. And that's super, super, super, super uncomfortable, particularly as well. We've talked about this a lot before where you go, my God, this thing's so dirt cheap, 70 cents. Yes. Right. You buy it and then you go, right, Now the market will see that it's wrong. It doesn't even know what you did. And then it'll probably take, even if you're 100 % right, it might even take six months.

45:55It might take two years before the evidence is so overwhelming that the market can do nothing other than agree with you. And it can drop down another 50%, right? Like, I don't know, it's a good example. Oh, Catacupole is a good example for me recently. God, I mean, what a relationship I've had with that stock, right? But I remember being on Ausbiz and talking about it when I was at 70 cents and the host was basically laughing at me, right? And I'm not trying to have a go at them, but it's like it is that really good example of it being an uncomfortable position to be in to say I am right and everyone else is wrong.

46:34Exactly. But hopefully sort of in a reasoned and objective sort of fashion, not just because I think I'm God's gift to investing. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, absolutely does, Matt. Absolutely does. Hey, let's go to the second part because it's kind of related, but there's something different going on here. So Sam asked about M &A. It says, it seems to me a merger would often help a company run more efficiently. However, there's a number of times now when a merger rumor has floated, one of the two companies' stocks often takes a tumble. What's going on there? So first thing to say is that every single M &A that's ever happened since the history of ever, a part of the rationale is always synergies, which is just a fancy way of saying we don't need two marketing departments, we don't need two of this, you know, we get a certain scale advantage.

47:23Absolutely true. Absolutely true, by the way. Well, hopefully it's true. It can be true. That's right. Yeah, it can easily be true. But we know, again, statistically, one out of three acquisitions creates shareholder value. One out of three does nothing. It's a wash. And one out of three loses it. So in other words, there's a two out of three chance that it doesn't actually improve your outcomes in any way. Which is not a great start, is it? Hope springs eternal. And management will always be optimistic. And they're not doing it because they're pessimists. They're doing it because they're optimistic on it.

47:57And then it's interesting, too, you can get into the incentives of it Because you've got investment bankers whose whole, you know, revenue basis is constructing and executing deals. So you're always knocking on the door of potential customers saying, hey, by the way, we can do this, this, this and this. And do you know it's going to grow your earnings this and we can save all this money on synergies? And so they are going to tell you this. There's no conspiracy here. There's no evil cabal of investment bankers. But it's just incentives, right? That's what they do. They are going to tell you that this is brilliant.

48:30One plus one can equal three. And it can equal three, but my point is it often doesn't. So that's the first point. The second point is that it often is very one-sided in terms of the benefit. Here's a small company being overtaken by a large one. The small one is doing really well. That's why the large one wants it. And they obviously see it as great value. and they obviously think they can put their shoulders to the wheel and make an even better value as well. And you go from 20 cents to 40 cents, it's all upside for you, right? It's like that can be fantastic. For the acquirer, investors look at it and go, well, wait a second, how many shares are you issuing to fund this deal?

49:12How much money are you borrowing to fund this deal? By the way, your last 10 acquisitions didn't work out. Well, the market might be perfectly reasonable in sort of saying, hello, I don't know if this is sort of... So the devil will be in the detail and it'll be specific to each case. When you observe that, I would say there's a very, very high chance the market is looking at the capital structure. So what mix of debt and equity you're using to execute this deal? What cash reserves are you employing? And do we think that is going to be accretive to us. It might be. Not every chance. It's almost a guarantee that the day after the merger is complete, revenue will jump.

49:56Buffets will probably jump too. But on a per share basis, maybe not. And once interest expenses are factored in, then maybe not as well. Right. So whether the market, again, the market might be totally wrong, but when you see one rise and one fall, it's because for one, it's sort of like, well, we were just on a merry way and this gorilla has just come out of nowhere and offered us a big premium. It's like, yes, that is a wonderful thing. For the other, it's like, oh, my gosh, another acquisition that's going to involve a bunch of debt and more dilution from an executive team that has got a comparable track record.

