September 2026 Random Ramblings

0:28This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're about to listen to the Yet Another Value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Today is my monthly random rambling, but before I discuss that, if you are watching on video, you will see me holding up a wire. And why am I holding up a wire? Because this is the wire. It's my microphone, which I forgot to plug in before I started recording. So it picked up on my laptop microphone instead of my audio, which means the sound quality. It's admittedly probably going to be pretty poor. I will try to fix it in that name, but I'm just disclaiming that out the way.

1:00Speaking of disclaimer, a reminder to everyone, nothing on this podcast is investing advice. Always true, but probably particularly true today because I just go and this is a man who can't remember to plug his microphone in. I'm just rambling for 30 minutes about a bunch of things that have been on my mind. So we're going to get there in one second. Oh, what am I rambling about today? Today, I'm starting with talks on the market overall. Interest rates have been screaming higher for most of the past year, but especially the past few weeks. And just some thoughts Thoughts on interest rates are financial gravity and some thoughts on why we're not really seeing gravity starts to pull yet and all that sort of stuff.

1:34Then we're going to go to some brief discussions on crashes and bear markets seem to have disappeared over the past 25 or maybe even 40 years. Where have they gone? Why have they gone somewhere? Are the markets more fragile today than they were because of that? Maybe not breaking new grounds, but just things that have been on my mind there. A quick discussion of interest rates in special situations. You know, I think a lot of investors, if you grew up in 2010s, you're trained one way and you might not have adjusted for the interest rate environment we are in today. So hit that. Then a discussion of overconfident investors versus imposter investors.

2:09I'll discuss that when we get there. And finally, a discussion on mentorship, largely driven by Ian Castle's book, Stock Picker. I had some discussion of mentors. That's just been in my head. And I love that book. I've been thinking about that. So get those thoughts out on paper. We're going to get to all those random ramblings in one second. But first, a word from our sponsors. Today's podcast is sponsored by Fiscal.ai. Fiscal.ai is the modern financial data provider for global equities. Look, that's what they have me tell you. But let me tell you how I've been using Fiscal.ai. And I'll remind you, I'm a customer.

2:39I paid with my own money to connect to the Fiscal.ai API. There's two things that I've really found it useful for. Number one, this is something super unique. They've got a huge database of fund letters. And the fund letters are connected by the API. So whenever I'm researching a company, whether it's researching the company because I'm interested in them or looking up an event or prepping for a podcast, the first thing I have my AI do is I say, hey, I'm prepping for a podcast on what are we? I'm prepping for a podcast on HIMSS. And the first thing it does is it says, hey, here's all the recent letters on fiscal.ai of people talking about HIMSS.

3:12And here's their thesis. Here's their bear thesis, all that sort of stuff. So that's the first thing. And that is really unique. And that is really fun. And then the second thing I do is I use it for edited financials, right? I've got my model and I say, hey, I'm looking at HIMSS. Go build me a model. And it says, sure, I'll build you a model. And every line in that model has a link. So I can see, oh, they're pulling this EBITDA number. They're pulling this segment number. They're pulling this number from three years ago. I click on it and it takes me right to Fiscal.ai and it says, hey, here's these company-specific KPIs.

3:38Here's these ratios. And I can see exactly where they're getting it and exactly where they're coming from. So it is a super reliable data provider that can connect to your AI. I found it super helpful. I'm a big fan of the podcast. If you want to try it out, you can use my link at fiscal.ai.yav to get 15 % off their AI connector. That's fiscal.ai.yav, and there'll be a link in the show notes. Let's dive in and let's start with, you know, let's just start with some markets talk. So I think as I record this, it is the kind of mid-afternoon on September 24th. As I record this, I think there are two dominant stories in the markets overall for the past couple weeks or whatever.

