Jamie Dimon: Why I Won't Buy Bonds, AI's Future & Leadership Lessons

23:37Are you committed to New York City regardless? Or are there certain things that the mayor or the governor could do that would force you to say too much? Yeah, I wouldn't make it binary like that. I've pointed out, and I've actually told this to the mayors, that our headcount in New York has gone from 35 ,000 to 26 ,000 in the last 20 years. And in Texas, it's gone from like 11 ,000 to 35 ,000. And it's, where's it attractive to do business? Why are you doing business there? Where do people want to live? So it's not just the taxes, but it is the taxes. It's the medicals, the hospitals, it's the social life, it's the commute, it's the housing.

24:13And, you know, if a mayor wants to do a good job, they have to be thinking about all that because they have to compete. You know, and you go way back, you know, New York City, there weren't as many competitive cities. Now there are a lot of wonderful, I love London. You know, it's a competitive city. So you have choices and people are going to vote not because of their ideology, but for their family or their pocketbook or their or they prefer the lifestyle, the weather or the parks or whatever it is. And so, you know, if governments do the wrong thing, it will work adversely. You see that happening in state after state and you see the adverse effects in places like Texas.

24:48They're open to business. They have low tax rates, low individual tax rates. And that's quite a great university, you know, graduating great kids, you know, easy for you to buy a house and have a family. Those things matter because not just you, it's what your people want, what the options are. And on the UK, what's your message to the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham? I don't know. I would say the same thing. I want him to succeed. I want to see the UK thrive. I want London to succeed. I'd like London to be your home for a long period of time. It's been a wonderful home for us. But the U.K., like everybody else, and like my own country, so don't yell at me and tell me I'm an angry American.

25:27If we don't do the right things around immigration and taxation and regulation and health care and affordability, affordability is not a Democrat or Republican issue, or taking care of our lower-paid citizens, you need a strong economy to do that. A strong economy will benefit all of your citizens. You know, and just travel around the world and look what happens when, you know, when bad policies muck up a country. So, you know, the new chances are going to be good policies that actually cause growth. And growth, good policies are free, and growth is the best antidote. Growth also helps the lowest paid people the most.

26:04Sometimes you look like you're doing a policy that's in benefit of a big company or wealthy people, but it's growth which will drive it for everybody. and it also creates the wealth of the nation that you can use to fix schools and roads and hospitals and all of that. So I'm praying that they get policy right and government after government get it wrong. And look at Europe would be a primary example that they've been slowly slipping on most measures of economic competitiveness and it's a bad idea. And that is not helping the lower paid people, which is what people on the left and the right say.

26:38One tax that's talked about a lot is the banks levy. It's a 3 % extra corporate tax that other sectors don't have to pay. Yeah, there's two different taxes we have there, extra yes. And it used to be 8%. Rishi Sunak brought it down to 3%. What if that went back up again? It would be one more negative on that bucket of things you got to think about. I always thought it was wrong. JP Morgan did not damage the UK. And I called the chancellor at the time. Did not damage the UK. We're a great citizen there. We hire people there. We want to be bigger there. We train people there. We hire veterans there.

27:14We have programs with people. We have medical. All of our people get medical and all this stuff like that. And I just thought it was lack principle to punish a company. It had nothing to do with the crisis. Didn't cause the crisis. And it's still there 20, you know, what is it, six, 17 years later? Is that fair to a shareholder? I mean, it may sound great, you know, tax the banks, but it's$5 billion that my shareholder paid on that extra tax. And, you know, I just think things like that have adverse consequences. So if a government decides to do it, there's nothing I can do. But it will, over time, cause decisions made that they may not like.

27:47The new Canary Wharf building you announced the day after Rachel Reeves' last budget, when she didn't put that up, would you U-turn on that building? Well, that's again, it's a binary decision. I don't know what I'd do. I wouldn't make a binary decision like that. I thought Rachel did a great job, by the way. I want London to be our happy home for a long time. I would be very cautious if I was a government thinking that penalizing any company out of the ordinary is a good thing for that country. And what they should have, in my view, is a competitive tax system that's consistent and conducive to capital formation that will drive a country, drive the growth of a country.

