The Most Exciting Change to Our Business Yet

27:23our grid is not capable of doing what we needed to do. So there needs to be an upgrade in that dramatically. And we saw all of this play out in Texas a few years ago with the unfortunate incidents that happened down there where the weather turned, renewables weren't available, and they weren't able to get electricity to heat homes in different parts of places, and people suffered, and a few people even died. So all those things just go back to tell me that I think there's a lot of potential here, and it's an area that warrants deeper and deeper digging to try to find investment ideas. And I will find them, and I'm starting to find them.

28:02And I think this is going to be a really, really long runway of profitability for an industry. And I'm not looking at oil. Oil's on the too hard pile for me. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Lots of geopolitics there. I think what's impressed me about your work in energy is even though it's something that you were arguably just as passionate about as you were with payments, you still had the self-control to say, you know what, it's too early. The businesses haven't reached this maturity yet where I feel like this is a safe investment. And so you've just said, you know what? I can come back later. I can come back later.

28:40And that's a sign of a great investor is somebody who can get excited, but also say no to things because better reason or wisdom or whatever you want to call it kind of comes in and tells you to pull the brakes. So it's something that I've observed that maybe people don't see every day on the day-to-day. And it's something that I think speaks really well to your passion, your curiosity, but also your wisdom when you make these decisions. So let's talk about Visa because we're going to circle back to that. I looked yesterday and since, which by the way, like when I bought that, I first read through every blog post you did because I didn't, I couldn't figure it out either.

29:21Like the way they make money is weird because there's the different banks involved and there's two sides of banks and all this. And you're just like, what? When the opportunity was there for me to buy Visa at a decent price, I don't think I would have pulled the trigger unless I had your resources to dive into and finally understand how does this business work. And so when I checked yesterday, it's made a nice, very nice, clean 69 % return so far, which after only several years is a great return. And what I love about Visa in particular, it's like that dream stock you always want on your team.

29:54It's like every earnings call, the earnings report's always like, you know, double-digit growth, double-digit growth. Why would we do this quarter? Double-digit growth. And it's slow and steady. You get those gains as earnings rise. It's perfect to just sleep at night stock, continue to grow at these great rates. Do you think they've done so well? Do you think they're still a good bet? and if so what are some strengths that you think set them apart from other players in the industry uh they are unquestionably still a good bet part of the duopoly with mastercard of being the payment rails for a vast majority of payments not just here in the united states but globally and there has been so much competition trying to knock them off their perch whether it's been regulatory, whether it's been other companies, and they just have not been able to get it done.

30:49The company has probably one of the widest moats you'll ever see. Whenever anybody talks about moats or competitive advantages, Visa and MasterCard are almost always the ones that people use as a textbook example of this. And because of that, they just have a huge strength. The way that the company operates is they don't look at other people in the industry necessarily as direct competitors. They look at them as opportunities to create new revenue streams or new payment flows. And I'll give you a couple examples. So the first one would be stable coins. So stable coins, when that first started becoming a big thing, it was kind of around the time that President Trump came into power that that started getting more attention and regulatory approval and things of that nature.

31:40And Visa prior to that was already working behind the scenes with several of the stablecoin providers as a way to try to integrate that technology with what it is that they do so that the stablecoins are still in essence running over the Visa rails just in a different way. And so instead of looking at stable coins as a potential threat to disrupt Visa and MasterCard, they have both embraced it with open arms. And they are continually trying to innovate on that front to make stable coins easier. And so that may or may not necessarily directly hurt Visa, but in the long run, it'll help them because it opens up other opportunities.

32:29And so that's one of the things that I love about the company and the management is that they're open to working with other companies, even air quote competitors, to try to enable things to go well. Square slash block slash XYZ slash Jack Dorsey, it's a Visa card. All these years, it's still a Visa card. And when Jack started the company, their initial mission, if you will, was basically to take out Visa and MasterCard and become their own rail, kind of like American Express is. And they were unable to do it. And so the only way they could grow was to partner with Visa. And so that's what they did.