4:18And those two stories would be agentic AI, particularly Muse, which, you know, is topping the charts and all this sort of stuff. And it's causing a lot of sell off on the consumer inertia plays and everything. And I think that's probably the dominant story right now. And I've written that up three times in the past week on the blog. So, you know what? I know we're living in an audio fast pace world, but you can just go read them, especially my piece that I posted this morning. and I'm dropping my headphones here, especially by a piece that I posted this morning on consumer inertia, the sell-off, the differentiators between it.

4:53I'll just point you to that. The other dominant story in the markets right now, and what I'm going to discuss in this podcast, is interest rates. And interest rates are, I don't want to say screaming higher because we're not in a hyperinflationary world or anything, but interest rates have been moving up fast. So if you look at the 10-year, it was at 4.2 % to start the year. It was at 4.6 % in late August. And it's at 5.1 % now. So I mean, it has moved up fast over the past three weeks. And that's the other big story, because interest rates are financial gravity. I think Warren Buffett is the one who said interest rates are to asset prices what gravity is to the apple.

5:33So I think that's Warren Buffett. Well, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But interest rates serve as financial gravity. And I've written before about how in 2011-ish, when we were in the ZERP era, I mean, long-term interest rates were 2 %-ish. If you were running a DCF, and I was working for a consulting firm doing valuation work, you'd run a DCF. And you'd look at the stock price in the DCF, and you'd say, hey, either there's huge terminal value questions here, or we're completely off in all of our modeling, or the equity prices are wrong. because these companies were borrowing at like 4 % and their equities were yielding 10%.

6:13And you're like, hey, that's way too high of an equity risk premium. Or I guess you could say the equity risk premium had blown out. And what happened then was over the next 10 years, I mean, it was boom times for equities and obviously earnings did well or not, but a lot of it was multiple expansion. And I kind of look right now at the S &P 500 is basically touching all-time highs. The Russell and S &P 500 are up 12 % to 13 % And the Russell's been a little weak over the past month, partly because of this interest rates. And I think a lot of the stuff in the Russell are more sensitive to interest rates and stuff.

6:45But economy's doing well. Stocks are pretty high. And interest rates just keep on ticking up. And I've kind of been wondering if interest rates are gravity, as Warren Buffett says. But they're gravity in the same way. If you throw something really high in the air, it keeps going up, up, up, up, up. And then it slows and slows and slows. and then it comes down. And eventually the town becomes a plummet. I'm not saying a plummet, but I guess I'm wondering if interest rates were on a little bit of a lag when it comes to the stock market and this longer term thing I'm talking about. So I could see a few ways it could take.

7:21It might take a little bit of time in the same way it took people. Consumers are not perfect and that's kind of the consumer inertia trade that muses it. They don't instantly look at things and say, oh, the dividend yield on the S &P 500 is 4%, the interest rates on bonds are 3%, I need to switch more of my money to equities. It takes a while for that shift to happen. In the same way, I wonder if it takes a while when yields go up, if it takes a while for people to look and say, oh, my incremental cash goes to bonds versus equities. I wonder if that's a longer term thing. I don't know, because that does ascribe a lot of weight to what consumers do.

7:57And most of the money is managed by really big asset managers. Maybe that's too much. I don't know. This is my random random ramples. I'm just rambling on this. The other way it could work on a longer term lag is corporations were very good in 2000, let's call it 15 to 2022. They really turned out their debt long term. Banks were not as good. That's what happens with Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic and everything. They had a lot of floating rate exposure. They blew up, but most corporations really laddered out their debt. They went longer to medium term, fixed rates. So when rates started moving, it didn't impact them.

8:34But what happens when most corporate debt is on the five to 10 year time horizon? What happens when all that debt that was issued in, let's call it 21 to 23, starts rolling in, call it 28 to 2031? If they're paying 3%, 5 % on that debt now, They go to Rotlit and interest rates all of a sudden are 8 % to 10%. And I've been wondering if that is one of the reasons the lag effects work, because the free cash flow that they're generating right now is boosted by that interest rate differential. And the market, again, the market is supposed to be at a very efficient pace. It should look through that.