50:29Oh, gosh, I'm not confident. The market might be wrong, but that's what they're worried about. Yeah, I like that. I think that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Yeah. I think, yeah, I can't add much more to that. It comes down to price. and normally the acquirer falls, almost never the target that falls because they're generally being offered more than the current market price. So generally speaking, that will go up and the market looks and goes, you're paying how much for that? Oh, that sounds bad for me. That's why the share price falls, but you've covered that, mate. Here's just another angle on that.

51:02Was it Altium? ALU is the ticker in ASA. Really great company. I bought them years ago and super smart of me, locked in a 20 % profit. I would have multi, multi, multi bag if I had not done that. It's not the first. It won't be the last time that's happened. But I bring them up because they got a, was it last year or the year before, they got this really, well, it seemed like a juicy offer. I can't remember who it was, but it was a good offer in the sense that it was higher than the share price. Yes, that's right. And the CEO and the board turned around and said no. Now, that's always interesting.

51:43Now, again, they might be wrong. They might be ego again involved in all of this. But everyone will tell you, oh, it doesn't undervalue the company and this and that. The more hastily a management team accepts an offer, you can probably bet that behind the scenes there's a huge amount of relief. Oh, my God. You know, it's like, we can slog our guts out for the next five years trying to grow earnings or we can just, like, front load it, take the cash and sell off into the sunset, you know? Exactly, exactly. For someone to get a premium on the market price, a decent premium and say no. Now, again, you still don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but you know that they believe that, no, it does undervalue it.

52:26It is absolutely worth more than what the market price currently suggests and even what your offer does. And we are so sure of that. We are going to turn – again, the CEO, really great CEO, very wealthy man. could have been even wealthier, sailed off into the sunset, bought a power yacht and lived his best life, you know? But he's like, no, there is so much value here that I would rather continue working and growing value. And it turns out, I think, like, it's still reasonably early-ish days, but I want to say, I need to come back and look at it, but I want to say the share price is now well above that market price point and the takeover offer.

53:05And again, there's no guarantee in that, but it's just try and put yourself for, always try and put yourself in the shoes of the decision makers. I think there is something, it will feel disappointing at the time. I've got shares, they're$10. Someone has come and offered them$12. I could lock in a 20 % premium today. And those idiot managers have said no and have knocked it back. And then when they do knock it back, so the announcement is made, shares jump up. Oh, take over offer, fantastic. And then it gets knocked back and the share price falls. And you're left there going, oh, idiots. Why? Why could, And again, no guarantees, but to me it's actually a very, it's a very potent signal.

53:46It's like, well, no one knows the business better and they're choosing the harder option. The only rationale I can think of, and maybe there's something I'm missing here, is it really, everyone will say it undervalues the company and the offer. No, they genuinely believe that. And yeah, in this case, it turned out to be true. Yeah. Yes. I think it was hard. it's also by the way when you say no investors are a fickle bunch right particularly fund managers I don't mean that critically or at a personal level but your time frames are so different the pressure on someone to accept a deal is immense because you think about someone who like Altium is just no to the deal so firstly the share price falls back again so the deal is announced shares go I'm making the numbers up shares go from 35 to 45 bucks because the deal is announced with a 45 dollar price as soon as you say no the share price falls.

54:39Now, it probably won't fall back to the original level because some people say, oh, it's obviously in play, horrible jargon, but basically others might do a takeover. Or some will say, well, maybe it is worth more than I thought because they thought it was, so maybe it's worth more than$35, but it's probably not going to stay at$45. So if you're a director or a manager who says, I'm not taking the deal, you've actually just straight out lost your cashless money in the very, very first instance. And then you've got to be right. And that's over the long term, and that's not a certainty either. I mean, I guess to some degree why some people take the money because it's just easier to, right?

55:10If you're the knucklehead who says, my shares fell from$45 down to$38, and then for the next five years stayed at$38, and the business profit halved, it's like, oh, man, I really should have taken the money. Qantas famously knocked back a takeover from Jeff Dixon, the ex-CEO, back in 2001 or 2007, I want to say. That's right. That's right. And they should have taken the money, right? They should have absolutely taken the money and run, but they thought they knew better. Altium, on the other hand, has done really well. Yeah, true. So, you know, I just want to make that point that both, both for very real, logical, rational reasons and for reputational ones, it can be really hard.

