MI321: Uncovering Stocks Like A Pro w/ Stephen Clapham

23 Jan 2024 · 1 h 6 min

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The Intrinsic Value Podcast - Episode MI321 Summary

Episode Overview Title: Uncovering Stocks Like A Pro Guests: Kyle Grieve and Stephen Clapham Release Date: [Date of Release] Duration: [Total Episode Duration]

In this episode of The Intrinsic Value Podcast, host Kyle Grieve engages with investment expert Stephen Clapham to explore various strategies for identifying undervalued stocks and mitigating investment risks. Clapham emphasizes the importance of understanding market perceptions, simplifying valuation methods, and utilizing a range of tools to enhance investment acumen.

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Key Concepts and Discussions

Introduction

  • Guest Introduction: Stephen Clapham shares insights from his book, *The Smart Money Method*, and his extensive experience in stock analysis.

Detecting Frauds (Timestamp

01:54)

  • Clapham discusses the techniques for identifying fraudulent activities in companies’ financials, emphasizing the value of forensic accounting.

Finding Ideas Across Geographies (Timestamp: 04:55)

  • "Laterals" Concept: Clapham explains how to leverage existing ideas from one sector or geography and apply them to another to identify potential investment opportunities.

Utilizing Your Network (Timestamp

11:31)

  • Clapham suggests using friends and acquaintances as filters for screening investment ideas. This can help gauge public perception and sentiment around specific stocks.

Role of Stock Charts (Timestamp

17:42)

  • Clapham advocates for the use of stock charts to identify market sentiment and potential investment opportunities, even for fundamentally-focused investors.

Importance of Market Perception (Timestamp: 18:16)

  • He stresses that understanding market perception is critical for making money, as it often deviates from reality.

Management Incentives and Red Flags (Timestamp: 25:16)

  • Discussion on the significance of management incentives and how misaligned incentives can be a red flag for investors.

Back-of-the-Envelope Evaluations (Timestamp: 31:34)

  • Clapham highlights the effectiveness of simple valuation techniques over complex models, emphasizing the importance of sanity checks during analysis.

Detecting Fraud Skills (Timestamp

35:24)

  • Importance of developing skills to detect fraud; Clapham suggests that proper training can help avoid costly mistakes.

ESG Investing Pitfalls (Timestamp

41:01)

  • Clapham critiques the current ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing landscape, suggesting that it can lead to poor investment decisions.

Building Investing Skills (Timestamp

46:30)

  • Clapham provides insight into the best practices for developing investing skills, recommending various resources including books and online courses.

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Key Takeaways

  • Investment Philosophy:
  • It’s crucial to understand both reality (fundamental analysis) and perception (market sentiment) in stock investing.
  • Using charts can complement fundamental analysis by providing insights into market trends.
  • Fraud Detection:
  • Investors should prioritize learning forensic accounting to identify potential fraud and avoid significant losses.
  • Management Quality:
  • The governance and incentives of management teams are critical factors to evaluate when considering investments.
  • Simple Valuation Methods:
  • Back-of-the-envelope calculations are often sufficient and preferable to overly complex models.
  • Networking:
  • Engaging with others in the investing field can provide invaluable feedback on investment ideas and enhance analytical capabilities.

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Resources Mentioned

  • Books: *The Smart Money Method* by Stephen Clapham
  • Courses: Online investing and forensic accounting courses offered by Clapham
  • Website: [Behind the Balance Sheet](http://behindthebalancesheet.com)

Social Media & Community

  • Connect with Stephen Clapham on [Twitter](#) and [LinkedIn](#).
  • Become part of the TIP Mastermind Community for more in-depth discussions on stock investing.
  • Follow The Intrinsic Value Podcast on [X (Twitter)](#), [LinkedIn](#), [Instagram](#), [Facebook](#), and [TikTok](#).

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Disclaimer: The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional financial advice. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.

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Transcript

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0:00You're listening to TIP. A lot of people write off technical analysts, or they're just drawing squiggles on charts. But the chart is the single, encapsulates in one measure what the market thinks about the share. And if you're trying to make money out of the difference between perception and reality, which is what effectively what an investment analyst does, then you need to not only understand the reality, which analysts tend to be reasonably good at, but you also need to understand the perception. And you need to understand why the perception is wrong and what might change it. If you don't understand that, then you'll never make any money.

0:46And how do you understand the perception? Well, it's quite difficult, isn't it? I mean, how would you know what's in the price? and the best place to start is the share price.

1:22the power of simplicity in valuation, and a whole lot more. I first found out about Stephen Clapham when I saw his book, The Smart Money Method, referenced by a former guest, Tobias Carlisle. When Tobias says something is worth reading, I'm all ears. So I checked out the book and author and ordered it immediately. I was impressed with how well the book was laid out and some of the very interesting insights into how professional investors analyze stocks. There were so many takeaways I had from the book, but the overarching lesson was that I probably needed to do even more work into the individual line items of any business that I was interested in.

1:54Stephen is very good at identifying potential frauds with his focus on forensic accounting. This has helped him avoid making poor investments while helping to spread the word about how others can avoid the same mistakes. If you enjoy learning about the process of how to analyze stocks like a pro, you will learn a lot from this show. So without further delay, let's jump right into this week's episode with Stephen Clapham.

2:18you're listening to millennial investing by the investors podcast network since 2014 we interviewed successful entrepreneurs business leaders and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation now for your hosts kyle grieve

2:43Welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Grieve. And today I bring Stephen Clapham onto the show. Stephen, welcome to the podcast. Whoa, thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to it. I recently finished your book, The Smart Money Method, and I enjoyed learning about the subtle nuances and specific degrees of depth that you'd go into in a business that you discuss in your book. I really enjoy learning about laterals, which you say is how all of your best investment ideas were created. Laterals are, quote, taking a stock idea or theme and apply it to a different stock industry or geography.