28:30That is what they should do. If you have an uncompetitive tax system, you know, capital leaves your country. If capital leaves your country, it goes to other countries. And you see that. And now you see, what is it, how many companies have delisted from, you know, London in the last couple of years? Another one brought out yesterday as well. A lot. I mean, I wouldn't want to see that if I was running a country. Hi, guys. It's Wilf. I hope you're enjoying this episode. Just a quick reminder to please hit follow or subscribe on your podcast or video app so that you never miss an episode. And if you've got time, please do give us a five star rating and leave us a comment.

29:09It really helps other people find the podcast, too. Now, back to the episode. I wanted to move on and talk about bureaucracy. You've talked about how bad it was when you joined American Express with Sandy, Sandy Weil, and how he had to over... Do you remember that? I've read and listened to pretty much everything you've done in the last couple of years. So I have gone back over it all. And you now have 320 ,000 employees, more than you had then. So just compare and contrast what you found when you got there and how you avoid it today with a massive company to try and make sure it's not sprouting up anywhere.

29:49Well, first of all, it does start at the top. Not always, but it does start at the top. So I always say bureaucracy. And people know bureaucracy, they see it. You can see it in how you fill out forms and taxes and Department of Motor Vehicle and getting a certificate of occupancy for your house. And people hate it. It's like demoralizing. But I always tell people that the scourge of any company, big or small, it's not unique to big companies. Maybe more unique is bureaucracy, complacency, and its cousin, you know, arrogance, which is, well, of course you're doing well and that you can do well forever.

30:20But that's not true. You can run a great restaurant. You have to do great servings of great food every night. And we're in the same boat. We have to compete every day. And so the way you combat it is you're always an honest assessment of yourself, not yourself as a person, but your products and services. You read customer complaints. You go to the call centers. You talk to your people all the time. You're always finding out. You're constantly assessing what's taking place out there, and you're relentless about it. And you try to teach your own team to do the same thing. That's why we have bus trips and road trips.

30:52And it's not to show the flag. I want to hear, I always say we have these tellers and branch managers come on the bus. We give them beer and immunity. Say whatever you want. And I watch this sometimes where they tell me, you know, Jamie, you really want that? And they're like, why do we do this? I remember the first time we did faxes for some product. And they're just dumb things. And people accept them. And I'm like, ah, that's terrible. We'll fix it for you. I have seen people in my own management teams who were twisting in their chairs. They don't want to hear from someone layers down who reports to them how bad it is.

31:25And that tells me something about the manager, too, that they probably shouldn't have that kind of job or even have the job if they can't acknowledge it because you don't know. And then directly related to being is curiosity. Always learning. Always learning. Always looking at competition. Not so you can compete. Acknowledge where you made mistakes, the good, the bad, the ugly. You know, there are a lot of things that our competitors did that we could have done like Stripe and we simply didn't. We missed it. And I don't say that to flagellate myself or somebody else. I say it to be an honest assessment about, well, yeah, we may have the biggest payment system in the world, but we missed that thing.

31:59And that thing is really big and really important. And why? And you learn from why. You learn from your mistakes. And so you have a little heart and humility. You know, David Novak, who I think you know, recognized people. And I didn't always understand that recognizing people is a form of humility and a form of curiosity because it's saying, hey, well, you did a great job. We're going to recognize the job you did. It's also saying it wasn't me. It wasn't that person. It was you. Then you recognize it. You know, you. It's we have those anonymous ways to give feedback at Skype, but that you have to fill them on online.

32:32And I always get nervous that is it totally anonymous? But I'm pretty blunt in those. So I hope. I've always had that problem. And also, when I turn my, you have to get a response. I remember the first time I turned on Bank One, it was so overwhelmed. I closed it down with an apology. I'm sorry. And then we started to open it up by state just so we can handle it. Because it's disrespectful to say, you know, give me your input and then never get back to the person with that input might actually be. And so, I mean, what you learn from it. It's funny you mention. But I still do that where I ask them when I leave at lunch.

33:04They mention eight things and we're going to follow up on every single day. Right. And you're also, for someone in your position, you're very efficient at replying to emails, which I find amazing, actually, given how busy you must be. I've heard you talk, when we talk more broadly about leadership, about the importance of character many, many times across our interviews and just publicly. And I had always sort of assumed in my mind, that's a Jamie Dimon thing. He puts character right at the top of his list when he's trying to judge people. But I was recently reading my friend, your friend as well, Andrew Sorkin's new book, 1929.

