Investment Strategy: Trader Ferg emphasizes the importance of identifying market pessimism as a key strategy, citing historical examples like coal and seismic oil exploration as sectors that were undervalued due to negative sentiment.
Asian Market Outlook: Ferg is optimistic about a potential bull market in Asia, driven by reduced reliance on US dollars for trade and increased intra-Asian trade, which could lead to significant economic growth.
Commodity Focus: Ferg is bullish on physical metals, particularly gold and platinum group metals (PGMs), due to their undervaluation and potential for increased demand, especially in emerging markets.
Market Sentiment and Valuation: He highlights the dangers of market euphoria, using Nvidia as an example of a stock with valuations that are difficult to justify, and stresses the importance of understanding where a market or sector stands on the sentiment spectrum.
Portfolio Management: Ferg discusses his preference for holding physical assets over miners, favoring small-cap and micro-cap stocks in emerging markets, and maintaining a balanced approach with some cash reserves for opportunistic investments.
Sector Analysis: He identifies seismic companies as undervalued within the oil sector, noting their potential for growth as market sentiment shifts and the need for future oil exploration becomes apparent.
Uranium Market Challenges: Despite a strong long-term thesis, Ferg acknowledges the frustrating pace of the uranium market's recovery, emphasizing the importance of a strategic approach to investing in this sector.
Investment Philosophy: Ferg advocates for simplicity in investment theses, focusing on sectors with clear supply-demand imbalances and avoiding overcomplicated strategies that may lead to losses.
Transcript
Today on resource talks, everyone's favorite Kiwi is going to talking be talking to me about what he's buying, what he's selling, and uh what's really going on in with the world and whether everything really is right with the world. Uh just briefly for people watching or listening, if you want a summary of this conversation and all the other interviews that we do on Resource Talks, go to resourcealks.com. There's a free newsletter. It goes out once a week with a bullet point summary of all the conversations from the week before. And of course, uh, Kiwi I'm talking about is Trader Ferg. Ferg, thank you so much for investing your time with me today. Thank you for having me back on, Antonio. It's always a pleasure. My enjoy. Pleasure is mine. I think I I I think I called you an Aussie once like three years ago or something and I still cannot forget myself about it. So that's why I'm emphasizing the Kiwi part of it. Um it's uh it it was already a pleasure really reading your most recent post called portfolio speedrun and um the subtitle there was taking the axe to a few positions and you kick off the article really interestingly with uh Howard Mark's quote I think you you do like Howard Marks a lot. you quote you quote him a lot in um in the articles, but the second part of that quote is really interesting where he says quote, "We never know where we're going, but we sure as hell should know where we are," unquote. And that that's a that's probably like the whole podcast can be based really only on that thing, but where are we right now? What's going on with the markets these days? Yeah. So I started with that quote because it's it's literally my whole process is trying to just observe like what are what are the what are the things we can tune into that are actually going to give us an edge in the market. And this is a lot of this will um ring a bell from my mentor Brad that I've often talked about. But one of the first things he taught me was John Templeton's maxim which is bull markets are born in pessimist and um grow in skepticism, mature in optimism, die in euphoria. And it's kind of a like no one ever knows exactly where you are on those scales, but um you should always kind of have a feel for where you are on it. And that that's it's really an art like understanding like is something in maximum pessimism and like I've tried in some of my writing to point out like the point of like real maximum maximum pessimism. I I think I I wrote a piece recently called rules of thumb and I tried to like pinpoint it with um Cole and it was in believe it was in late um 2020 or even early 21 and there was um there was just nothing. You you couldn't find a single person that even was interested in it, covered it. You were like shunned if you even mentioned it. the the only ETF in the whole space delisted and literally dumped all the stocks. So, anyone that was trying to play it literally got dropped off at the bottom because the the vehicle literally unloaded and liquidated the equity. So, you couldn't have even made money by in in a sector that was about to um do really really well. You had the likes of Peabody threatened after going bankrupt in 2016 literally threatened to go bankrupt a second time and that uh put in the bottom. you had the vast majority of um majors trying to get rid of it. Like they were all saying um yeah, we're we're going to get this off our balance sheet. We're going to spin it out, dump it. And sentiment was just absolutely in the toilet. I remember I mentioned it in an interview and I started one of my coal pieces with it where I just took the clip below the YouTube interview and the first four comments, the first one was like this is he mentioned coal. This is the equivalent of um looting Jewish homes