33:12And to this day, they're still a partner with Visa. So to me, that is one of the strengths of the company. And that gives me a lot of confidence that they'll continue to be successful because a lot of companies tend to get set in their ways. And that's usually when the dinosaurs start to go extinct. And that's when companies falter. And the fact that Visa is willing and open-minded enough to look at other companies is super appealing to me. And I think that's one of the things that sets them apart, not only from others in the industry, but just in general as an investment. Yeah, that's awesome.

33:47I mean, I feel even better now. It's dream team squared. Right. I like that you brought up the moat. Let's talk about the moat, but let's talk about like, what's your moat, you think? Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. If I had to, I guess, assign myself a moat, I definitely wouldn't say network effects or switching costs, but those are more traditional ones, shall we say. I would say my moat as an investor is, number one, I'm curious like a cat. I have to know everything. I drive my wife constantly crazy. I probably drive Andrew a little bit nuts too, because I'm always asking questions. I'm curious like a cat.

34:27I'm not afraid to work hard. I'm not afraid to not understand. I'm not afraid to say I don't know and then go try to figure out how to say I do know. And so I'm willing to grind. I've always been that way. I've never been one of those people that has had a lot of natural ability. And I'm not saying that to be negative. I'm just saying that a lot of times these things don't come naturally to me. but I'm willing to work at it to try to figure it out. And then the last thing is I'm smart enough to know that I don't know everything. And so I don't walk into investing thinking that every single investment I make is going to be a home run and that I am 100 % right all the time because I am not and the market will humble me and I know that.

35:16And so I try to approach investing with, I try to be as wise as I can and as intelligent as I can, but also know that I will make mistakes and I will try to learn from them. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most.

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36:21required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. So how do you manage risks then? That's a huge part to doing all of this, right? Like how do you manage a portfolio and what kind of principles do you use when you think about portfolio management? That's a great question. And managing the portfolio is arguably as important as picking the stocks because a lot of Sometimes you can find the greatest idea in the world and not allocate enough money to it or not keep going back to the well enough that you don't take advantage of a company that explodes. And likewise, if you make a mistake and you bet too big, then you can hurt yourself on the flip side of that too.

37:07And so Andrew and I have studied at the feet of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, as well as other great investors like Joel Greenblatt, Monish Pabrai, Terry Smith, Peter Lynch. The list goes on and on and on. And so I have tried to learn from their examples over the years of trying to be as prudent as I can while also still trying to employ some elements of optimism and enthusiasm. and you know charlie munger is is a great guiding force for warren buffett and i've always kind of admired the way he really tries to invert all the ideas uh i know warren buffett always jokes calls him the abominable no man and uh so i i try to think about that and i try to have that idea in my head when i'm trying to think about companies you know when i'm doing my analysis one of the questions I like to ask to myself is how could this blow up?

38:04What could go wrong here? What is something that go wrong? And then try to look at what I know and the research about it and try to disprove that. And if I can get comfortable with that, I think that can help with how confident I am in making the investment. The way I approach risk is I'm probably a little less risk averse than Andrew is, but I'm not a whole lot more risk. I'm not going to be some growthy graveyard guy that's picking pre-IPO kinds of companies. I'm going to invest in companies that I think have long runways that are profitable and have been around for a little while and have proven track records, managers that I trust.

38:47And so I'm not going to go crazy, go nuts with companies, but I am going to probably look at companies that maybe Andrew might not have looked at. And that's one of the reasons why we're doing this. And I think the other thing that is, I have the mental balance, or I guess the balance here of, I know that when I'm making a pick and other people are looking to me for guidance, that I'm acting as a fiduciary. I'm not gonna buy anything that I wouldn't buy myself. So anything that I'm suggesting are things that I'm gonna buy. And I know that other people that are watching us or listening to us are going to buy the companies as well based on the recommendation I give.