55:40And I think CEOs and boards who say no to take, I deserve some credit. Also, just be mindful. They're taking the same risk you are with their money, right? They're thinking, I think this is worth more, but I'm not sure. And that's why sometimes I can't blame them if it's a two in the hand, one in the bush type stuff. It's like, well, the other way around. I'll take it because at least I know that I know that I know I'm getting the money. It doesn't mean they should be reckless about it or just take it off just because it's made. But you knock back a deal, the target's on your back. You better justify that no.

56:10And the other problem with the counterfactual is if you do take the deal, the share price can never fall. So you've only ever made money for someone. Even if that$45 could have been worth$60 in 12 months' time, no one will ever know because the company's not listed anymore. So you never get – Afterpay is a great example. What would have happened to Afterpay if they'd said no to Square? I don't know, but I dare say the share price would have fallen. In other examples, Qantas, same thing. They said no, the share price fell. Other examples where they said no when the share price rose, yes, Altium.

56:35So it's really, really complex. But it's a very long way of saying, Sam, yes, if a company is going to be overpaying, that's why the acquirer's share price would fall. The other dimension to it here, which I've been critical on AGL of in the past, and I might be wrong on this, but remember Mike Cannon-Brooks made an offer? Yes. And they knocked it back. Yes. And I probably unfairly at the time said, what the board is asked to vote on here is, hey, you know, you're really cushy, extremely well-paying job. Yeah, yeah. What do we do? You have a meeting once a month and you're responsible for the remuneration committee.

57:18Being on the board of a major company, you know, you're not the one coming into the office nine to five, right? It's a good gig. It's a really good gig. If the takeover goes through, guess what? That's gone. Yes, exactly. This is, again, why skin in the game is so important. A director that's got tons of shares and, again, understands the business very well and seeks to get an immediate and upfront gain is very different to someone who's like, I don't know, I've got like half a percent of my wealth in this thing. I don't really care about it. I make more money just collecting my director fees each year than getting to go to the yacht club and tell everyone what a big swinging so-and-so I am.

57:58again people are people right we're not as noble as we like to think sometimes there's I don't know how you distinguish this you've got to make your own judgment but sometimes I think that is absolutely in play it's like I'm on a good thing here I don't want you know and by the way I'm 74 I'm probably not going to be doing this forever I don't really care about what shareholders get over the next 10 years I'm on a gravy train that could last at least another five years here and frankly, they'll never admit that to themselves because we all convince ourselves that we're doing stuff for the greater good.

58:32But is that unfair? Maybe I'm a bit unfair about that. No, I don't think so. No, I think that's exactly right. I think that's probably the biggest challenge is to try and unpack all that and try and work out where things are left. It's a difficult one. I reckon we might finish up with a question from, let's see what we've got. this one's from so we can finish up with a question you ready for some big picture thinking Ram? always Todd says hello podmanauts to boldly invest what no one has yet to think of let's face it we're talking for the future he says I like that Todd thank you podmanauts you ready for a really big question what are your thoughts on quantum computing versus AI do you think they have a place in the modern portfolio or am I treading on thin ice by looking at them now.

59:23Love the pod machine on my daily commutes, Todd. What do you reckon about one, either, both, neither? What's your take on that? So confession, I am a massive technophile. You're a nerd. I love technology. I will jump on anything. In terms of my enthusiasm, investing is different. So look up Google Gartner hype cycle is really worth a lot of lessons in that. And it just sort of shows you the journey a technology makes post its introduction. And I'm going to mess it up because I'll be doing it from memory without any visual aids as I sit in my car in my driveway. But generally speaking, there is usually a period of overinflated expectations.

1:00:17So is quantum computing real? Yeah, we've got them. We've got quantum computers already, right? Like they work pretty well. Very, very limited. Because we don't have a lot of qubits that we can string together. By the way, quantum computers are very, very, very slow and useless for a lot of the tasks. So even if we just like really like crack it, we're not going to like traditional computing will still play a major, major, major role in our life. I'm not going to be using a quantum computer to manage a database or something like that. But they are incredibly powerful for certain types of problems when you've got to sort of explore very large spaces in higher dimensional mathematics land kind of thing.