during the Holocaust. The second comment was like, "This guy has got no moral compass. I'm never listening to another one of your interviews like the for the host that was hosting me." And yeah, I can't remember the others. It was just Yeah, it was just people absolutely railing. And then obviously that that was what I kind of determined as absolute peak pessimism. And if you can find areas with that, like this whole game is a game of expectations. You want the absolute lowest expectations you can possibly have. Often often some of the best returns are when I've gone into a sector when I even struggle to come up with a bullish narrative. I was like, "Yeah, it's really really bad." But I think in the future it might be like it might not die. It might be like, "Okay, I've got a recent corner of the portfolio in seismic oil exploration." And to my surprise, it's actually one of my better performers. But when I went into it, I wrote a big the start of the thesis. I was like, you're going to have to go into this with a 5year time frame and expect nothing from these positions. The oil thesis hasn't even started working. So to expect these companies to make money is um yeah, like you're like super early and um surprisingly enough, some of those are actually because the expectations is so low, it's actually surprisingly easy to make money in some ways. And then to take that to the other end of the spectrum, like what does euphoria look like? And I'd argue euphoria is when it's like the Robert Melli um he gets over overly quoted, but just the idea that the valuation is so great that there's no way they can ever grow into it. Just everything is priced to perfection. He he literally goes through their valuation is like if you understand what this valuation means means everything is priced to perfection. And I' I'd argue some of the likes in Nvidia, if you start going out on how much they need to grow sales to justify that valuation, the numbers just get so big, it just like it's hopelessly euphoric on the extrapolation of what it needs to earn to justify its valuation. It's well, if if you have to piss off people to be a good investor, I think that is a task I'm up for. Uh it's something I've I've trained for my whole life. uh you always seem to have a a game plan as to how to position or deal with these things though. Um how how do you do that right now? I mean with everything that's going on, right? And it's um you're not like a doom and gloom personality. It's actually why I keep asking you on I'm tired really of the doom and gloom without clear direction or at least a minimum of some ideas as to how to actually deal with a situation like often times it's just oh the world's going to an end. That's the interview. Let's end it there or uh let us uh whatever different topic point is um again the current situation is not something most of us have lived through but again you always seem to have a game plan. So how how do you deal with it? What are you what are you doing right now? I'm pretty optimistic about a whole lot of sectors. Um I I recently wrote a piece I I see a massive um Asian bull market. I think there's going to be an absolute boom in that side of the world because they um a lot of the constraints are giving way like the the entire Asian market's really been held back by its ability um they've all had to essentially run surpluses, get a hold of US dollars to be able to um access um the commodities and energy they need to grow. like growth is ultimately usually comes down to accessibility to energy and um what's changed more recently is they can um start to trade with each other and that's when their own currencies and even net settle in gold which is another bull case for gold which um touched on but the fact that they can use their own currencies aren't constrained by the US dollar means they don't need to run the surpluses that they have which means kind of like someone having just been forced to save more. They can now use their income um to better themselves and that trade will lead to higher economic growth in my view and will really surprise the upside right across Asia. And when you consider Asia already consumes half of the energy in the um world is um and they're just the start of that sort of scurve which I always sort of reference like it's um when you when you're in poverty like Africans have will consume a lot more energy but you got too big a proportion that are in poverty and so they they don't even have access to electricity so they can't they can't sort of ramp up their demand when they don't even have access to it. Whereas someone in um in the likes of like here where I live in Indonesia, they're getting their their first fridge, their first air con, their first motorbike there and that just their energy demands really are ramping up and going parabolic. And so that's when I put that all together. Um I just yeah I I can't be bearish on this whole side of the world and especially with how much capital's being kind of sucked out of it as well. I'm just seeing crazy valuations across all sort of Asian small caps. Whereas where I am slightly bearish I guess would be just the extremes that passive has driven within the west combined with the extremity of the the situation US finds itself in um financially and that's kind of what I started that piece with as well just kind of I think everyone needs to understand how how desperate that position is and how few levers they have to pull now and that's why I have made a few adjust adjustments to the