3:16Why do you think this method was so powerful for unveiling great ideas for you? Honestly, I don't know why it was so powerful. You often don't know why something works. You just sort of gravitate to the things that work. And I can't really explain it other than, well, if you've seen something work before, it's got a high probability of working again. And I can't remember, it's so long since I wrote the book, and I haven't read it. But I think the one that I used in the book was the discounters, the supermarket discounters setting up in the UK, Aldi and Lidl, and they rolled out a huge increase in the number of stores.

4:01And obviously, that put significant pressure on the incumbents. It was quite a cozy oligopoly up until that point. And then, so when they moved to Australia, you could predict with a high degree of confidence what would happen, because these German discanters, they're very effective. I believe that they've started to come into the East Coast now. and you've seen the playbook before so i guess the reason why it's effective is it's harder to predict something that you've not seen before than something you have seen before so it that i guess that's the simple reason but i wanted to ask you why is my book not on your shelf how do i get my how do i get that product placement oh it definitely is on my shelf somewhere where is it Don't worry.

4:50No, it is. I'm going to get it in that sort of top right corner. It's definitely up there. I promise you. So one thing you really mentioned, one thing that you just mentioned now that I liked and that I quoted was about geographies and moving from one geography to another geography. So how do you help with the analytical process of understanding when you think a product market fit is right for one geography and right for another geography, even if let's say it's in a whole different continent and has a different culture and stuff like that. Well, I wouldn't necessarily be making that assumption.

5:25I mean, if it's worked somewhere else and obviously you're hopeful, that isn't how I would necessarily classify how I'm looking at it. It wouldn't be the transfer of a product necessarily. It would be more like that theme, the discounting theme that was disruptor in one geography, then moves to another geography, and that would be more, you know, you could predict with a degree of confidence what the impact would be. I'd be less sure that Tesco opening up in California, I generally wouldn't think, oh, Tesco is successful in the UK, therefore be successful in America, because I can't name a UK retailer that's gone to America and made any money.

6:10And sure enough, You know, Tesco burned hundreds of millions trying to set up in the U.S. because they thought they were the best food retailer in the world. It turned out that they were very good, but they couldn't compete in the U.S., which is, you know, the most efficient, most competitive market for almost any product. So I'm not confident about the application of a product to a very different geography, unless it's something very simple. But, you know, when you go to China or you go to America, there are very, very different markets. And you can't place a great deal of reliance on that. And also, Kyle, what you've always got to think about is what's in the price.

6:54You know, management have said, oh, we think we're going to, you know, we're going to this new market and we're going to do really, really well. And there's some anticipation of success. And you've got to be very careful with that. So another simple way that you outlined for finding great ideas was to follow the market. And by this, I mean looking at the market to see what is currently out of favor. The market often overreacts to things like earnings misses, negative guidance, litigation, decreased growth rates, departure of key executives, and increased leverage. But these events can also be very short-term in nature and offer incredible buying opportunities to those who have some patience.

7:31How do you use this strategy on a business with limited knowledge of where the price value gap may close faster than you can finish your research? If you're trying to deploy a very large chunk of capital, your partner had to research at two multi-billion dollar hedge funds, and you don't have that many positions. So when you're deploying capital, you're deploying it usually in quite significant size, particularly on the long side. And in order to do that, you need to be confident that where you're going to deploy the capital, where it's going to work. And you can only generate that confidence by doing a lot of work.

8:07So you've got to spend a lot of time. People in the stock market, they're always looking for quick wins. And quick wins are, I'm not saying there isn't such a thing as a quick win. I have made quick wins, but they've been very, very rare. And usually it's been a long and painful grind to find an idea. So you don't have any guarantee that where you're doing a lot of work, that the stock price won't move in the meantime. But ironically and paradoxically, in spite of the fact that it would take me quite a long time, we were usually too early. Because if you're thinking about, if you and I are buying a stock, we can wait for it to bottom, bounce a bit, and then buy it once the base is set in.

8:54And if you're a large hedge fund, you've got to buy it on the way down. And you don't know where the bottom is. And usually the bottom was way lower than what we thought. So if anything, it was quite the reverse. Rather than being late, we were being early. But you might not buy on the first profits warning, but you might not wait for the third one. You know, if you thought that there was a good longer term opportunity. I mean, typically, I wouldn't have gone and bought a stock that had had a profits warning. because the risk of turning around, usually stocks that have profits warnings have a second, have a third.

9:33And I would only ever sort of start to get confidence once I'd seen, you know, that there was some evidence that the thing was going to turn around. So that wouldn't be my sort of thing. I also, changes of management, people, and look, there's all sorts of ways to invest successfully. I can only tell you what works for me. And I think this is an extraordinarily personal endeavor. I don't think people place enough emphasis on it. I mean, I had a cup of coffee with Anthony Bolton last week. Anthony Bolton, one of the world's best investors. And he said that what I hadn't put in my book, which he thought was missing, is that you need to know yourself.

10:16And it's actually very true. I think knowing, understanding what you're good at and what you're not good at is actually very important. So I start off the book by saying my speciality was forecasting company profitability. And that's what I focused on. And that company profitability might be about to go down because Aldi and Lidl are about to enter the Australian market, or it might be about to go up because there was some pricing power hidden that the stock market hadn't perceived, or there was demand in a different sector that was going to generate demand for this sector. But I wouldn't really get involved in very obvious things because I think if it's very obvious, then there's usually a good reason behind it.

11:05I mean, finally, I'm writing my sub stack for Nick Sunday about an idea that was presented at the Sown Ideas Competition. And it was one of these sort of discount to some of the parts, a company with a lot of stakes in other companies. I said, really, generally, I don't like these ideas because anybody can add up. How could you have an edge with that? Although this particular one is so compelling. It's such a large discount that it's hard to see. You know, you've got such a margin of safety. It's very, very unusual to get that. And things that are obvious usually don't work. So I know you like to draw wisdom from contrary views when testing your thesis for an idea.