1:01:03It'll allow you to crack all cryptography, right? No, let me step back. There is quantum-resistant algorithms, but it'll allow you to disrupt Certainly all the cryptography that we use at the moment is really good for drug discovery. It's like there's some applications where it just is fantastic, right?

1:01:27However, Google came out recently with a bit of a breakthrough. I think they're up to 100 and something qubits that are strung together. And they've also done some stuff with error correction because these quantum states are very unstable. Unstable. Unstable. Unstable. So anyway, it gets very advanced. But the fact is, although we are making progress, and I think it's reasonable to assume that at some point in our future we will get to a stage where they are where we want them to be, it's still a long way off. And at this point, it's not investable to my mind

1:02:06because so much more R &D has to occur before you've got a commercially viable kind of product that will ever be any kind of sense of mainstream. So when you're at a very, very early stage of a technology, absolutely, put it on a watch list. You know, oh, this is interesting. I'm going to watch this. I've talked about robotics before. That's going ahead in leaps and bounds. Fantastic. AI, by the way, Alan Turing, everyone watched the Imitation Game? He's the guy who cracked the Enigma code, incredibly gifted mathematician. Right. They were talking about AI back then, right? And for good reason.

1:02:42And actually, a lot of the stuff that's referenced today in AI is from Turing, right? It's absolutely ahead of his time, but 80 years ago. We're all long-term investors. I don't think any of us are that long-term. Exactly. Now, in the recent years, AI has gone to something that is more investable. I still don't have a – the best I would do at an AI play would be something like NVIDIA, and I don't have any at the moment, except through my ETF, I guess. So what I like to do is I think you have to separate hype and potential from commercial reality and the timing of that commercial reality. And the best example in recent history, I say recent from a very broad perspective, would be the dot-com bubble, right?

1:03:32Right. The internet, actually everything everyone said about the internet pretty much came true. It revolutionized business and marketing, everything, right? But anyone who was getting super excited about that in 1996 had to wait a hell of a long time before it was obvious as to who the winners were going to be. And 99 % of all the alternatives went to zero. So, again, I always reference this book just because it was such a great teacher for me in this kind of space. It's called The Gorilla Game. And the TLDR is basically wait for a leader to emerge and then invest heavily. And they say that because even though you miss out on the very, very, very early gains, what you need to think of as an investor is not the return potential but what they call the risk-adjusted return potential.

1:04:20The return potential of a lottery ticket will put any stock to shame. Like I can spend$2, buy an Oslo ticket, and I can make$20 million. Like you cannot beat that, right? There's no better ROI in the world, correct, yeah. Yeah, but what are the odds that it's going? I mean, the expected value is probably 99.999999 % chance of zero and 0.001 % chance of 20 million. When you do the math, it's a pretty poor expected value. And again, Google expected value if you want to nerd out on the math kind of thing there. So I am perfectly happy of being late, quote unquote, to something like the internet, but investing in something when it's really obvious that Google and Amazon and Netflix are going to be a big deal, right?

1:05:08And it'll be hard because at that point, you don't know the future, but at that point in time, you would have seen the shares grow 10, 20x. and they'll be at all-time record highs. They might even be at a point where the company still doesn't have any statutory earnings and the PE is infinity or the PE's maybe got a tiny bit of earnings and the PE is a gazillion. You remember. We were around. You might have even bought your Amazon shares when it was on some stupid PE. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it did. It might have even been a full-digit PE, I think, at the time. Like insane, insane, right? But actually not because at that stage it was like, well, I can't, there's no guarantees in this game, but given the scale, given its cash flows, given its competitive advantages, it was a high chance that Amazon had some real momentum.