39:32And so I don't take that lightly. And I know that that's important. And it's something that I take very seriously when I'm thinking about, okay, what company am I going to look at? What company am I going to write about? And so even though I may be willing to take some risk, I'm not willing to take risks that will lose people all of their money. And so that is kind of the way I try to think about when I'm managing the portfolio is I try to have, I guess, three tiers, if you will. So one would be like a, air quote, a starter position, maybe taking a smaller bite of a company and getting to learn the business along the way.

40:06Another one would be more of a, I guess, a normal position, let's say 2 % to 3%. And then another one would be a bigger one would be 5 % or more. And that would be the big bite. and that's when I think I see a great potential opportunity. So yeah, that's kind of how I look about trying to manage it. I also will kind of caveat all this is that it's a learning process. I'm still learning, just like Andrew is still learning. We're all learning and I will be as open and transparent about my decisions as I can. And if I make a mistake, I will acknowledge it and I will learn from it. And if I hit one out of the ballpark, I will do a victory lap in my little room and I will not brag about it.

40:47So that's just the way I am going to operate. That's awesome. I think that's really helpful for all of us to hear. Let's talk about adversity. Let's talk about, you know, we've been fortunate to be doing this a while. So we lived and invested through the pandemic. And I think that was a good way to kind of test that the preaching matches with, how's the phrase go? you walk the way you talk, whatever the phrases are. Yeah. So how did you react during 2020 when we hit the pandemic? Everybody thought the economy was going to shut down forever and there was a big stock market crash in bear market.

41:28How did you react with your investments personally? Buy, buy, buy. I thought it was a great opportunity to take advantage of a situation where some companies were unfairly being punished that offered great opportunities. And a lot of times in the market, you make the most money when the market crashes, because that's when a lot of times when the market crashes, the tide goes out for everybody. And sometimes it's deserved, it's justified, but other times it's not. And so it's understanding those times when it's not, that you can take advantage of that. And my biggest regret, if you will, during that period was I didn't have enough money to invest more.

42:16Because that's when I first bought Visa, for example. And it was trading at like$150,$160, somewhere in that range. I think I bought Berkshire Hathaway the first time then. And that was trading around, I think,$180. Yeah. And I also got Prudential. I believe it was and it was trading around$40 a share. It got up to about 110 or so before I sold it. So it was, yeah, I found a lot of great opportunities at the time. And, you know, I just wish that I'd had more money. That was, and to me, that's, you know, that's, that's the way I try to look at it. Yeah, it was hard. It was a hard time to be optimistic.

42:59It was. Yeah, it was, it was very hard. It was, it was scary, right? We were all terrified. We didn't, you Especially when it first started happening, you didn't know what was happening. You didn't know what was going to happen. You worried that your family was going to be impacted by this and not just by your jobs, but potentially losing their life. And so all that stuff was very, very scary. And I just kept coming back to the words of Warren Buffett, right? Be greedy when others are fearful. And this was a perfect example of people being fearful. Now, were there companies that were certainly impacted by this?

43:35unquestionably, you know, a company like Carnival, for example, the fact that they were not going to have anybody sailing is how they make money. That's a huge impact on that business. Now could have been a potentially great opportunity possibly, but for me it was in a too hard pile, but it certainly was good to be aware of that. Who, who remembers, I think it was the, the gas companies when gas futures went negative, like minus$20 for a gallon of oil and how much that impacted the oil industry. All those things are certainly things to be aware of. But for me, it was just as I was learning about Visa and I was coming across these other great companies, I'd been wanting to buy Berkshire forever.

44:22And then when it dropped so much, it's like, I don't see how this really impacts their business. And so it was a great opportunity. So that's why I tried to take advantage of those. That's awesome. All right. We talked about some wins. That's easy. Obviously, we all know not every pick will be a winner. How do you deal with mistakes? After I take myself in the back room and beat myself up a little bit, then I kind of come back to reality and realize that that stock picking is hard you are not going to win every single pick that you make I think it was Peter Lynch or somebody Terry Smith one of those two that said if you're 50 or 60 percent right on your picks you're doing pretty good and so that means conversely you're going to have 40 percent of them are going to be losers And so I think if you go into the game understanding that, and that doesn't give you, to me, it doesn't give you an excuse to not do the work and not to try to do your best that you can to make good judgments on companies.