9:11All this stuff I'm talking about, it being slow to adjust to gravity, it should immediately adjust. Interest rates go up and it should say, hey, interest rates went from 4.9 % to 5%. Well, every business is worth, I don't know, what would that be? 3 % less than that. I wonder if it works slower. And in the same way, I wonder if it's not quite incorporating, hey, the free cash flow that the company generates today, two years from now, it's actually going to be lower because they're going to refi at a much higher interest rate. I wonder if it takes a while for that to happen. And also there's capital allocations.

9:40Managers are valuable too. I wonder if they're kind of the wave of refinancing is what happens. That said, look, I did say equities are still touching or near all-time highs. You know, the past month has been pretty rough for the Russell 2000. And you can see it. You know, it's famous. There's always, even with markets at all-time highs, there's always a crash somewhere. Earlier this year with SaaS, right now, I mean, leveraged small caps have really been hit. Housing has really been hit. I've got a lot of smart friends who are telling me, go look at housing names. You know, it just crossed my decks a couple of days ago.

10:19Berkshire buys 200 million of Lennar, maybe three days ago or something. You know, Lennar, big home builder trading just above tangible book right at book value. So Berkshire's seeing the pain in housing. You know, now they're they're huge and 200 million is nothing for them. And they've got a lot of cash to park. But a lot of smart investors are saying, hey, you know, a lot of the housing names are starting to look kind of trow. and you get a lot of different levers to pull there that could help the housing teams out. So housing, levered small cap, I think there is a lot of pain. Biotech has come back really hard.

10:56And if you've followed me over the past 18 months, you know I follow a lot of biotech. So biotech's come down really hard, really fast. I think there's the roasting issues and all sorts of stuff there. But even with indexes at all time high, underneath there, there's a lot of pain. The consumer inertia names, there's still some value. well, I struggle to say there's still some value in success. I think there's opportunity if you believe it's not going to happen. So anyway, my bottom line here would probably be, I don't think stocks are ignoring rates, but it doesn't seem like they've really adjusted to the current rates.

11:27Growth is good right now. I think there's a lot of, this is me being a broken record. I think there's a lot of volatility on the horizon. And I would say overall, I think the margin of safety in stocks is just skinnier and skinnier as prices remain elevated. I see lots of looming risks for them and interest rates continue to stick up. So even if earnings remain good, I think that financial gravity is coming for you. One quick other thing on interest rates. I've written about this before, but interest rates does something interesting to special situations. If you announce a merger and the merger is guaranteed to go through, but you say, hey, it's going to take a year to close.

12:11If interest rates are 5 % and the merger price is 100, well, then you're going to trade for like$95. And that is if it's guaranteed to go through. Now, nothing is ever guaranteed. So you're going to trade a little bit below that 95 to adjust for, hey, it's only a 99 % chance it happens. And by the way, why should we, if company has to be buying company-wide. It's not like the US government. So there's going to be some corporate liquidity risk and all this sort of discounts. But this would have to 5%. I think it's interesting. The environment you're raised in is a lot of times how you think about things.

12:50So I still see people, a deal will get announced. And in 2015, when interest rates are 2%, deal gets announced and the stock will trade. If the deal's 100, the stock's going to trade at 98 or 99. It's going to basically trade right up to that deal, especially a really safe deal, because interest rates were basically zero. So there wasn't a lot of time value of money. Today, I get hit by, especially generalists, I think, especially generalists, I get hit up by a lot of them. And the deal comes at 100, and they'll be like, oh, the stock's trading at 94. Isn't this an opportunity? And kind of like, hey, I don't think it's an opportunity.