1:05:58I'm not talking about share price momentum. I mean business momentum. And you would have been buying at or near a very all-time high, right? So this is a long-winded answer, but what I'm trying to say is when it comes to a technology, wait until it's out of the lab and it's in the commercial world and it's generating profits and the company that's doing it has built some advantage. Maybe it's a first mover advantage. Maybe it's a scale advantage. Maybe it's a brand advantage. Something that just enables them to, you go from, I think e-commerce is going to be big, very, very sensible view, but very, very difficult to prosecute because, okay, but who's going to win?

1:06:46So, I think Amazon is going to be big because they own 80 % of the market. They've made much more investments on this. There tend to be these things called network effects, and it's built this massive network effect around it. Jeez, it's very likely to win. And that's when you invest, and that's when you invest heavily. So long answer short, quantum computing, super exciting. We'll get there a mile away from being commercial at this point in time, to my mind. Yeah, I agree, mate. I'm not even sure we'll end up with an investable outcome. I mean, you can't really even invest in the internet. Despite what we're talking about Amazon and its business, Amazon isn't the internet.

1:07:20Amazon's a retailer. Apple makes consumer devices. I mean, the internet isn't even really, I mean, it's a thing, but it's not a thing. There is no, you can't invest in the internet. You can't buy shares in TCPIP, right? Right, exactly, which most people won't understand the acronym for, but trust us, that's an internet thing. Do you know what it stands for? I don't even know. Transfer something protocol? Yeah. No, I don't. But it's basically an open and free protocol that is the common language of the internet and enables computers to make sure that they can all communicate. Right. Now, AI is not even that.

1:07:55AI is just a broad concept of machine learning, which itself is a broad concept. I mean, this isn't even just open source singularity stuff. It's just an idea, a computing application. What's application? I mean, capital A application. It's a way to use computing power to do a thing. I mean, it's like investing in, again, search. Can you buy shares in search? No. You buy shares in Google who does search. But that's the winner of the game, as you said. For me, AI has even been broader than that. There are so many different options, so many different ideas. Quantum computing, the same. Now, NVIDIA has done very, very nicely out of the chip demand.

1:08:27That's probably the closest to an I.I.-related stock. In fact, I'd say it's large I.I.-powered that share price, huge share price rally in recent years. I guess in hindsight, we might have done that, but maybe you would have invested in Intel instead, and it doesn't, or AMD. There's other chip makers who haven't done it quite as well. Could you have known it was going to be NVIDIA? Maybe. Maybe the Bitcoin kind of mining technology maybe should have highlighted some applications for NVIDIA's chips, I guess, in AI. Will it be the final winner? I don't know. Maybe there's someone in a garage, someone in Intel, coming up with the next best chip that beats NVIDIA's chip.

1:09:02And then what happens? So I think, you know, to your point about waiting long enough, I think that makes, to me, makes a whole lot of sense. But I suspect that, I suspect AI is probably more like the internet than it is like, you know, an actual technology that is investable with a patent or something else. Yeah. I think I will be huge. I suspect quantum computing becomes huge at some point because we want more computing power. We spent the last 50 years chasing it. We're not going to give up until we have hit the bounds of physics and things that are possible. So if you kind of push that far enough out, I kind of think that's where you get to.

1:09:39And so I don't know any investable AI ideas or quantum computing ideas. I suspect it's more like using AI. Like Amazon used the internet. Someone will use AI to further their own businesses. I suspect the winners out of AI are Woolworths and BHP and News Corp and Catapult. And in other words, everyone will use it to a greater degree. The biggest winners out of AI are the ones who find an early and compelling use for it that gives them a meaningful competitive advantage that they can somehow sustain. And I don't know who that is either. Everyone's got it. Every business has a website and an email address.

1:10:12Yeah, that's right. They're all new to that. What do you do? There's zero competitive advantage in that. Yes. Yeah, and you're right. There's value, but there's no advantage. Look, this is something where I'm hopefully cognizant enough to recognize that my view will evolve and change because it is so fast moving. But my current thinking is that those best able to exploit AI will be those that have proprietary data sets. In other words, anyone can point a large language model at some data and do some interesting things. But if you own the data, well, that's a very different story. You know what I mean?