11:44You talk about how these are much harder to come across, like a bear report. So for investors investing in more obscure or less followed businesses, what are the best ways to try and poke holes in your thesis when no bearish report exists? Well, go down to the pub with your mates, tell them your idea, and watch them laugh at you and rip it apart. That's one way of doing it. I mean, I think it's very difficult to be completely solitary as an investor. And I think being able to bounce ideas around, I find to be quite helpful. And so, you know, at the hedge funds, we would discuss, you know, it wouldn't be, you know, you would come up with an idea and just put it in the portfolio.

12:30there would be quite a rigorous debate. And I think that's a very, very healthy thing, because the discussion forces you to examine the strength of your thesis and figure out, are there any holes in it? I was usually deploying a lot of capital. So by definition, it was in a large cap stock. And by definition, it would have a number of people looking at it. And there might have been 25 buys, but there'll be one guy that had been a seller in the past, or there would always be somebody that was less enthusiastic. And so I would really spend my time, if I was looking at a long, I'd really spend my time trying to poke holes in my own argument.

13:14if you're looking at a small cap it's clearly more difficult and you the only thing i think you can do really is to say are there any cells of comparable companies maybe not in the same sector but something with similar characteristics and just to argue with your friends i mean i was being slightly facetious go down the pub but actually the debate down the pub is can be quite helpful. And I was at an investment conference a couple of weeks ago. And the most interesting part of the investment conference is usually the chat in the bar. I know you've done a lot of work on a case study, a patisserie, Valerie, a chain of cake-focused cafes.

13:53You had a really good point about the fact that it wasn't a particularly difficult fraud to identify. Your simple measure was to look at it and you could instantly see that its margins were higher than that of Starbucks, for instance. So why does that matter because coffee is a high margin business and there's simply no way that cakes that are consumed in store can compete with the margins that a business like Starbucks, who people can just take their drinks and go, would have. So one part of this case study I found particularly scary was the fact that the CEO, Luke Johnson, was unaware of the fraud and was never prosecuted.

14:23He also owned 37 % of the business and had his equity wiped out. Investors looking for quality businesses might have been attracted to a business like this that had appeared to have some sort of competitive advantage. On top of looking at financial statements and comparisons to other businesses, what are the best ways for investors to limit the risk of fraud? Well, I mean, the Luke Johnson case is quite an interesting one. I mean, Luke actually lived around the corner from me. And at the time, our children were at the same school. And I was quite puzzled, because I thought, you know, he's a very smart guy, how's he not spotted this?

14:57and the day, the week, I think it went bust on the Tuesday and then the Friday morning, I was dropping my younger son off at school and who should I bump into very early on? Obviously not wanting to see anybody, it was Luke Johnson and he couldn't speak. It's not every week that you lose 150 million quid at the time and that would have been 200 and something million dollars. That's not a good week, right? Even if you're very rich and he wasn't, he was rich, but that must've been one of his biggest holdings. You know, it was clear that he hadn't been aware. And I think he was doing an awful lot of things.

15:33And he was executive chairman, but there was a CEO who was running the business. And I think, you know, he was there in the board meetings and he was told, oh, it's all going fantastically well. And he probably never visited the stores. And if he'd visited the stores, he would have seen that. There was a Patisserie Valerie next door to the Café Nero, another coffee chain, very close to one of the offices I worked at. We always used to buy our coffee in Café Nero. We used to do a coffee run every day. And we never went to Patisserie Valerie. The Café Nero was always full. The Patisserie Valerie was always empty.

16:12Now, it could have been just that street, you know, in central London. But the Capi Nero margins started off at two-thirds of Petitierie Valerie and fell in half, whereas Petitierie Valerie's margins went up. That seems a bit bizarre. But I think this tool, I really recommend to all my students. You know, I train professional investors in forensic accounting. I have an online school which allows you to learn about investing and about reading financial statements. And I say, look, the one really powerful tool is look at the margins versus the peers and understand why your company's margins are where they are relative to their peer group.

17:01and I really can't understand how could making cakes where it's very labor intensive, there's a lot of material cost, there's a lot of wastage because they're full of cream and they go off. Coffee is the highest margin product you can get just about. I mean, it's got a 75 % gross margin if you include the cost of the electricity. I mean, it is a really, well, the beans cost tuppence and the cappuccino costs$3.50. It's just a very, very profitable product. And if you're making a higher profit than selling coffee, then you're doing really, really well. And there must be some trick to it. And if you can't understand why the margins are where they are, then you probably shouldn't buy the stock.

17:53Robert Leonard So looking at stock charts is not something that I find particularly interesting myself, but you gave a great quote by Stanley Druckenmiller on how it can be used to help improve ability as an investor. He wrote up an investment paper to his research director who, after reading it, said, quote, this is useless. What makes the stock go up and down? That comment acted as a spur. Thereafter, I focused my analysis on seeking to identify the factors that were strongly correlated to a stock prices movement, as opposed to looking at all the fundamentals. Frankly, even today, many analysts still don't know what makes their particular stock goes up and down, unquote.

18:28I agree with you that I'm not sure it's necessary to completely ignore the fundamentals just to identify what makes the stock go up and down. But I am interested in whether you think this is a worthwhile exercise to add to a fundamentals-based investment process. Absolutely. I think a lot of people write off technical analysts, or they're just drawing squiggles on charts. But the chart is the single, encapsulates in one measure what the market thinks about the share. And if you're trying to make money out of the difference between perception and reality, which is what effectively what an investment analyst does, then you need to not only understand the reality, which analysts tend to be reasonably good at.

19:14But you also need to understand the perception. And you need to understand why the perception is wrong and what might change it. If you don't understand that, then you'll never make any money. And how do you understand the perception? Well, it's quite difficult, isn't it? I mean, how would you know what's in the price? And the best place to start is the share price. And if the share price has been going down and down and down and down and down and down, then there is quite a good chance that it will continue to go down and down and down and you've got to understand what is going to make it go up I mean a lot of people focus their energies on valuation and say well I'll buy it if it's cheap enough I'll buy it cheaply enough then I'll be safe and you know what will happen they'll lose money and they'll lose money for a period and then they'll get bored, they'll write off that loss and go and buy something else.