45:28But at the end of the day, we are all just guessing. We don't know for certain what Google will do five years from now. We can project, we can certainly estimate, but we don't know for sure that it will do that. And if anybody is saying that out there, they're lying to you because they don't. And so when we're playing this game of trying to buy winners, that sometimes we're going to make mistakes. We're going to interpret something that maybe wasn't the right thing and that is going to be natural. And so I think when you understand that, it helps ease the pain a little bit. it also sets up, I think, this mindset or mentality of, okay, I was wrong about this.

46:14Why? Why was I wrong? What about this? Why is I wrong? And how can I avoid that in the future? So do I need to set up systems? Do I need to set up a better checklist? Do I need to look at more sources or more alternative sources of information to make sure that I'm not just narrowing in, tunneling in on one particular thing? because that can be very easy to do. You could just focus on one thing and you base all your judgments on that one thing without looking at the other side of the investment. It's always a good idea to look at the downside of the investment. What could go wrong? What's a bearish thesis on a company like Visa, for example?

46:57And so that's how I try to learn from my mistakes. And I've had two pretty good ones. I've certainly busted PayPal and I definitely made a huge mistake on Intel, but I've learned from both of those and I've tried really hard to put the parts that I learned from those in my process so that I don't make those same mistakes. Doesn't mean I won't make new ones. I'm an equal opportunity mistake maker, so I could make mistakes in the future too. So it's something to be aware of and that's how I try to deal with it. Yeah, that's cool to hear you go through that journey. uh you also got that dog in you though you have this grit that you just kind of pick yourself up after getting beat down um and i think a great example of that is the whole jp morgan thing so like i know the story maybe you can share the story and then like what is it about you that allows you to kind of pick yourself up like that and have this grittiness um so when i first started getting into into investing i was working at wells fargo at the time.

48:05And I had a financial advisor in a branch who was kind of help guiding me through all this. And as I decided I wanted to become a stock picker, his suggestion was to start learning about companies. And so I was like, well, I like banks. And so I think I'll learn about banks. And so I decided I would pick up JP Morgan. And that would be the first company I would read a 10K. Unbeknownst to me that it is, uh, 200 and I want to say 29 pages of mostly banking jargon, legalese information, uh, disclosures, all kinds of cautionary tales, all kinds of regulations. It is, it's a slog. Like it, let me put it this way.

48:53If you ever, ever have trouble sleeping, forget medications, forget, you know, uh, noise machines, pick up JP Morgan's 10 K and read the risk section. You'll be asleep before you get to the second risk. I'm telling you it's, it's gruesome. And so I had that, I had that going on. And then I also had, I don't understand most of what it's telling me. So I was almost literally looking up every other word. Like, I, what is this? What is an efficiency ratio? What is a net income margin? I don't know what that is. You know, what is a, what is a non-performing loan? Like, well, that sounds like, you know, logical, but am I right?

49:35So, you know, I had to look up all of those things. And so what would normally take maybe an hour or two probably took me a week, if not longer. I will admit I was doing it on air quote company time. So I was doing it at my, on my work computer. so I was not really being a good employee to Wells Fargo, I apologize now but that's really kind of how I learned to do it and I guess it was one, I have never not finished a book and in my whole life, I've been reading since I was a little kid and I've never not finished a book, I've always finished a book, even the worst book I've ever read, Moby Dick, I grinded through it, probably the second worst was Security Analysis, That was another snooze fest, but I made it through it.

50:22But I don't like to quit. I'm okay if other people don't do that, but I'm not a quitter. And so I just, if I put my mind to something, I'm going to go through it. And so with this JP Morgan, I was going to figure it out. I was going to figure out how this works. I was going to figure out all the terms and I was going to do it. And a good key for me that I'm interested in something is if I can't turn it off after I'm done with it. So I would go home, for example, for work, and I would be making dinner, and I was thinking about the things I would learn from J.B. Morgan's 10K. And so that, to me, was like, okay, this is something I'm interested in.