1:10:47He's like, well, no one else can use your data. So, you know, I think those kinds of companies stand to exploit the technology far better than those that are using generic or open source or publicly available information. So a couple of examples off the top of my head. ProMedicus, right? They do all the medical scans. They've got the scans. Like, okay, is it any wonder that the universities are partnering with them to do AI training? They own all the data there. Catapult collects all the sports analytics data. You know, like that's very interesting, right? Like anyone can build some AI to look at some of this data and make interpretations, but it turns out that Catapult's collecting the most data and has got the most valuable data set.

1:11:31So, by the way, these aren't recommendations. I own shares in Catapult, you know, and have been terribly wrong on that in the past. So, you know, I'm not trying to advocate anyone to do anything other than try and focus on those best able to exploit it rather than those. You've got to think two or three steps out here. I think it's too narrow to say that to invest in AI, the option is Anthropic or OpenAI or some of these big AI companies. It's like, no, it's the companies that will exploit it that have the best potential to do that. And in a way that competitors can't easily compete with. Yeah.

1:12:13I think you'd probably nailed that. I guess I would say, so Todd, I can't give you advice, but I do think it's thin ice at the moment for all those reasons we've talked about. Just to go back directly to your question, do they have a place in modern portfolio? I don't think yet for me. I've not made any quantum computer or AI recommendations for our members. I don't own any myself. I own some companies that might use it. I own Alphabet shares. I hope Google finds a way to use it. Oh, Google's doing AI. I own quantum, yeah. absolutely Google AI is really impressive in search recently I probably buy because I've used Google I'm a Google shareholder but when you type a question in a Google search now you get an AI result at the top plus links you can go to to see the information it's a really really clever use of AI in search they've compiled the information they've answered the question compiled an answer which may be enough but if you want further detail there's a link for every statement it makes and you go and use that it's a really really clever way to use it so I hope they continue to use it I hope they do really well that maybe someone else beats them to it, by the way, because it's all new and different and exciting.

1:13:12And is it possible that ChatGPT becomes the go-to search engine? Yeah, possibly. In fact, just a quick inside baseball thing. I'm probably not allowed to share this, but I will anyway. One of our team actually realised there's a not inconsequential number of people coming to the Motley Fool's website from ChatGPT. Yeah. So they're either searching what is the Motley Fool or how do I find the Motley Fool? What do you know about the Motley Fool? And from whatever information they're getting, or maybe it's not about it. Maybe it's how can I find a good investment advice? I don't know what they're typing in.

1:13:41But there's a – Should I buy X, Y, Z is probably what it is. And Motley has an article on it and the AI has noticed that. And they go, oh, they've got lots of articles. And here you go. This is probably right. That's probably how the heuristic is working there. Now, it's a really small – it's not – yeah, it's inconsequential. It just came up as a domain source. It was like, oh, that's cool. That's interesting. It's like fractions of a percent. This is just interesting. Some people are finding it. So that could be the search engine of the future for all we know. But who's going to win by how much?

1:14:17And here's the other thing. Even if we knew, what price would you pay for that? That's the other part of it. So it's not only, you know, can't you find the winners? Even if I'd known, you know, someone told me in, I don't know, whatever year that Amazon would be a long-term winner at e-commerce. I couldn't have guessed how big they'd be, how quickly, how much I should pay for that. I mean, the number of ifs you have to put together, I get the excitement, Todd, sorry, I get the idea. I know we all want to be on the leading edge. If it is big, gee, wouldn't it be great to get in in 2025 rather than 2027 or 2029 or something?

1:14:52Yes, absolutely. But the Rams lotto example, I kind of think that's where we're at. Someone will win lotto. Our chances of finding who that is and paying a good enough price I think is pretty long odds. Yeah, yeah. As I say, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on. Like it really is. But it's just there is a point. I mean, we would lose count of the number of fads that come and go on the AXX. Yes, yes. Right? And the thing is every bubble, every fad, bubble might be too strong a word, but, you know, every hype cycle, there is actually a nugget of truth to it. It's not like outright patently stupid, you know?