20:13The fundamentals and the valuation are obviously terribly, terribly important. But if you don't overlay the real world interpretation, understand why the stock market views that business in the way it does, you've only got half the story. And it just makes it more difficult to make money. I'm not saying you can't make money by buying a stock that's very, very cheap. Obviously, if you buy stocks that are very, very cheap, the chances are that they will go up. But they might get quite a lot cheaper. And understanding timing is important. The problem, Kyle, is that we don't get everything right. So eliminating obvious, simple mistakes is quite a good strategy, in my view.

21:02And knowing when to buy something is actually quite important. And so I view charts, I'm not a great believer in, you know, oh, it's broken out and Fibonacci. And I mean, I don't even look at a candlestick. All that stuff, I think, is it's not that I don't believe it. It's just that I want to just get the basics right. I don't want to get too encompassed in all the detail about the charts. But what I do want to understand is, is the market becoming more favorable or less favorable towards this company? And why? And once I've understood that, you know, I can say, oh, well, it is cheap and the market is warming to this company.

21:48If it's cheap and the market doesn't like it and shows no sign of liking it, I might be able to find something else that is equally cheap and the market is showing some signs of interest in. And that's where I'll go, all other things being equal. Obviously, when you're running a professional portfolio, one of the other things you're looking for are complementary stocks so that they reduce your overall portfolio risk. So you might buy the one that's unloved and still hated and shows no sign of interest because it also gives you something else in the portfolio. There's all sorts of things that you might be thinking about.

22:25but ignoring the charts i think is why why would you ignore the most useful piece of information and it's funny that we're having this conversation because i was in the offices of hedge fund in london yesterday and i was pitching my forensic accounting training course to them they said they were interested in it so i went in to chat to them and one of the guys said this to me he said i don't understand why people are so anti-charts because you know what you say is that it tells you the psychology of the stock market? And why wouldn't you want to know that?

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24:39That's public.com slash T-I-V-P. Paid for by public investing, full disclosures in podcast description. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor. And I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on. But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investor's Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors. And now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with.

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25:49And for a limited time, you can use code STOCKS15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. So in the smart money method, you wrote, quote, return on capital incentives are generally recognized by investors to be more effective than EPS targets. And this is borne out by academic as well as sell-side research. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on any research you've come across on this as well as what you've observed from any sell-side research that you've looked at. Oh, it's a long time since I've looked at this stuff. I mean, Goldman's did a piece and I think they've done some follow-ups saying, look, the best incentives you can have are returning on capital incentives.

26:33And it's just obvious. If you incentivize people on EPS, They'll go and do stupid acquisitions. They'll gear the company up. They'll cheat on the accounts. Look, I mean, earnings per share is quite important. The stock market pays very close attention to it. So I don't mean that you should ignore it. And I don't mean that people shouldn't have it as some part of their incentives. But returning capital is a much more important criterion. You don't want people to sell off growth parts of the business in order to improve the return in capital. You've got to have a mix of incentives. But there's all sorts of research, and there's lots of academic research on this topic, that companies where the management are incentivized on returns and other metrics tend to do better.

Read the full transcript

27:25No, show me the incentives. I'll show you the outcome. You've got Charlie's almanac behind you, and it is so true. So another thing, I look quite carefully at incentives. And if a company is like a resource company, an oil company, or a miner, if it doesn't have a safety incentive for the CEO, I'll be very concerned about that. I wouldn't say I wouldn't buy it, but I'd be much more reluctant to buy a stock in those sorts of industries if the CEO isn't rewarded for ensuring his staff are safe. Because it just seems to me a fundamental criterion of a good business that you would do that. I mean, I actually did some research on this.

28:14I was quite staggered because not every miner, the CEO is paid to not kill his staff. You would imagine that would be quite a good, quite a simple starting point. and some quite big minds. It was quite some time ago that I did it, but I was staggered. So another great point on management that you made was that you look for, quote, consistency, honesty, and common sense, unquote. You list a few red flags, such as continuous restructurings and frequent mentions of extraneous issues. Now, to some extent, extraneous issues do affect the operations of a business, but at some point, management needs to take responsibility for the outcome of their business.

28:53How do you determine when a management team is spending too much time making excuses for the shortcomings of their business and view it as a red flag? When they mentioned the weather, when they mentioned the weather, you know, I just, I'm gone. I'm not interested. I mean, obviously, weather does affect outcomes and performance. And ironically, we were talking about Patisserie Valerie. I mean, in 2018, we had a very hot summer in the UK. I mean, it was the hottest summer, I think, since 1976. And as a consequence of that, you know, the ice cream vendors did very well and people selling tea and cake did less well.

29:29So obviously it does, at the extreme, it does have an outcome and an influence and is a fair thing to include. But I think generally people that look for excuses rather than blaming themselves tend to be people I'm less comfortable about investing in. And, you know, I'd much rather hear the CEO say, we missed our numbers and I was stupid because I'd assumed that we were going to have a mild summer and I should have had more slack in there. And I've been a bit overambitious in the projections. I mean, how often have you heard a company say that? Rarely. so companies that use extraneous things the weather is a good example obviously you can't predict the weather but you shouldn't be assuming that the weather will be perfect either so when you make a forecast you should have some slack in the forecast and these sorts of factors won't kill you and there's all sorts of issues that slightly annoy me Oh, we hadn't expected our competitor to cut his prices.

30:50Well, you're in a competitive industry, then that is what your competitors are going to do. And it's not easy when your competitors are cutting your prices to grow your profits. And that can sometimes be a surprise. But often you hear management make not the same excuse quarter after quarter, but there'll be a different excuse. There'll be an excuse every quarter. And I don't really have time for that sort of thing. I mean, it's different if you're a long-term investor and you think, well, three or four quarters of bad results aren't going to affect my long-term disposition towards the share. I mean, I completely sympathize with that.