13:27There is the risk of the deal break. So you got to factor that into kind of your Kelly criterion, your upside downside and everything. And then you've just got to discount that 100 back to the present day. And once you do that, it looks like this deal is trading 90, 95 % implied. And again, I find it more generalist than specialist event investors, or I think the pod shops are pretty good at pricing their cost of capital because they're drawing down. But it's just funny. You come of age in 2015 and there's an assumption. The assumptions that you make are kind of how you invest. And And if you came of age in the 2010-2020 range, it was kind of like, hey, capital is free, time value is low.

14:10That's as interest rates take up, that assumption is different. And it's just interesting to think about. I think about, and we're going to talk mentors later, but when Warren Buffett has launched his partnership, the two most important men in his life, his dad and Ben Graham, are both saying, hey, now's probably not the right time. The Dow's never gone above this number. and Buffett launches anyway, because A, what does he hear what the market does? He's Warren Buffett. He's going to beat the pants off it. And B, he thinks they're kind of living in a different world. It's been 20 years. The earnings have grown and everything.

14:43But that's an assumption that kind of they have come up with and grown with in a market thing they've done. And interest rates are similar. So anyway, those are my two things. Let's go to something else I'm talking about. Oh, market related stuff. Just something I've been thinking about. So crashes and long bear markets, where did they go? Crashes, you read history and you see these big crash days. You think about Black Monday in 1987, where the markets are down like 25 % a day. You think about the 1929 crash that leads to the Great Depression, right? Where I think, again, stocks were down like 33 % or something a day.

15:23Big crashes like that. And then when you read history books, you hear about these long bear markets that are just brutal. You know, the Great Depression. I mean, markets are in a bear market for 10, 15 years in the Great Depression. OK, that's one thing. But, you know, you read about the late 60s to early 80s. The markets go zero. There's this brutal bear market from like 1972 to 1974. Like in Buffett's talking about being I think the Buffett quote is an oversized man and a heron because everything's so cheap in 1970. and he's selling stocks at five times earnings to buy stocks at four times earnings and all this sort of stuff.

16:01It takes long, long drawdowns, right? And I've just been thinking a little bit, you know, there was a little bit of a bear market from, let's call it 2000 to 2002 with the dot-com bubble. But a lot of that was the uninflating of dot-com elevated multiples. And actually, a lot of the kind of more value-oriented stuff does really well in 2000, 2002. And I've talked about this. A lot of the legends of value investment today, their bones are really made from 2000, 2005, and the market's not doing anything, and all these value stocks are just ripping, and they've lived off that for 20-plus years. Fast forward today, you have the global financial crisis.

16:38The market peaks in October of 2027, I want to say. It bleeds down a little bit as bears turns and everything happens. But the peak of the GFC is, let's call it July of 2000, till March of 2009. So that's about nine months, right? Since then you have COVID, but the COVID correction in 2020 lasts for maybe two months. You know, it's like late January to everything bottoms in late March. You have the tariff tantrum in 2025, but that's less than a month. And I guess what I'm wondering is, hey, the crashes have gone. Maybe that's because markets are better. We've got circuit breakers, the Fed liquidity.

17:18People know that Fed will provide liquidity. Why aren't we seeing those long, drawn-out recessions in bear markets anymore? I don't have an answer. Maybe we're just living in a great world and we've got lucky and the economy overall has been good. I know a lot of people on both the crashes and the long, would point to the Fed over-indexing and over-engineering the markets and providing too much support. Perhaps people might say, hey, the reason we don't have the long, drawn-out bear markets anymore is because of structural changes. If you think about the 70s, you've got lots of autos and lots of steel, and those are really cyclical.

17:56So you're going to have a long bear market when the economy suffers. Whereas today, you've got lots of really capital-like businesses, whether it's the tech companies before they went on the hyperscaler boom, or whether you're talking McDonald's is all franchised at this point or anything. Maybe it's more capital-like, a little more recession-resistant. So I'm sure there's a little bit of all of those, but it's just interesting to me. We've got a whole generation, multiple generations now of investors who have not invested through anything more than a quick couple month drawdown. And I don't know why the bear markets have disappeared.