portfolio. With that in mind, I've lent heavily on physical metals over miners. Um I'm favoring small micro caps and sort of um emerging markets which haven't really benefited from a dollar of passive flows or anything for a long time. I like kind of label them the sort of bottom crawlers that are just hated and they're just starting to improve on their business fundamentals alone. um and trying to hold a little bit of cash, not too much because I think if you hold too much cash, it sort of can make you quite pessimistic on the world and and I don't see the need to hold cash as well with um the amount of opportunities I'm seeing as well. So, um yeah, I guess that's a a brief overview. I'm happy to dig into any areas you want to dive into. I'm I'm happy that that Indonesians are are beating the EU to getting their first aircon. That's something we still not have figured out. So, I'm actually sitting here with a fan. Uh and uh and no, it's um it's also interesting by the way just how quickly it got dark over there. It's like what did it take like 10 minutes and it went from like day to night? Um I forgot how quickly the song is. No, but but so yeah, a couple of things that I want to talk about. Uh with you, you being bullish on on the whole Asian segment. Um you inevitably have to be bullish on like your your your main commodities and like your your copper and your oil and and and maybe your gas, but also because of what's happening in in the West, you probably also have to be bullish gold. So am I following kind of a thread here for you? Yep. No, 100%. I um got quite a large percentage of my portfolio now in just um straight um physical medals. Yeah. And so I I haven't directly bought gold or through. I'm starting to and just sort of a kind of almost a a monthly pan plan of just putting um money aside to buy it in a vault just completely separate from my broker because I don't like the fact that I'm so heavily exposed to pretty much just IBKR is the vast majority of my wealth. Um and so I'm trying to diversify a little bit in that way. Yeah, I um I'm a huge bull on gold to start with. I am mainly playing that via junior gold miners is I just find it crazy how hated they are. How the fact they've got very little inflows generally basket approach there because I'm don't think I'm smart enough to pick any winners. I think the um just the the average of that will do very well. I see gold uh remaining bid for the foreseeable future just because the fact it's largely being driven by central banks and a little bit emerging markets and there's been almost zero interest from um retail participants which I think will come pro most likely when inflation rears up and I see like in my recent piece I had sort of a a meme which is um the sort of the Brazilian phase and it's just the idea that um a lot of people think yeah when inflation re up you um equities will just hedge you and go up and that's not how it works. Um inflation absolute massacres is high valuations and once you get depressed valuations then um then equities start to as a hedge and so I'm kind of trying to get in front of that with things that I think are already um sort of joke had a full Brazilian like they're already trading at single um single digit multiples um low c high cash flow and um gold gold juniors or gold miners in general just at the top of that list for me. I I really don't think you can go wrong. Granted, you're not sort of yoloing on one junior. It's a really hard space to um to u pick winners. And then from there, I'm I'm a huge PGM bull. I've got a large percentage of my portfolio in um in physical PGMs and also some of the PGM miners. And so yeah, I'm um very long and I inend intend to stay very long um those sectors for um probably years to come. No. Um no ETFs in there though, I assume. And that might also get you talking about that broader point that you made also in that recent articles where actually the US now has more ETFs than it it's got US companies. So there's more ETFs and stocks out there which I think I think that was a very very interesting finding there. We're talking about no gold ETF fee. Yeah. No, I do have um so whole gold juniors via GDXJ. So I just I didn't think I um could pick gold juniors after going through the space and even even some of the um super knowledgeable people that have been have a great track track record just say how hard it is. I know Fred Hickey, he's got an impeccable track record with picking gold producers and he I've seen him say that just it's super tough with gold juniors. Um it's easier with PGMs because there's so few to pick from and I think some of them are real standout when you look at um at the actual mine life. Um granted they're in um pretty much your choices are in South Africa which is pretty rough. So I'm currently running like two/3 of physical and one/3 is a minor and I like that ratio as well because it kind of hedges me. If I get taken to the cleaners on my South African miners, I think I'll be looked after pretty well in my physical holdings. Um and so yeah, I like that kind of dynamic that there's a scenario in which I just do well on all of it and then there's a scenario on I get to taking um taken out of one and the other section will kind of play play it role in hedging it. So So you hold no separate positions in gold like you're not no like no eagles or beric or new mod like any of any of the majors where you hold separately for a specific reason. No, no, I haven't I haven't played that. Yeah, I regret it. I I researched New Gold