31:29And I quite get that. But if you're doing special situations at a hedge fund, you get paid not to buy the stock that disappoints for three or four quarters in a row. You get paid to short that stock and buy something good that goes up. and I just wouldn't hang around in in that role I wouldn't hang around for those perennial disappointers I mean I have been responsible for money that's been longer term money and then I might take a different attitude but the excuses always make me feel just may undermine my confidence in the people you know obviously things don't go according to plan all the time but the way you the way you present that is quite important.

32:13So you had a great sentence on debt that really spoke to me. Quote, if debt is quoted and trading at a discount, it is often a critical indicator of failing financial health. Unquote. I recently spoke with Matthew Peterson, who discussed his experience with Horsehead Holdings. And he said, if he'd only looked at the discount to the debt that the business was trading at, it would have helped him stay away from the business that ended up being a major dud. What's the simplest way to add this to the investing process and what resources are best to get a better understanding of the value of a corporation's debt?

32:43Well, I mean, I can't understand why anybody would buy a stock with quoted debt and not look at the value of it. Why would you do that? Especially if it's got a lot of debt. That seems bizarre because the credit markets are quite good at spotting financial risk because they're paid to look at the downside and we're paid to look at the upside. So I would always look at the value of the debt. I mean, I used to just do it on Bloomberg, but if you don't have Bloomberg, then there are ways you can do it because you can go to a stockbroker and say you want to buy the credit and say, what's the price?

33:16And this broker will have a Bloomberg terminal, be able to tell you. There are quotes for these things. I mean, I have proprietary systems that I I pay to get access to the price of credit. And those aren't, you know, they aren't free. I mean, I've forgotten what the one that I use, how much it is. It's not a ridiculous amount. You would need to be doing enough trading or investing that it would pay you to buy that. I mean, it's quite an interesting thing because I did a sub stack about, you know, what does it cost to be an investor? And I invited my readers to come back to me with, you know, what they spent.

33:58I was quite shocked at how little people spent. You know, people just believe, oh, well, you know, I can buy, or actually there's now some good products that are free that you can get, you know, quite a remarkable amount. But why would I pay for$30 ,000 a year for a Bloomberg when I can get X, Y, Z for free? And, you know, I've got a certain amount of sympathy with that because you can get quite a lot for free, but you do need to invest in your tools. You need to invest in your information sources and you need to invest in yourself. You can't be a competent, complete all-round investor without reading some books, without having good quality periodicals.

34:47I mean, I don't see how anybody could be an investor without reading the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. I mean, if they can do it, well done to them. I've got no idea how they could possibly do that. So I like how you emphasize the importance of back of the envelope checks for valuations over more complicated models. I also prefer this method, although more complex models are important too. It seems like different investors do this math in different ways. Can you give an example of a business that you've analyzed using back of the envelope math and what specific numbers that you would look at?

35:19The problem with spreadsheets is that they look like the answer is right. and a friend of mine was working with a major international oil company and at board level and the board couldn't understand how the analysts came up with their forecasts. And so he got three of the top, so the II top three analysts on the oil majors and asked them for their models of this company. And they then had somebody audit the models And every single one had not one error, but multiple errors in the model. And that's quite shocking. But I can't tell you how many times I've emailed an analyst at a bulge bracket firm and said, I don't understand how you get to this number.

36:07And they've changed their forecast because their forecast, their model's been wrong. This isn't like, oh, once in a blue moon occasion. This happens regularly. And you can't really blame the sell-side analysts because they've got a huge amount of work to do. And this is a difficult process. So what I would do is I would always have very simple models. And then whatever the models spat out at the end, I would ask myself, does that make sense? And we used to call it the back of the fag packet calculation. So, you know, cigarette packet, there's not much room for calculations. And just asking yourself, I've got this stock that Dan is growing at 25%.

36:54So that means 10 % revenue, 12 % revenue, 12 % on the margin. Is that realistic? Is that sensible? What's it done in the past? It's simply a case of comparing your own detailed knowledge of that specific stock with the likelihood of that sort of occurrence. So Michael Mauboussin, when he was at Credit Suisse, produced something called the base rate book, which was a sort of incidence of how fast the companies grow, how fast do they improve their margins, and so on. Those sorts of simple checks are very, very important when you're doing forecasts. They're actually also quite important when you're looking back in history.

37:39I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago who bought Estee Lauder. And he said, it's not a stock I know or have looked at, but he was saying, I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought more carefully about, they'd had very impressive growth in margins. And I should have asked myself, how sustainable was that growth? Because in fact, what they'd effectively been doing is stealing from the future. So these are his words, his analysis. I've not looked at it. But often you find that. And just asking yourself, does this make sense is a hugely important question. And if you just ask those questions, you'll avoid all the frauds.

38:22Because none of the frauds make sense. So I liked your emphasis on doing sense checking for evaluating business, which you kind of just talked about now. And I think this is an area that many investors refuse to look at because it invalidates their ability to buy a business, especially in bull markets. The other problem that can happen in bull markets is comparing one overpriced business to an industry full of overpriced businesses. This can help justify a purchase, even though looking at historical average price to earnings valuations or whatever metric of your choice for the industry over the last 10 years might be 50 % or cheaper than current valuations.

38:52So how do you best combat making these mistakes when markets are running hot and everyone is euphoric? I can't tell you how to combat making investing mistakes because if I knew that, I would be rich, right? I mean, everybody makes investing mistakes. The best investors make mistakes because this is a very, very complicated endeavor. And even Warren Buffett, the best investor in the world, I mean, he's made mistakes. You know, he bought Tesco. And it's just not possible not to make mistakes. I think where I get, where I beat myself up is where I make the same mistake a second time or a third time.

39:32And then I get really annoyed with myself. I think you should have known because remember that last time there was a similar situation. But in overheated markets, people get excited. They get enthusiastic. So the most important thing you can do to protect yourself against that is to start off with a valuation framework. And so we teach that you should look at not only the valuation of the stock, but the valuation of the market. And there's a huge amount of garbage talked about, oh, it's time in the market, not timing the market. And I don't say that that's garbage because obviously it's a truism.