33:42And I hadn't realized that it was also something that your founder does or did, sorry, John Pierre Point Morgan, that he put character above all else. And this is above all else's character. And is that something, therefore, that you adopted having studied J.P. Morgan or is it coincidence? It's coincidence. But I think a lot of people would say that's the highest thing. Now, you have to be honest what you mean by that, because a lot of these things, people say the word, but they don't act on the word. They put assholes in jobs, but they say it's all about character. And you learn more as you get on, like, what it means.

34:16Like, would you promote someone to a big job that you wouldn't have your child report to? It tells you something about, would you want to report to them? You know, and it tells you, like, how are you making, how actually are you making those decisions, you know, to the best salesperson or something like that. And so, no, but I brought back the Pierpont thing. So when I came, I saw that somewhere. I said, put that back. That's a big thing, you know. So we now use it as a key point. And it's really important in banking because, you know, in some ways we're like a financial partner. I mean, it's not like you're just buying a piece of steel.

34:50You know, we have to know, you know, how will you act in tough times? What kind of person are you? How do you treat your employees? and all these little things that you wouldn't normally put on a credit form, but they're different forms of credit. Do you want to be a part of that person? Do you want to play on a team with them? I love team sports because you see when team sports, when they are humming, man, you see them working together. That's the form of character. They may not even like each other, as opposed to another team where they hate each other and you can see that they won't pass the ball.

35:22There are all these different forms of how you analyze these things. You mentioned David Novak there, And I was listening to your appearance on his podcast a few years ago. And you were talking about, he was asking you, given all the success that we've touched on, how do you make sure you don't get a big head? And I was really struck because almost counterintuitively, you felt insecurity in CEOs is often what leads to them having a big head or the appearance of a big head. That's correct. So expand on that for me a bit. What do you mean by that? It's just, there's a great quote from John Weinberger in Goldman Sachs, who said, when some people get a big job, some grow into it and some swell into it.

36:01And what I've seen is that, you know, what happens, the bigger job you get, the less you know. Literally about the job. So you're, maybe if you're in a trade area and you run mortgages, you're the best mortgage guy in the world. You know more about mortgages than anybody else. I have to call you up to find out about what's going on today and mortgages and stuff like that. Maybe that mortgage guy gets promoted to run trading. Now he's got equities, commodities, fixed income, Asia. And all of a sudden, he's an expert in mortgages, but not in the other ones. And then make believe you get the next job up.

36:32Now you've got 36 functions reporting to. You're an expert in one, and you kind of learn five. But all the others are foreign to you, and there are different people running these things. So it induces insecurity. And what happens, and I've just noticed this with people, some people, when they get there, they have these innate skills to trust people, to get the best out of people, to not get embarrassed by not knowing, by having fun, by being curious and saying, God, just do that again and let me know if I can help you with it as opposed to, and then the people, when they have insecurities, they tend to be like friends, you know, friends of Bob.

37:08And, you know, don't, he doesn't like that. You know, it becomes PowerPoints, you know, make them look good. Don't tell them the bad news. And that is what causes the problem. And you get that in governments, too, by with government leaders where they're surrounded by people telling what want to hear because of insecurity. Whereas a secure person, you're not going to hurt my feelings by telling me we have a crappy product. I would probably say, well, thank you. I'm going to look because if you're right, I'm going to thank you for letting me know. You know, like I say, customer complaints are a gift, you know, and when a customer complains, people have to say the right or wrong.

37:43I said, no, no, look for where they might be partially right. Because very often there's an element of truth that we should actually do something about, even though in general they may not be right. So I do think insecurity becomes one of those things. And then you see the response to it is kind of covering up friends, don't embarrass them. Reports start being modified to look good as opposed to to undress what's going on in your company. How are you performing? What's your season score? What's your approval rates? which all the stuff their customer sees, it starts to disappear. Are we seeing some of that in the White House at the moment?

38:17Don't tell them it's not good. I can't comment on that. I'm not in the White House, so I don't. There's some very capable people I know there, and so you have to be in the room to find out what people are actually doing. But I think any leader should be worried about it. It's just an ordinary course. I know we don't know, and there's a lot of things that get exaggerated, but we do sometimes get to see inside the White House. sometimes we have those cabinet meetings that are recorded. I mean, you know, be frank with us. If your board meetings were like that, where everyone just said, Jamie, you're so fantastic.

38:49We love the job you're doing. You're the greatest CEO of all time. Would that be a good thing to have? I wouldn't mind having it every now and then. No, I definitely do not have that. We definitely do not do that. So it's not ideal. It's not ideal around the cabinet table. For me, it's not ideal. I'm not commenting on the White House. For me, it's not ideal. I'm much more the good, the bad, the ugly, just trying to do the best job type thing. My board does something unique, by the way, which is every single board meeting I leave, and they meet without me for 20 years now. And I insisted upon them to do that.