1:15:33It's easy to go, oh, how dumb we're people. No, no, no. There's a nugget of truth to this. It's kind of a necessary precursor for that. So you've got to be careful to just be the kind of person who just dismisses it out of hand. It's like, no, quantum computing is a thing, right? And it's getting better, and it's not unreasonable to expect it will continue to get better to the point where there's good commercial outcomes for it. But as I say, we're not there yet. We're not even close to that yet. And it's also, it's really, things evolve in very unexpected ways. I was like, oh, you know, I'm all in on AI in terms of a user, right?

1:16:11Yeah, totally. It's so, so powerful. And I talk to mates and I'm like, oh, it'll do this, it'll do that. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's$30 a month. Oh, I'm not spending that. What? And like here I am thinking, who wouldn't, right? You're telling me I can have an always-on intern that is never rude, never late, never questions, will do anything I ask, and I can pay a dollar a day for them? And you're saying to me that's too much? And I just say it's always – this is a big challenge for me and I think a lot of people in investing is you look at the world in the way you look at the world, and it's hard to comprehend that anyone could think differently.

1:16:52It's like, but of course, I mean, how arrogant is that, right? Like, of course people have different interpretations and views and excitement about various things. And here I am looking at it going, this is the best thing ever. And, you know, in my world, anecdotally, it's like 80 % of people are like, yeah, I asked them to do this and it wasn't perfect, so I don't really like it. Are you kidding me? But here's the point though, right? Like, you would imagine that every single person on the planet would have a subscription to this thing, but actually very few people do. And so it's sort of like even when you're right on the technology and what it can do and how quickly it'll be rolled out, whether or not it has the commercial success that you might assume derives from that is a completely different thing as well.

1:17:38So anyway, what am I saying? Investing is hard. Well, it's hard, but it's also, and this is maybe the big one, we'll wrap this up, but you don't have to invest in everything. I think that's the other, like, because it's hard, You don't have to have a view on absolutely everything. You don't have to know the odds of AI being X big by X time and having X winners. And it's just like, I don't know. The I don't know pile should be the largest pile by far in your investing life. Bigger than even the no's. It's easy to say no to a whole lot of stuff. But me, people ask me for - Yeah, my most stuff is I don't know.

1:18:14Oh, right. You and I have done OSBs before. And you're on OSBs and they're like, what are you doing this company? And the answer is like, well, I don't know. Or alternatively, it's like, you know, they want to buy, hold, sell. Most of them aren't, you know, and it's not their fault, but investors think this way. But most of it is just, I don't know, or I don't feel good enough to buy or sell because I don't know if I buy it. I just would. They love that. Right? But that's the reality. It's like, you know, is this worth buying? Well, not clearly enough for me. No. Why would you sell it then? Well, if I owned it.

1:18:46I mean, not clearly. I mean, you know, my default is we're limited amounts of capital unless it's a buy or sell. So it's a little bit binary in that sense. I don't own every company on the ASX for very good reason. I don't know enough about them. So if you gave me shares in that company, I would sell them and buy something else I have more conviction in. But it's not because that company can't go up more. It's just because I don't know enough to do it. So honestly, most of my answers on that are I'd sell it if I earned it because I don't, I'm not sure it's got a good enough opportunity. I'm not shorting it.

1:19:12I'm not trying to make money from it falling. I'm just saying, I don't know. So if you give me the shares, I'll sell them. Because why would I own something that I don't have confidence in beating the market. And that's kind of where, just to put it back to Todd, that's for me. That's me. Are there opportunities out there that might in future have looked good in 2025 prices? Possibly, yes. But I got no idea, mate. So no, I'm not. I don't invest in things I don't have a high enough conviction in. So would I invest in them? No. Do they have a place in my portfolio? No. Is it thin ice stuff? Yeah.

1:19:41Doesn't mean some mightn't do really well. They all might do badly. They all might do really well. Very good chance that the winners are probably not even around yet. or at least not in public form. So, yeah, don't know. Too hard. I mean, I know we've mentioned this a million times before, but the classic example is, you know, Buffett didn't buy Apple until 2012. Yeah, that's right. Right? Like the cat was out of the bag well before that. And he just stayed – and, again, it's not like, oh, poor guy. No, no, no. He did just fine, like staying a mile away from, like, technology. He just – and he would say, it's like, no, I'm not against it.