40:13It is time in the market, not timing the market. But if you just keep buying, irrespective of price level, you might do well over the very long term. So if you're 25 years old and you do that for 40 years, you might be okay. But if you keep doing it when you're 65 and you're wanting to retire at 70, you'll lose your shirt. And, you know, all these truisms are, I think, quite dangerous in a way because people quote what Buffett says out of context. And if Warren Buffett were giving advice to a 75-year-old, a 55-year-old, and a 35-year-old, he wouldn't give the same advice. And what people fail to understand is you've got to think about your personal circumstances.

41:06I've got, on my podcast, I interviewed a guy called Sebastian Lyon who runs Troy Asset Management in London. It's about a$10 billion firm. And he looks at the valuation of the stock market. And if it's very high, he holds more cash. And if it's very low, he owns more shares. That's what you should do. I mean, it's very difficult in these recent times where markets have become incredibly enthusiastic. day. And older investors just kind of understand that they're going to miss the boat, not make as much money as their younger peers, but they'll lose less money later. I mean, I was asked to look at a Dutch company, Adyen, in the payments industry.

41:56It was valued at$100 billion and it had 1.3 billion dollars 1 by 3 billion euros pardon me of sales and you know i said okay payments is quite a good industry and they seem to have quite a good position in it what sales growth would they need to have for how long before i could you know think about that as an investment and the answer was 15 years at 40 percent now i don't quite know what amazon's compound growth has been over the last 15 years, by that it's been 40%. It's just like an almost unachievable sort of level. And when you see that happening, you've got to ask yourself, well, hang on a second.

42:41If this stock is at that level, what about all the other stocks? Because if people are so enthusiastic about this, maybe they're being overly enthusiastic about other things. I mean, people are, even in poor markets, people are always over-enthusiastic about something. But when you get very, very clear signs of froth, then you should just exercise a bit more caution. And that's the best discipline, I think, that I can recommend. I don't have any, there's no magic to investing. It's the same old thing every cycle. My friend Russell Napier, the famous financial historian, he started the Library of Mistakes.

43:22and the Library of Mistakes in Edinburgh if any of your listeners are in the UK or in Scotland they definitely should go and visit the Library of Mistakes brilliant institution it's got I think 4 ,000 books and lots of interesting memorabilia and even just to walk around and look at the posters on the wall of past frauds and so on and just keep your feet on the ground you don't have to make the money tomorrow you can make the money over the long haul. And I think a lot of mistakes are made because people have a desire to get rich quickly. I know the motto of my courses is, I'll teach you how to get rich slowly.

44:04I don't know how to get rich quickly. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows. We Study Billionaires is our flagship podcast, and we've made a name for ourselves over the years by interviewing the best investors in the world, including Ray Dalio, Howard Marks, Joel Greenblatt, and many, many more.

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47:25That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. So I think environmental, social, and governance is largely a buzzword used to generate interest in emerging and unproven business models. But you had a really interesting three-question framework I think is actually useful. One, does the company have a purpose? Two, will it improve people's lives? And three, will it improve customers' lives. I think this is a great set of questions to ask to find out if a business is a true win-win-win for the good of the planet, the customers, and the business. But finding a business, opportunities like these are quite rare, but they do exist.

48:01How do you incorporate these questions into your investing process, if at all? I'm not an ESG investor. An ESG investor would be quite shocked looking at my portfolio today because I've got energy, and I've got mining, and I've got dirty companies. And I think those dirty companies are going to do well. And I want to save the planet. Don't get me wrong. I'm passionate about that. But saving the planet and making money are two different things. And I think we should be devoting more attention to climate change. I think the ESG has been a bandwagon. The ESG made money because the tech stocks fitted ESG.

48:47So if you had an ESG fund, you're overweight tech, and so you did well. And then in 2022, tech fell and ESG funds all fell. And everybody's like, oh, well, maybe it's the end of ESG. And coupled with that, there's been this sort of backlash, particularly in the US municipalities, where in Texas, they don't want you to own an ESG fund, because then the ESG fund won't be investing in oil. And that's not good for the local economy. and there's all sorts of political things come into it. But I think that when I look at ESG, G, governance, I mean, that is table stakes. If you buy a company with bad governance, guess what's going to happen?

49:29They're going to steal from you. So buy companies that have good governance. I used to invest with crooks. One of the things, one of the chapters in the book was about investing with crooks. But you have to be on the same side of the table as the crook. So governance is table stakes. The S, I'm quite dubious about the S. I mean, I do understand the principles and the human capital. People are the most important part of a business. But it's pretty obvious. You just need to look at the board and who's on the board. I mean, whether you need to have a certain number of executives that are female, that is a very interesting debate.

50:13And I think that you can have a company which has got a lot of women in senior roles and a company which has few women in senior roles. And they can both be good companies and not necessarily discriminating in either way. And I think it's very difficult to spend too much time worrying about this. And then the E, I want to save the planet, and I want to invest in companies that are conscious of their responsibilities. For one simple reason, I think that the carbon price is going to go up a lot. And if you aren't paying attention to the carbon price, well, you're probably going to end up with a lower quality investment because the carbon price will go up and you should be wary of your environmental obligations.

51:02But that doesn't mean to say I shouldn't buy Exxon or BP because we need oil. I mean, I'd be very happy if we had more electric cars and that we were producing less pollution. And I think that's a very good thing. I don't happen to drive an electric car myself. I think the electric technology is perfectly fine. But, of course, you can't displace everything overnight. So, you know, realistically, we have to provide the exons of this world with capital because otherwise we won't have any oil and we won't be able to go anywhere because we can't get enough lithium to make, you know, I mean, the technological changes take time to work hard.

51:47I think ESG has been an overused epithet. I think it will disappear, actually, because there's such a backlash against it. But I would be very careful about ignoring the principles entirely. And I thought the questions that I was asking are quite a good way of understanding. This isn't an ESG question. The best investors incorporate ESG into their fundamental analysis and have done since the beginning of investing. before ESG was a thing people were practicing ESG because they were asking themselves is this a sustainable business and the actual sustainability of it and the pollution and the climate change and the environmental all those things are part today of what is sustainability and you have to really worry about the fact that I don't know when was Al Gore's film so popular 2006 where 17, 18 years on from when Al Gore pointed out what was going to happen to the weather.