18:33And I think about that in terms of what happens if we ever do run into a really big bear market. I think it has everything I say is, I think it's really interesting to think about. And I think the other side is if If you read the anti-fragile type thing, if we do have, and I realize I'm starting to sound a little bit like a tumor, but when you say, hey, the market's been over-engineered by the Fed, the economy, the moment we start to have a recession, fiscal support, Fed support, all this sort of stuff, the moment the market has a dip, you get the Fed put. Well, what happens in a fragile system?

19:06When you have all that support, it actually becomes more and more fragile, and you can have bigger breaks, right? So something that becomes more and more fragile will have a bigger break, or something that's anti-fragile will have lots of little small breaks, but that actually makes it stronger over time. I have wondered, and there's other things contributing to this, you know, zero-day options, everything. I have wondered if the market is like, we're prone for one day we wake up and this market's down just like, it opens down 5%, and by the afternoon, you know, wire after wire after wire is getting tripped and you're down like 20 % or something.

19:35I don't know. And look, I'm not claiming to be an expert on market structure. It's just something I've been thinking about. And it all ties together with the market structure, the rising interest rates, the lack of huge recessions. Hey, maybe the reason we haven't had a long drawn out bear market is because if the last one ends in the early 80s, since then we've had that whole backdrop, the whole market backdrop from the 80s till call it 2022 is interest rates are coming down or they stay very low. Now interest rates are rising again a little bit. So maybe the answer is, hey, Andrew, the reason we haven't had a sustained bear market is because interest rates can be coming down.

20:11And we're about to have a lot of long bear markets because even if stocks go higher over the long term, they can really sell out. And one of the reasons they sell out is that financial gravity starts acting on them. Okay, that was a long-winded talk about markets. Let me go to just investing things. I've been talking about general investor things. I was having a dinner. I was going to say beer, but I don't drink. So I was having dinner with a friend and he said, look, there's two types of investor and every investor falls into one of these two types. There's an overconfident, there's investors who are overconfident and there are investors who have imposter syndrome.

20:47I can't tell you how much I've been thinking about that line. And, you know, every time I catch up with a friend, I'm like, is this guy, does he have imposter syndrome or is he overconfident? And let me just be clear. When I say imposter syndrome, I don't mean like, you know, imposter and the, oh my God, he's pretending to be someone else. He's going to, no, I just mean, you know, the imposter syndrome everybody thinks about where in your head, you say, oh my gosh, I, I'm not really, I'm not as good. Like I've got a lot of self-doubt and stuff. So anyway, I've been thinking about where investors fall into that.

21:19And I will tell you right now, I know I'm a very handsome man on a podcast and maybe you think otherwise, but I am firmly, firmly in the imposter camp. You know, in my head, I'm still an 18 year of reading and SEC filing. And a lot of times when I'm kind of pulling the trigger on a trade, I have to remind myself like, hey, you've done a lot of work on it. You are the expert. There's not some secret expert out there who knows everything and can tell you, oh, this is the real tricks thing. You hopefully have some confidence in yourself. Hopefully you are at the bleeding edge and you've done a lot of work and you've got to have faith in yourself and do this.

21:52But I have to remind myself that all the time. So anyway, I've got imposter syndrome is what I think. And if you think I'm overconfident, then maybe I am, but I don't think I am. I think I've got imposter syndrome. The thing I've been thinking about is the great investors. I was just thinking of a list of the great investors, and it's hard for me to think of one who isn't overconfident or at least overconfident in some way. And maybe that doesn't speak well for me, who thinks he has imposter syndrome. But, you know, empathy. Why would I say all the great investors, all the investors with great track records are overconfident.