51:00It's definitely – and that helps me keep going, too, because it's something I'm interested in. Yeah, for sure. and it's very clear from the issue the October 2025 issue that you are very interested I think it's 25 or 30 pages so it is quite the meaty stuff and it's all good stuff like it's a great read so how how did you become a writer like where did that come in it several things first is I read a lot. I've read since I was a little kid and I've read a broad range of things. I've always been, as I mentioned earlier, super curious about things. And so I read a lot of different writing things, literally from Shakespeare to Stephen King and anything in between.

51:50So history books, I love history, Roman history, World War II, American Civil War, things like that. I would just devour those kinds of books. And I also loved great fiction books, but I also of classics. My grandfather was a classical writer. And so he got me into Shakespeare and Dickens and things of that nature. And so I just love reading. And so I read for a long, long time. And I think that really helps you unknowingly become a good writer because you see what good writing looks like. If you read Hemingway, you understand what good writing is. Now, does that mean you could do it? Well, that's a lot harder thing to do.

52:30The other part of it is I studied writers that I admired.

52:37No joke, I studied Andrew. I liked his writing. I liked how personal it was. I liked that he used short sentences. And I tend to be a little bit long-winded when I write, maybe when I talk. So I admired that about his writing. He used bullet points to kind of break up the views on the paper. And I really liked that. I studied Hemingway. again i tend to be a little bit long-winded and so i love the fact that he can communicate so much in very short concise sentences and i love the way joel greenblatt writes he's very descriptive he's very eloquent but he also has a way of communicating things simply that people can understand when he's especially when he's talking about money because it's not always an easy topic to talk about I admired that.

53:25And of course, Warren Buffett, I love his writing. He has a very clear, concise way of writing as well, but he's also really good at interwining humor and his personality into the writing as well. And so I've tried to pick up on some of those things. So that's it. And then the last thing is, I just frankly written a lot. Since Andrew and I have started, if you go to our blog posts, if you go to our website, einvestingforbeginners.com, you're going to see a lot of Andrew Sather and Dave Ahern articles on there he and I were writing two to three thousand word articles twice a week for many years on the blog and so all that work writing constantly it definitely has an impact and hopefully you know it helps you become a good writer I think the more you do the better you get and the more you learn from it the more you learn from it.

54:15So that's, that's how I've tried to become as good a writer as I can be. Yeah. And you wrote a lot of tougher things too. It wasn't all rom-com and, and fantasy. No, not quite. No, no. So, you know, like you mentioned, we've been doing this a while. What still gets you excited about stocks and the stock market? I still find it endlessly fascinating. I, I still find, even after doing it all these years, learning about a new business or learning something new about a business you already know. All those things to me are endlessly fascinating. And I think some of it stems from the fact that I am fascinated with how creative we as human beings can be.

55:00And it always amazes me to see when somebody comes up with a really great idea of something. And I just marvel at that. And so that to me is like uncovering, It's like a Christmas present every day. You get to learn about something new. And I also think it's the hands down the best way to grow your wealth is to invest in the stock market. Because when you think about it, we're really just doing a small part of it. When you buy Microsoft, you're really putting your faith in Sati Nadella and his team that they're going to do all the heavy lifting. All I have to do is decide, do I trust him and do I think this company can make themselves money, i.e.

55:42us? And if I do, then my hard part is done. But they still got all the other effort to go through to get all that done. And so I don't think there's – there's a lot of conversation about passive income these days. And I won't say that stock investing is passive income, but I would certainly say it can be if you do it right. Those are the reasons why I'm still excited about it. Oh man, that's super well said. And the passion shows. It's awesome. So let's talk about Value Spotlight. What about Value Spotlight will stay the same with you as portfolio manager? And what's going to change? As I said before, the stock picks are not going to change vastly differently.