52:56And we've done nothing about it. Why have we not spent billions, trillions of dollars on carbon capture and storage? It just is beyond my comprehension. The government should have been forcing us to investigate. And the UK government, I mean, they had a competition 15 years ago to design a CCS scheme. It's never been implemented. business. I mean, just pathetic. So I really enjoyed reading about your history in the investing industry when you first started in one of your recent Substack articles. You discussed how you couldn't sleep because of a buy note that you published. You were fearful you'd be wrong and you wouldn't make a positive impression.

53:35You then discussed how you got over imposter syndrome by building skills to outperform your peers. Now, many listeners are not professional investors, but love the art of investing. So what are the biggest bang for your buck areas to build skills on when you are a newer investor? I still have imposter syndrome. I think it's very hard to get away from. And that was early in my career. And it was a new sector, a new company, very important company, big call. And if it had gone wrong, my career was at risk. And so the night before, you worry, don't you? You can't sleep. But there's all sorts of ways of gaining skills.

54:15If you're a private investor today, you don't even need to spend a lot of money, but you should because taking things for free creates two risks. One is the risk that it's rubbish because there's a, well, you laugh, but there's a lot of really, really good stuff on the internet, whether it's on Substack or on YouTube, there's some great quality content. So I've got some fantastic videos on YouTube. But if you have not heard of me, and you just arrive at my YouTube channel, you get no idea whether I know what I'm talking about or not. So it's very difficult to know where to go. The trick with the free stuff is knowing where to go.

54:56So that's very difficult to resolve. And there's quite a lot of good free stuff on Substack. I mean, I've got, I save my best stuff for my paying subscribers, but I put out quite a lot of free stuff that's quite useful. and lots of other people do the same, but finding the right ones is quite tricky and you've got to worry about what the value of your time is because the free, I think, is a false economy because you spend so much time on garbage that you shouldn't be wasting time on that you spend 10 times the amount of time, so you get 10 % of that time that you've put out. Is it output? And your time's going to be pretty cheap to make that worthwhile.

55:39I recommend reading books. I've got a list of books. I think there's 10 or 20 books on my website that I think are a must-read for every investor. I believe, and look, I'm very biased in this because I've got an online school, but I believe that online education is a very, very effective way of improving your investing skills. Because if you do one of my courses, you not only get the the videos from an experienced practitioner telling you here's how i went about it and here's some tips we also get exercises to do so you download a model you can fill out that that particular exercise and then you can look at the model answer and in my school i have a community so you can ask me questions you know if you don't understand something you can get some proper help and we've thought quite carefully about this but sadly there aren't too many of these types of opportunities i mean there are a few people i came across somebody yesterday who a german guy who has got an investing school i mean unfortunately it's in german so you limits the the audience but i'm told his stuff is quite good by german investing friend of mine And so I wouldn't discount using that as an approach and find some good substacks.

57:07And Substack publish the most popular finance substacks. So it's kind of like the top charts. And some of them are good, some of them not quite as good. But if you've got somebody that's got a big following on Substack, the chances are that they're reasonable. So books, newsletters, be very careful about the newsletters, though, because there are a lot of charlatans in the newsletter world. I think Substack is probably a better, safer place than some of the other sources of newsletters. and online courses, I think, are a good way. And going to university is a good way of learning. I'm less keen on the CFA.

57:54I've been getting a lot of flack for criticizing the CFA. I think the CFA does a good job of teaching you about the theory of investing, gives you three letters after your name, but only after an immense amount of effort and work. And I really don't know that that's worthwhile. And the problem with investing is the theory is all rubbish. The theory gives you completely the wrong answer. So I don't really understand why people are so keen on investment theory. I mean, in my courses, I teach you, here's what the theory is, and here's why it's rubbish. So I do it very quickly. Because you don't need the capital asset pricing model.

58:35The beta, I mean, I think it's garbage. It leads you to the wrong answer as often as not. So why worry about it? So you recently attended the London Quality Growth Conference, and you shared a very interesting photo of the drop-off in quality businesses, and an even more severe drop in quality plus growth. I'm interested in your opinion on the drop in quality business over the past five years. What factors do you think are driving this drop? I'm trying to remember the chart that you're referring to. I mean, I think what we were trying to look at was the persistence of quality. It's quite a new conference.

59:11It was reasonably well attended. But I was interested to go along just to see how people define quality. And I think 14 of the 17 speakers, something like that, don't quote me on the exact numbers, define quality as sustainable competitive advantage. And I said, well, what is that? How do you find what? And the reason that Berkshire has been so successful, I mean, apart from the fact Buffett and Munger are obviously geniuses, or Warren and Munger was a genius. The reason is that C's Candies today is as successful as it was when they bought it 50 years ago. It's a lot bigger, and it's still making exceptional returns.

1:00:00Now, even Warren Buffett today would have a much harder time identifying stocks that are going to be winners in 50 years' time. You might say, oh, okay, Apple's going to be a winner in 50 years' time. But don't get me wrong. When he bought C's candies, it wasn't obvious that it was going to be C's candies. But people were still going to be buying chocolate in 50 years' time. Will we be using the iPhone in 50 years' time? I'd be very surprised. I mean, it may be that we'll have an implant in our ear that is an Apple implant. I mean, who knows? And it may be that Apple will be in the forefront of creating that technology.

1:00:40It certainly has as good a chance as anyone, a better chance, because it's got more resources to throw at it. There's no guarantee that it will be successful, and there's no guarantee that it will even identify the right resources, the right technology. And I think technology is so pervasive today. There's barely a business that you can look at in which technology isn't a critical component. even seized candies. I bet you, I mean, I've never eaten a seized candy. America is a wonderful country and I love it. We go there on holiday and my kids love it. But the chocolate's terrible. It really is.