22:29And the one who came to mind, like the first one who comes to mind always is Buffett. He's the GOAT. And at first I was like, oh, Buffett, he's down home. He's humble. He lives in Omaha. He's kind of posture. Go read the snowball. Read Buffett in his 20s and 30s, what he's doing and what he's saying to companies. The man is an overconfident personified. Now, so I was wondering, why are all the greats overconfident? And I think one answer could be, hey, Andrew, they're the greats. They're not overconfident. They're just properly competent. And probably with Buffett, that's the case, right? He's great.

23:04He knows it. He's competent. But there are other people who are revered. I would put them more in the overconfident camp. And even with Buffett, when you read the snowball, it's interesting how many times one thing flips the other way. I mean, Sam and brothers you know one thing's Geico he says I just wrote a check into Geico that could be the end of me like how many times one thing flips the other way John Malone's got a ton of these if you read Cable Cowboy and all these things one thing flips the other way and instead of them being legends with huge huge great track records they zero out right so I yes he's the goat but I've been thinking about the overconfidence thing and why why are all the greats overconfident in my opinion or they have traits of the overconfidence.

23:49And I think the obvious answer is survivorship, right? We're all coin flipping monkeys in one sense. And an overconfident coin flipping monkey is going to tend towards concentration and leverage or both. And that means high variance. So all the greats who are overconfident, they're on the great list. Well, we don't see the survivorship bias of all the overconfident people who zeroed out. And actually, I think you can even see some of the overconfident people who zero out because they're overconfident, because they are concentrated. I think you would point to Bullhang with Archgoes, right? Concentrated leopard bets keep going up, up, up, up.

24:32They keep buying on the way up. I kind of don't know what the exit strategy there was, but look, it goes from killer category returns to basically zero overnight, right? situational awareness over the summer uh great call with the concentrated ai thesis and they just keep betting and betting and pressing the best and pressing the best and eventually basically it doesn't go to zero because i understand they they still have a good track record and everything but tom's pretty close to going to zero they they get unwound and if the anthropics they kind of been going crazy i mean the public book is pretty much destroyed and Anyway, those are just two examples, but I think it does speak nicely to, hey, the overconfidence.

25:17There is a graveyard of people who aren't overconfident who aren't there. The other thing is I have thought the greats, you have to raise money at some point. And it is possible that overconfidence is very helpful in fundraising too. Investors and LPs and everything want to invest in the people who are overconfident. So maybe you can't get an incredible following of a couple of the greats without a decent bit of money. And maybe the overconfidence also helps with the money too. So yeah, you know, I don't know. And look, there are counters, there are pushes, but it's just my friend mentioned overconfident versus imposter.

25:54And my first thought was I'm an imposter. And then I started trying to think of how many greats are imposter. It's like, oh, that ain't good. Last thing I've been thinking about, and then I'll wrap it up because I'm probably close to my self-imposed time limit here. Look, I had Ian Castle on to talk about his book, Stockpicker, a couple of weeks ago. You could hear it in the podcast. I've had people on with books. Some of them I really like. You can hear it on the podcast. I really, really liked Ian's books and it really got a lot of the wheels in my head's turning. And one of the chapters, he talks about his mentor.

26:28I think his mentor's name was Skip. And he talks about Skip teaching him a lot. And then eventually him and Skip drift apart because if I remember correctly, he says, hey, I was growing and evolving as an investor and Skip was kind of staying the same, right? And he doesn't say this in a bad way. He's not saying like he doesn't like Skip as a person, all this sort of stuff that Skip, if you read the book, Skip has his flaws. But he's just saying, look, Skip had a style, he stuck to his style, and I was kind of growing my own style. So they start to drift apart a little bit. And it just got me thinking a little bit of anyone who has as a mentor, your mentor is always going to start out as like kind of the most impressive person in the world to you or very impressive.

27:09And then over time, they're always going to get less impressive as you get to know them. You know, you realize they're human, they have their flaws. And then, you know, when you're a day one analyst, you don't have a lot of skills or you don't have a lot of knowledge and they have seemingly decades and just oceans and oceans of knowledge and experience. And then you start to gain those. So if they have 20 years of experience and you have zero, they have literally infinite more experience. And then after five years, they've got 25. You've got five. They've got five times more experience. And some of those are experienced in a different market.