39:23It wasn't legal. It wasn't regular. I said because, and then when there are disagreements with people, I say, okay, Wilf, I tell board, we're about to make a decision, and Wilf just has a different point of view, and I want you to hear it directly. Because again, I'm just trying to do the right thing. I'm not trying to do the thing that I want to do. I want to do the right thing for the company, their clients, or the products or services. There's another thing just to follow up on this theme. You said this at Ohio State University commencement speech in 2021. You said, we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

39:56Humility is the realization that those who came before paved the way. Never fool yourself into thinking that your success is just your own. We just had the 250th. Do you think that was enough on display, that respect for the 249 years beforehand? You know, it's hard for me to say. Like, I do think it's absolutely right that we should have shown it. I think a lot of things did. So if you were here, there were documentaries, there were things on TV, there's a lot about Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln and Hamilton. And so I think there was some. Was it enough is a very good question. I think in general in America is not enough.

40:39We have our Constitution, which is a legal document, but what's really important is it's the embodiment of values and principles that are more important. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And some of these are British concepts, by the way. And the pursuit of happiness was not happiness the way they mean it to today's generation. It was pursuit of something meaningful, purposeful to you. It could be agriculture, it could be media, it could be education, it could be finance, something like that. But then all the other principles, you know, freedom of speech and free religion, freedom of enterprise, to do what you want, you know, individualism, rugged individualism, work ethic, civic responsibility.

41:18So if you read the founding fathers, that was all of it. We definitely do not teach enough of that anymore. And we definitely don't teach enough that those values are why billions of people would like to come to this country. Does that mean the country is perfect in its founding day? Of course not. I mean, do we spend a lot of time now talking about, you know, I heard one of our politicians talking about, you know, a country was founded on exploitation. I mean, that's absurd. The person obviously doesn't understand anything, but did we treat the black community right? No. Should we acknowledge that and do something about it?

41:48Yes. But that doesn't mean that those principles were bad and that we shouldn't support it. And so we're still the, you know, the bastion of freedom in the world. And so I think we should support that, help people that, educate people about that, and those other responsibilities. are real. Like I think it's real for a business to get involved in making society better. I think it's a mistake for us to blindly look at the bottom 20 % and act like we can't do anything to help. Didn't cause it. I don't like it when people act like sometimes JP Morgan caused bad inner city schools. Really? That just is not accurate.

42:23But can we help fix them? Absolutely, we can.

42:29This podcast is sponsored by Interactive Brokers. Building wealth starts with the right broker and Interactive Brokers helps you reach your goals with powerful tools, global market access, low costs, and unmatched financial strength. That's why the best informed investors choose IBKR. Learn more at IBKR.com forward slash master investor. This episode is brought to you by LSEG, the leading global financial markets, infrastructure, data and analytics provider. To learn more about how LSEG connects businesses, investors and markets worldwide, visit lseg.com. On the flip side, in terms of respecting politicians, you at the peak of the financial crisis.

43:20You sent Hank Paulson, former rival of yours, Goldman Sachs CEO, then had become Treasury Secretary. He was under a lot of stick at the time. And you sent him the Teddy Roosevelt quote, it's not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly. And if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. With that in mind, do you have great sympathy for politicians? Yeah. So, yeah, I do. You know, I both come mad at them and have sympathy.

43:57You know, when we rolled out security resiliency in London, you know what I said to the whole crowd, all Brits in the room? I said, we owe you all a great debt of gratitude for standing alone with 40 ,000 dead in the Battle of Britain, saving the world from that scourge of Nazism for a year and a half by yourselves. And that is a debt of gratitude. I think politics is a very tough game. And I think those who do it well and try to do it well, and I was with David McCormick yesterday in Philadelphia rolling out some of these programs. The President Trump was there. That's maybe we thought he was going to see the President.

44:38And I greatly value the people who do that. I love the fact he talks to his senator, Fetterman, the other senator from Pennsylvania over the time. And I think if you look at when I come here, I always remind myself, there are a lot of people who want to do the right thing, who care about their country. They may disagree with you, by the way. Some may be more that. And I don't disrespect someone who's got a different point of view about what might work out there. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't get mad at the hypocrites, the liars, the bums, you know, the self-serving. And there's plenty of that too.