1:01:19I mean, chocolate doesn't hold a, I mean, it's not nearly as good as chocolate in Europe. You're probably going to get all sorts. Don't invite that anti-American guy on, but anybody that knows chocolate, and I'm a great chocolate fan, knows that if you want chocolate, you go to Belgium, not to the United States. But even to these candies, I bet you we'll have a website and you can order it online. And there's a technological aspect to every business today. And I think that makes the idea of a sustainable competitive advantage a much more ephemeral thing. It's much harder to get your hands around.

1:01:58And I'd love to hear Buffett being interviewed about that. I'd love to hear what his perception is. And as a consequence of that, I think the sustainability of competitive advantages is probably eroding. And that's kind of what the research that we looked at told you, was that although companies that have high returns in capital, that tends to be persistent, the duration of the persistence from here, I would question. Obviously, looking back is easier. But the problem you've got is it's very easy today to look back and say Amazon is a great company or Google is a great company or whatever. But at the time, we didn't know how good Amazon was going to be or how good Google was going to be or Facebook, Meta, whatever they call themselves this week.

1:02:57I mean, Facebook came to the stock market in 2012, and I refused to invest in it because I just said, well, I don't know what it's going to be able to do on mobile. I don't know anybody that is spending more time on Facebook. Kids don't want to go on it. I don't see what its moat is. and I didn't buy it when I bought it, when it had the very controversial setback where the Cambridge Analytica affair, where the stock collapsed. Then I understood that it could do mobile and that kids didn't like it, but older people did. And I saw that my own business used it to advertise and that it was quite cheap and quite effective.

1:03:44And I thought, oh, actually, it's a better business than I thought. and I then was given the opportunity to buy it. But I wouldn't have done so otherwise. I just think that sustainable competitive advantage is easier said than analyzed and delivered. And I've got great admiration for people that are excellent at the qualitative aspects of investing, are understanding the sustainability of an advantage. I'm a numbers guy. And so I tend to look at things through a financial data lens and the sustainability of the advantage. You can look back and see, have the returns been very high in the past? And if they have been, you tend to pay a very high price unless you get those temporary setbacks.

1:04:41and understanding a business that's still developing a sustainable competitive advantage that will be there in five or 10 years time, I don't think is one of my particular strengths. And I don't know how you do that except from your own experience as a customer. So you can say, oh, well, I bought that because that product is miles better than its competition. But then if you look at, so take an unquoted company as an example, Dyson, the UK technology manufacturer makes vacuum cleaners and hair dryers and all the rest of it. You pay a high price for a Dyson product. Will they be able to maintain that price differential in 10 years' time?

1:05:24Will they be able to keep the same technological lead? These are very difficult questions to answer. And I don't have any real magic solution for that. I think owning quality businesses is obviously something we all aspire to. Personal experience, I think, is an amazing help in that. I did a competition for my Substack readers. I did a mini course, which was like$10, and there were three things that you had to watch. Then you had to create examples from your own experience. It was about how do you find good stock ideas? I should do it again, because there'd probably be more interest in it. And I said, the winner got a free course.

1:06:07And the winner was a lady in the UK. And she had taken some brilliant examples from her personal experience. And she said, oh, I tried to buy this product. And I found this one did this and this one did that. And this one was by far the winner because it wasn't that much more expensive. It was a much better quality. And she really understood the product. and she really understood why the company could have higher margins in its peer group. And she explained why the valuation was competitive, because they would continue to make higher returns. And that's what I kind of look for. And she did it brilliantly.

1:06:46Stephen, I appreciate you so much for joining me today. Before we say goodbye, where can the audience connect with you and learn more about your book and your course? Well, the book is available, sadly, not all good bookstores, but it came out in November 2020 when all the bookstores were closed. But you can get the book on Amazon. The book's called The Smart Money Method by Stephen Clapham. The best place to see what I do is behindthebalance sheet.com. On the top right of the homepage, there's a sign-up button, and you can go and you can sign up for the free sub stack. I also have all the investing courses on there.

1:07:25So there's courses online and in person. In-person courses, I only do for institutional investors, but I charge quite a lot of money. But online courses, there's a whole range of different courses. My favorite is the Analyst Academy, which is everything you need to become a serious investor. And there are some investing resources on there. So some of the videos that we've done about, we did a series of videos on investing tips, a series of videos on accounting red flags. So those are things that I've tried to put into the public domain just to help investors. And you can find me on Twitter. I'm not there very much these days because it doesn't seem to generate much engagement.

1:08:08And we've got a company page on LinkedIn, which I have a social media person who helps me, who puts out a lot of content on that that's worth following. And I just want to say thank you very much for having me on. I'm hoping that when I next watch your podcast, that I'm going to see my book up there in that pole position, top right corner. And thank you for your questions. I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you, Stephen. Okay, folks, that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here very soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network.

1:08:54Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin. And every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

From the publisher

Kyle Grieve chats with Stephen Clapham about how to use “laterals” to leverage your circle of competence and find great ideas, simple ways to test your investment hypothesis, methods to reduce your exposure to investing frauds, the importance of investing in businesses with properly incentivized management, why you should pay close attention to the value a business's debt, the role that stock charts can play in a fundamental investors toolbox, the power of simplicity in valuation, and a whole lot more!

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN
00:00 - Intro
01:54 - How to detect frauds.
04:55 - How to find interesting ideas in different geographies.
11:31 - How to utilize your friends as an investing filter.
17:42 - How charts can help you identify great opportunities even if you are a fundamentally focused investor.
18:16 - The importance of market perception.
25:16 - Management red flag.
31:34 - Why you should place a heavy emphasis on back-of-the-envelope evaluations.
35:24 - Why it’s important to have the skill to detect frauds.
41:01 - The pitfalls of ESG investing.
46:30 - The best ways to build investing skills.
And much, much more!

*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members.

Pick up Stephen’s book: The Smart Money Method here.

Subscribe to Stephens’s Newsletter here.

Check out Stephen’s courses here.

Check out the books mentioned in the podcast here.

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