27:38So the knowledge gap closed. The skill gap closes. All this sort of stuff. Anyway, why? Oh, I mentioned Buffett and Ben Graham earlier. Graham is Buffett's mentor, but Graham is literally a legend. He finds value investing. But Buffett eventually moves on from Graham. So if Buffett can move on from literally the founder of the value investing thing, not that he finds him unknowledgeable, but if Buffett evolves and moves on from Ben Graham, who is one of the smartest people in the world and has all these interests and stuff, and Buffett evolves from them, everyone's going to evolve from their mentor.

28:18Oh, side note, one of the reasons Buffett moves on from Graham, I think Graham gives a late talk in the 70s, right before he dies, where he says, I'm no longer a fan of elaborate security analysis. I like simple rules applied across the whole market. And if you think about that, that's kind of factor investing in quants. It's a investing. And he was always quant. He was trying to buy stuff at net net. But simple rules applied across the whole market, that's the beginning of factor investing. So not only does he follow value investing and the styles and everything investing, but he's like early on the factor investing scene, if you believe that.

28:51So I think that's really interesting. Anyway, why am I seeing all this? Well, I have been thinking like, as you kind of, as people naturally kind of move on from their mentors and everything, and again, if Buffett does it, everyone will do it at some point. Is it because the mentor is failing to evolve? You know, that's how Ian frames in this book. Skip is stuck in his kind of the way he does things and he ends up evolving and finding new things. Is it because the mentor's not evolving or is it because maybe they're taking, it's because you're evolving faster? You know, I'm just curious and thinking about that.

29:30And, you know, I will say one thing with mentors, again, you come to mentors most of the time because they, you're early in your career and they know more. And I think one thing with mentors, it's easy to grab a mentor who is on the overconfident side because, you know, they're kind of often wrong, never in doubt is something that pops to mind. And that never in doubt thing can really attract you to someone, make you want to be, make you want them to be your mentor, make you want to follow their footsteps. And maybe as you can know to them, you realize that they are never in doubt, but they are often wrong.

30:03And maybe that's why you start evolving. also you know there are a lot of people who have mentors and often wrong never in doubt you know overconfidence they're doing great when they're 40 but it's they just had a couple of coin flips come up their way and then when they're 45 or 50 the coin flips go the other way and then you have huge drawdowns and stuff and maybe that's one reason that mentees like start to evolve because they say oh this person's been taking on a lot of risk and those risks haven't come to roost but they might be about to or they might be coming to the roost. So anyway, I don't have answers to any of that.

30:37I will tell you one thing that I'm working on evolving. It's funny because a lot of mentors and a lot of people I talk to have been pushing for it and I'm off and on with it, but I'm trying to do better is, I mean, the blog serves as a journal for me in a lot of ways, but trying to write down more stuff and trying to journal a little bit more, especially with like market thoughts, like, hey, here's what I'm thinking about markets. Here's the just where I am, headspace, where I'm thinking about, where I'm thinking about portfolio, all that sort of stuff. That's one way I'm trying to do that. And that way I can go like, especially with ChatGPT, and I don't have to go read my notes.

31:09I can just have ChatGPT compare how I'm feeling today versus a few years ago, you know, kind of thinking about the journaling and everything and continue to evolve and push myself and all that sort of stuff. Oh, anyway, that's it. That's it. So I'm going to wrap my monthly September ramblings up there. I've got some really fun podcasts in the pipeline. Can't wait to share those with you. As always, appreciate you. Listen to me just ramble randomly for 30-ish minutes into a microphone. Can't wait to talk to you soon. Can't wait for those podcasts. I will see you in the next month with some more ramblings.

31:46A quick disclaimer. Nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial advisor. Thanks.