56:28The same principles that Andrew and I have been talking about for the last seven years on a podcast and Andrew has been writing about and I've been writing about, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and the ways that they kind of invest, those are not gonna change. Nothing about that is going to change. The pick once a month is not going to change. Those kinds of things, the$150 to keep going is not going to change. The idea that this is going to be a get rich quick scheme is not gonna be part of the equation. If you're listening to this and you're a day trader and that's what you love to do, this is probably not for you.

57:06If you're looking for the next thing that's going to go, air quote, to the moon kind of thing, you're barking up the wrong tree. So those kinds of things are not going to change. What will change is the ride of us may be a little longer than you might be used to. and you may see companies that may not have fit to the Andrew risk portfolio or they may have been outside of his circle of competence or comfort zone. And so the way he and I invest is mostly similar, but there are gonna be changes. There are gonna be different things. I'm gonna pick different companies and I may pick companies that are international that Andrew may never have touched, but I'm more comfortable with that.

57:53And so that is, I think, probably if you had to put a finger on it, that would probably be the biggest thing that will change. Yeah, that's awesome. Can you give us a sneak peek of some of the big opportunities you've been digging into? I kind of mentioned one, which I'm really excited to buy personally, but I can't yet. You're right. Can you give a sneak peek? Yeah, so there's a lot of things that are kind of on my radar. The first one, the first pick is going to be a bank. Shock, shock, I know. Everybody's super surprised. It's going to be a bank, but it's a very fast-growing bank. It's profitable.

58:32It's in a region that has been underserved traditionally by legacy banks. And I think it has a very long runway to go. And I'm super excited about it. And I've been super excited about it for a while. And so I'm excited for people to discover that. And there's some other companies in the energy sector that I'm looking at as well. Some of them are directly in the energy sector, i.e. they're generators or producers of energy. But I'm also looking at other parts of the food chain, if you will, that will help feed not only maybe the infrastructure play that I was talking about earlier, but also different items that are related to the AI and the data centers that are being built out.

59:19It's not just the chips or the computer stacks, but there's also the energy that goes into powering those as well as the connectors that go into making sure everything works and lots of different parts of that ecosystem. And there's a lot of great opportunities in there that definitely fly under the radar and are not as talked about as much. And so those are things I'm super excited about. And there's a couple other payments companies that I'm looking at as well. One is in the retail space, shall we say? I don't want to say exactly the space because it would give it away. But it's something I came across a few years ago and was frankly kind of like me.

59:58But now that I look at it again, I'm like, maybe I was a little too harsh on my premature judgment. So there's definitely some exciting companies coming down the pike that I'm excited to learn about and I think could be great investments for all of us. Yeah, I'm super excited. for all of that. So how do you handle the responsibility of knowing there are people on the other side who are looking at these picks that you are picking? Yeah. So I take it very seriously. And I understand that my money is other people's money. So it's not just me making a bet on what I think a company will do. And so I have full acknowledgement of that.

1:00:43And I also have a post-it note or a sticky note next to my computer basically telling me that, that you have to remember that you're not just investing for you, you're investing for Andrew, his family, my daughter, and all these other people. So that alone gives me the, it doesn't overwhelm me that I'm like, I can't make the decision, but it also makes it real. Like I'm not, it's not just some random people out there. It's, you know, people like Brandon and Jackson and Tyler and Sea Ocean and all these people in our community that listen to us and follow us. Those are real people. And I understand that.

1:01:21And so I take, I take that very seriously. And, you know, it's, it's not just my money that I'm making an investment with. So I try to keep that in mind at all times. Yeah. And I know it's something that you will be serious about as you are portfolio manager of this. one of the things people don't really get to see a lot from this side, you know, I get to work with Dave every day. You have a lot of empathy too. And so when you say something like that, I know, I know you mean it. The fact you have a lot of empathy makes it definitely fun to work with you, makes it fulfilling. And I think people can have confidence in that, but where does that empathy come from?