45:08And if you read history books, there was plenty of that in the original Congress. You know, it wasn't just our Congress that has that. You've obviously thought about politics at times. Is it a problem that someone like you has ultimately never decided to do it? I guess the link to this question is, how do you look at, you meet with them all the time. What's the caliber of G7 leaders today compared to, you mentioned World War II there, you know, the likes of Churchill? I can't compare them directly, but first of all, you're making a point. I think business leaders should get involved in trying to improve their countries and their societies.

45:46Because they have the know-how, the knowledge, the capability, it kind of transcends a little bit just their commercial enterprise. But I also remind people that, you know, J.P. Morgan is not going to be a lot better than our country. So if our country does really badly because we get all these policies wrong, which we are getting wrong all the time now, education policies, certain tax policies, you know, certain immigration policies and all that, that if society does badly, it's bad for all of us in a million different ways. And so a lot of these government people, they want to do a good job and they need help.

46:17And that's not an insult to them. They don't have the staff. The world is very complex. They often don't have the technology or the research capability or things like that. So when they have good faith, I want to do a good job with them. And so, look, I think, you know, I've met a lot of leaders in the world and it's It's hard to measure a leader when you have a 45-minute conversation with them. But some are quite exceptional. I mean, Macron is exceptional, very smart, very dedicated, very knowledgeable. He's got a lot of great things done. I know his polling. I know that that's bad. People say, yeah, but.

46:47But that's a poll. And I think Starmer is quite bright. And I'm hoping that these European leaders get together to form a coalition of the willingness to start to make the changes that Europe needs to make. And I also think the business community could be a lot more organized in Europe. You need a British roundtable, business roundtable, a stronger European roundtable that takes positions that aid and abet the growth of their countries, or EU in this case, for the benefit of the people of those countries. Not for their own tax benefits, you know. And so, like, I'll give you one. The capital markets union, the savings union, you know, it may sound boring to some of the population.

47:26That could incent growth. And if you had it, it actually would be bad for JP Morgan because there'll be better competitors. But I know it's better for Europe. I'm in favor of doing better for Europe. That was better for JP Morgan. And it'll make a better, tougher competitor in the United States, but so be it. I mean, and too often business uses the regulatory legal stuff to actually block competitors. That's a bad idea, too. In many of our conversations, we've talked about, you know, what might happen if you wanted to go into politics. and you've kind of ruled it out more clearly now. Do you ever pause to think about the value you personally add to JPMorgan Chase?

48:04I mean, clearly, as we've already reflected on, you're not the founder, but do you accept that you have a founder-like effect on the company's performance, on the company's share price? You're not JPMorgan himself, but you are Mr. JPM Chase. I try to do the best I can, yes. So every now and then I get called J.P. Diamond. I mean, look, I'm not a founder, but yes, this is an unbelievable company. I'm proud to be here. Whenever I travel the world, I remind people to be bank cities, schools, states, hospitals. I'm really proud. And we try to do the best wherever we can. We're respected in most places.

48:41And that's a hell of a thing. And then I think this company also has great impact, positive impact on society, you know, through our skills effort and our hiring veterans efforts and our SRI effort. and then we do much more than people don't see around policies and states and things like that. If you left, what? One day I would be gone, right? Yeah, but if you left the company, what would it do to the share price? 10 % down on the day, 20 % down? I don't think so. I think it'll be different by the time I, unless I'm hit by a bus, but I think it'll be, by the time it'll be, you know, probably organized, thoughtful, not a surprising event for people.

49:18So what aspect of the way you run the bank do you think will be hard to emulate? I mean, presumably you'd accept that whoever succeeds you has to do it their way. They can't try and copy you. They can't. We're all different, you know. And look, that's why I say, you know, someone asked me recently about that. They said, what are you looking for? What strains, like technology or AI? And I just think that's a false thing to look at. I think what you want is someone who's got work ethic, openness, curiosity, earns the trust of people, can really work hard, can have empathy at a deep level in many different ways, enough IQ to make sure the detail analysis is done.

49:58They don't even have to do it, make sure it's done. So they have to be kind of disciplined, like a little bit of a military discipline. Otherwise, it doesn't work. But then there's the heart. I mean, do you actually take care of people? Do they see you actually do it? I fire customers who treated our people really badly. I will not put up with that. And so, and that, you know, once you do something like that, filter through the company. We, you know, we pay our lower paid people more to make up for their medical insurance. And we've hired 14 ,000 vets. We try to be good citizens in every community we do business in.