1:20:17I just don't think I've got any special insight here that, so I'm just not going to do it. That humility is your biggest advantage, I think. You know, those that think that, those that have a confident and ready answer on every stock, that is a massive alarm, frankly, for me, because it's just like, you're either a genius polymath that, you know, you're that one in a million individual that can be a master of multiple disciplines and domains, or you're an arrogant so-and-so who doesn't know the limitations of their own ability. And that's most of us, right? And I'm in that latter camp, right? I absolutely am not a polymath genius, but I feel as though there are some areas, very narrow areas that I feel as though I can, again, not even just be top of the pile, but at least slightly better than the average, enough to give me a bit of an edge.

1:21:15And that's what you want to focus on and exploit. So often I'll say to new investors, you know, a great place to start is invest in the industry that you've got experience in. You know, you spend 30 years working in retail, so maybe, I don't know, you probably know more than me about retail, right? You know, you've spent 40 years working in ports and logistics. Yep, you've probably got some insights that I couldn't even fathom, right? Like, again, there's a lot more to it than that, but it's just like, what is, you know, obligatory Buffett quote, what does he say? It's like, you know, the size of your circle of competence isn't important, but knowing the boundaries is paramount.

1:21:53I'm paraphrasing. One of the most important and least quoted of his, I think, is such a vital thought. Yeah, and so look at, I mean, I don't know, Howard Marks, another one I go on and on about. He doesn't even buy shit, he's a fixed interest investor. He's done just fine. He's like, this is what I'm good at, I do this. You've got others that it's like, no, I only invest in bleeding-edge technology. Look at Cathie Wood there for a while. That's all that she did, and she blew it out of the water until she didn't. She blew it up. Yeah. By the way, it's come back a lot. She could well be proven. My point isn't to throw shade at anyone or put praise on anyone.

1:22:28My point is to these investors, there are a thousand different ways to invest. And I'm not going to tell you where to do it or how to do it, but just invest in the areas that you can honestly hand on heart say, I've got a little bit of an edge over the average person in this space. And just having humility will probably give you a bit of an edge as a general rule. By the way, we're dragging this on way too long. For what it's worth, if you'd bought ARK 10 years ago, this is Kathy Woods, she's a US fund manager. ARK is the ARK Invest, I think it's called. ARK Innovation, sorry, is what it's called.

1:23:04if you bought it in 31st October 2014 a little over 10 years ago because this far back as the data goes $20.38 now$58.70 so you've almost tripled your money in 10 years which is I think probably good I think compounded that's probably a good result probably market beating I would suggest if you bought it and I'm picking this I'm deliberately picking this on the 9th of February 2021 you've lost the best part of two thirds of your value yes so it kind of you know Again, that's kind of back to price matters, right? I mean, who knows where to from here? That 2021 price might be cheap in the future.

1:23:38Maybe today's price might be expensive in the future. We don't know. But, you know, is tech going to be a thing? Yes. 10 years ago, if you bought shares in this year, have you done well? Yes. If you bought them at certain times, have you done badly? Very badly? Yes. Yep. Knowing what you're buying, knowing the price you're paying, they all matter. Absolutely. All right. Should I stop this rather than introducing any more tangents or other lines of conversation? Yeah, the guy's getting pretty stuffy here. I got to crank the air. Now I'm not sure I should make you stay long just to punish you. Mate, thank you again for spending some time in the car for us today.

1:24:12We're recording this all on Friday morning and it was just turned afternoon. Andrew has been sitting in the car for probably the best part of three hours with a small break in between. So, mate, thank you. Well done. We got through it. A couple of breaks. Actually, I don't know if this episode will come together as well as it should have. I had a blackout for a minute halfway between this one and Jeffra Brown's problems. I know, exactly. Mine came back on pretty quickly, thankfully. But hopefully your power is back on soon, mate, or hopefully you learned to live like a caveman. Either way, hopefully you have a pretty good week.

1:24:38Thanks for spending some time with us. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. And until Friday, Fool on. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.