1:02:02That's a great question. I think I've always been a person that was interested in other people. And I've always been one of those people that probably, sometimes to my detriment, have put other people's needs and hopes and wishes ahead of mine. And so because of that, then I am more, I try to be, I guess, more connected or attuned to what other people are thinking and how they're feeling and try to navigate my emotions or my reactions to people based on how they are reacting. And I had a friend in college that told me once that I had a, I had a really good radar for how people were feeling and he was impressed by the fact that I could just by talking to somebody over the phone I could tell that somebody was upset and I didn't know them and that I could try to emphasize with them and try to feel their pain and try to help them in any small way that I could and so when I'm thinking about investing or working with people I try to be cognizant of everybody else and what their emotions may be going on.

1:03:26And Andrew and I in particular, because we spent many years recording the podcast over the phone, in essence, that I got really good at being able to pick up on his mood or his emotion by the tone of his voice because that's all he had to go on. and so all those things i think go into building me into being somebody that tries to have some empathy for people and i also try to find commonalities with other people uh like our business partner steven uh spent a lot of time in the military i'm fascinated with war history and so it's it's always a lot of fun to talk to him about some of those things and what he experienced because that gives me a better connection to maybe what i know but it's also something he's excited about and so that helps kind of build a rapport with people they do the same thing with sports or you know any work-related things that kind of stuff so that that to me i think is where it comes from i also gotta give a shout out to my mom because my mom is you has a high empathy as well and so obviously you know i picked that up from my mother as well super cool i mean it fits too with what you're saying about being curious like you're curious about other people and that provides opportunities like you wouldn't even imagine sometimes and makes you come across really interesting things and companies and all of that so yeah uh it's definitely a great strength any anything else you think if somebody's been listening to us for a while maybe they've never taken the plunge with value spotlight right anything you would say to them uh about considering a subscription yeah i i think the way i would look at it is if you're an investor, maybe a retail investor, somebody that's looking through the investing lens of, I want to buy companies that I can own for a while.

1:05:17And you think that this is the way that you want to invest, but you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to doing the research, i.e. you work a lot. You work a lot and have a family, or you have other social commitments, or maybe you just don't really want to learn all the ins and outs of finance that are necessary to be a stock picker, then Value Spotlight is the thing for you because what Andrew has been doing and what I'm going to continue to try to do is try to help find great investments that you can buy and not have to do a lot of worrying about because that's my job. That's what I'm getting paid for is to do all the worrying and all the heavy lifting.

1:05:56You can certainly ask me questions. You can certainly debate whether you think this is a good idea or not. But if you're just looking for good, solid ideas that you don't have to stress a lot about and you're not having to constantly watch the teleprompter to see how the company is doing, then this is the investment service for you because we're going to try to provide companies that have good long-term characteristics, that have a margin of safety, and that will be good, profitable businesses for you and the company over a long period of time. So that's what we're going to do for people. Yeah, I think that's very well said.

1:06:34If you've been subscribed, your subscription is going to stay the same. Obviously, the write-ups will be a little more in-depth than mine were. Real Money Portfolio is still going to continue. Still has the same original goal, 11 % return over the very long term. I have full confidence in Dave. I believe in Dave, his decision-making abilities. So I personally, I can't wait to see what's next. I'm confident it will be a worthwhile transition for all of us, for our portfolios, our futures, and our lives. So thanks for being on this journey with me so far, Dave, and I'm looking forward to this next chapter.

1:07:10Yeah, me too. Me too. It's going to be a lot of fun. And if anybody has any questions along the way, please do not hesitate to reach out. Andrew and I are both here to help answer any concerns or any questions you might have along the way. And with that, we'll go ahead and sign us off. You guys go out there and invest with a margin of safety. Emphasis on the safety. Have a great week, and we'll talk to you all next week. We hope you enjoyed this content. Seven Steps to Understanding the Stock Market shows you precisely how to break down the numbers in an engaging and readable way with real-life examples.

1:07:43Get access today at stockmarketpdf.com. Until next time, have a prosperous day. The information contained is for general information and educational purposes only. It is not intended for a substitute for legal, commercial, and or financial advice from a licensed professional. Review our full disclaimer at einvestingforbeginners.com.

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