50:29And so we were, everyone put together the harp, curiosity, grit. Like, you better have a little grit and a little bit of courage. And you better be able to say no. Like, because, you know, people say to me, you've got 20, you've got to decide by the end of the day. And so that's simple then. The answer is no. I'm not going to be put in a position where I have to make a stupid decision quickly. And so, but we have a lot of people who have this wide bucket of skills. And obviously their bucket will be different, how they execute them will be different, but they have the skills. Is your successor definitely going to be Troy or Doug, or could it still be Jen?

51:05Well, again, I wouldn't say, Troy and Doug, obviously, have been put in a position where there are likely successors hit by the bus type of thing. There could be somebody else there. Jen has made it clear that that's her preference. And that's the other thing about the job. I tell people sometimes the closer you get to it, the less they want it. I wanted to rewind the clock, if I could, to the 5th of March 2020. I remember reporting on this day when it crossed. You nearly died. You suffered a very nearly fatal heart failure but received sudden open heart surgery. Did your life flash before your eyes at that moment?

51:46Was it that close? Did you look back at JPMorgan Chase and what you built? Yeah. Just so you know, that wasn't nearly as painful as the thing I went through earlier where your life slowly flashes through. was the throat cancer and all the associated radiation and chemo that would knock the hell out of you. No, I knew, first I knew what it was, an air dissection. I knew that a lot of people don't even make it to the hospital, and I knew a lot of people get to the emergency room, don't make it out of the emergency room. So I knew at that point in time that, you know, there might be goodbye, yeah.

52:18And what stood out for you in the life that you'd led in that moment? I remember that I spoke to my wife and I told her to call their company and tell them exactly what's happening so they can do what they got to do. But I didn't, the good news is I didn't have any great regrets. I would be leaving behind great children, great wife, great company. I did the best I can. Of course, I made mistakes. I didn't think of that movie Defending Your Life, like when they show you your stupidest mistakes on a screen. But fortunately, I recovered from all that. Absolutely. I guess on the topic, though, of family, I mean, your job is relentlessly demanding.

53:11How hard is it to balance family life at the same time? I am also relentlessly organized. I mean, people would be surprised. I return every phone call every day. My office is magnificent. They know all you. So half of that isn't me. It's like they're just responding. You want to know if you want to come in town. We do this. I go to Joe. They respond. So they take care of a lot of stuff like that. And my calendar is I basically do work and personal life. So I don't golf. I don't go to red carpets. I don't go to a lot of black ties. I don't go to, you know, I often meet the family for dinner on a Friday night, all of them, like the whole gang of them.

53:49We have a house in Bedford. We all go up there and basically barbecue or hike or swim or something like that. And so, and we still do. We still take our family vacations. And so the kids, I used to tell them, you know, I did travel a lot. They were like, you never traveled. Because they remember that I was devoted to them on most weekends, even though I was gone some, you know, and we had a lot of family dinners. They said a lot more than most people, even though I was gone a lot. But I was home. I was like, okay, I'm coming home. We're going after dinner, bring your friends. And when they're younger, they bitch and moan and complain.

54:21But they love doing it. We still do it. And that's the best part of life. My daughter, one of them said, Dad, you need another hobby. You need hobbies. I said, what do you mean? I said, I'd like, and I'm not into fast cars per se, but I said, I have you. We eat together. We hike together. We travel together. I love history. I love wine. I love music. You know, I used to love tennis. I can't play anymore with my back. But I said those are my hobbies You know, and I'm perfectly content with those. I'm not looking for other stuff um, I've always heard you talk so so warmly and fondly about about your wife and and your kids and I did want to pick up on this because I didn't know this beforehand but your dad would rip out pages of annual reports of companies and Hand it over to you and say value this business, what would you pay for it?

55:12I didn't know that. So that's one of the ways you got into this. No, my dad was a stockbroker. So I was the, of the three boys, he didn't push anyone that way. My older brother was a physicist, a real class physicist, he was at Nielsberg Institute for years and my twin brother's an educator. So it wasn't anything, but I was interested. I read the papers. I read Graham and Dodd in high school. I was a nerd. I read all of Freud's books in high school. I mean, I just always would like taking this stuff in and, But this is a great exercise. You can still do this exercise, and I would still be humbled by it, which is back then, annual reports were smaller.

55:44They were 40 pages, 30 pages long. But there's always that part where it told you what the price of stock was. And you would give me an industry you might know something about, like a restaurant or something, and say, okay, look at this, look at the history, read the annual report, study the industry if you want. What would you pay for the stock? It's hard. It's brutally hard, you know? And then you learn also the why. Like, you know, the accounting is bad or the people are bad. There are other reasons people will not pay, but you think, oh, it's worth 13 times earnings. And the market has it at seven or 25.

56:17And so it's humbling. It's one of the many reasons I only did finance for five years and switched to media. I just have to comment on it now. I don't have to come up with the answer each time. Jamie, we're basically out of time. So I just want to end with a question that we ask all our guests, you know, which is an overriding piece of advice for our listeners. Often it's investment advice, but for you perhaps better to ask, you know, the overriding piece of career advice for our listeners who are ambitious and hungry to do well. I'll do the best I can. I mean, look, they're the base, like work hard.

56:52But the ones that people miss a little bit, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. You can only learn two ways. By reading. So read a lot. and read, you know, Labor and Conservative. Read Democrat and Republican. Read George Will and David Brooks and Tom Friedman. Don't get buttonholed in your brain like to one thing. Read a lot of history. History itself teaches you a lot about what can go right, what can go wrong, what people do in tough times like Lincoln or Nelson Mandela, how people misbehave in good times. I mean, you read Andrew Ross Sorkin's book. You know, they're echoes of arrogance and leverage and greed.

57:28And you do actually learn from that and you learn you can you can learn from other people's mistakes Which is a better way to learn than making the same mistake and uh, and then you learn with people and that's that's a better one and a harder one Who are they where like don't have a natural? You know people are different than you. They are Smart a different way. They're verbal. They they're I mean, there's one guy pointed out to me worked at bank one years ago And he said you know guys say it was a sales guy in our one of our trading desks And he said that's one of the most decorated living American soldiers You know, I didn't know.

58:00You know, and you learn all the time. And a bus, ask people about their past, their histories, you'd be shocked. You know, if they trust you and they open up to you and develop your EQs. You know, EQ is, you know, which you have in media, but do you have empathy? Do you understand when someone's hurting? Do you put your hand, you know, some people have a bad day trading and the boss puts his hand on it and, you know, he's like, get out of here. You know, the other boss might put his hand on it and say, it's okay. It happens to everybody. You know, go home and have a drink. And so, you know, are you good at communicating?

58:33Like, you know, Jeff Bezos has people write those six-page memos. A lot of people are sloppy as hell when it comes to communicating. They'd rather just pontificate than say, I have three things I want to describe you. A, B, and C are three options. And here's how I weigh the options. Here's why I put B and not C. And then you can have a conversation about it. And so, and that's a discipline, by the way. Have some kind of discipline. Oh, and a very important one, you have to take care of your mind, your body, your spirit, your soul, your friends, and your family. You should look at that as not a formal job, but as part of what you should do.

59:05And you know a lot of people, all of us, look, I made a lot of these mistakes. This isn't saying I didn't make them, but hopefully you learn when you make them, is that a lot of people that start their early careers, they're under a lot of pressure. Early career, they got married, they got kids, and they start neglecting pieces. You know, and sometimes, like I tell some, when I was younger, we all had young kids, and some of the fathers would complain, but they didn't have enough time for the kids. Yeah, but you go play golf every Saturday and Sunday. Stop playing golf. Stop watching three football games the weekends.

59:39You know, learn how to do what you should do. Like, take your kid to play tennis, or have something to do with them that's just between the two of you or something. Jamie, I know we're out of time, and as you said, you're very organized, So I don't want to be the reason to make you late for your next meeting. It has been an absolute pleasure to catch up with you today. Thank you so much for your time. Pleasure is mine. Well, always good seeing you. Jeremy, cheers. Great to see you. Great to see you too. Thank you. The Master Investor Podcast is sponsored by LSEG, Interactive Brokers, the World Gold Council and BNY Investments.

1:00:11Please do remember the views expressed in this podcast are for general information purposes only. Nothing in the podcast constitutes a financial promotion, investment advice or a personal recommendation. More on that in the show notes. This podcast is produced by Paradine Productions and Master Investor Limited in association with Birdline Media. If you've enjoyed the show, please do subscribe on YouTube or click follow on your podcast platform and you'll be automatically notified each time a new episode drops.