and I I sort of as I was researching, it's one of those things that just started going and it I was like, I'll wait for it to pull back and it never pulled back. It was like, yeah, a few hundred% ago. Yeah, I just watch it every day. It just keeps going up. But yeah, no, never bought it and never Yeah. Well, that's that's actually uh an interesting point where you know you watch it go up and then you don't jump in because you also mentioned that article that you're buying there's micro caps where anyone who would be a seller has already sold essentially uh you know you have those charts that look a bit of a like the letter E the letter L I suppose uh sort of a sharp decline and then a flat for a period right so everyone who should be selling or who would be selling has already sold and that happens a lot in the junior in the junior market in bare market specifically the question always is though and and in junior mining the answer is is often company related as you just said but what what you're doing here how do you know the reversal is about to happen so that you position position properly before it happens as opposed to you know you want to go up and either chase it or miss it out yeah so start with with that um that pattern it doesn't actually work that well when your session junior min is like kind of like the bottom crawler or I refer to it as like a heartbeat like you see the and the patient getting sick and then dying when it's like flat and then you see the first sign of life when it first ticks up again. Um that with junior miners is actually because of an awful lot of junior miners look like that and what you got to um adjust for is share count. So if you're just looking at the stock price you um they can often be sort of going down but the stock uh the share count's just blowing out. So often when I'm looking at um those charts looking at like businesses that are hated like going back to seismic as well but the um the actual whether it's market cap or EV like enterprise value it's um that's gone down and just bottomlined there's no extra share issuance often these companies are reducing debt levels uh sales and um um earnings are moving in the right direction and so the business is really improving when it's in that flat line. And with juniors, that's often not not the case. They're just um kind of diluting into oblivion. And so that that's it's a real key distinction is that chart doesn't tell you anything in the in the junior mining space um once you adjust for shares outstanding. Um yeah, forgot the rest of your question. Well, yeah, you you are. And I think this goes back to one of your other recent articles where again you're quoting how Howard Marx where being too early is the same as being wrong essentially is what the quote is. I didn't write down the exact quote but that's what it comes down to. And um it's that balance that interests me, right? Not being too early but not being too too late either. Um so how do you know specifically it's not too early or maybe how do you know it is too early but after you've bought? So you buy something and you're like, you know, I expected it to move within six months been a year, it's not moved. Should I be going out or not? How do you Yeah. What do you what do you base that decision on? So this is something I've been really critiquing the last few years. So before I would often just plow straight into a chart that was bottom crawling and sort of um say like I don't need a catalyst. Now, I've often try and look behind the scenes, and the the ones I love are the ones that have kind of either had a big recap, maybe even had a bankruptcy and a relisting. So, they've got their um house in order. They've often had a sort of debt for equity swap, so they've cleaned up their um debt levels. They might um have just had their like a massive recap, like issued a ton of shares, and now um taken care of their debt levels and are in a far better place to move forward. Um, it can be the earnings have been deeply negative in that I love this chart where they you see the earnings finally make the first dollar of sort of whether it's net income or any u metric where they've been deeply in the red and they've come back around generally cyclical businesses and they're just starting to make their first dollar again. And often with so few active investors like kind of looking at the stuff, no one's really paying any attention till the numbers really start um stacking up and then the sort of momentum chase starts. And the other one is um so I've got one position that's very large now and that was um that was just physical roodium and it was doing this chart pattern crawling on the bottom and I obviously didn't have to worry about being too early because I'm in a physical commodity. I'm not going to get diluted. I don't have to worry about operational risk. And if anything, I benefit from operational risk because it's 85% of roodium comes from um pretty much one small part of the bushfeld in South Africa. Um and so I kind of love that trade as well. I I always try and it's in my recent piece as well. I'm I'm just trying to um I was trying to have a hurdle rate and I'm like if I can see this position doing well, I've got to comb through the portfolio and really ask myself why am I why am I in anything else if I don't see an equivalent payoff and also um equivalent sort of um like downside risk like a like if it's um the likes of physical rodium I saw very little downside risk with that. I thought it was roughly at the cost to produce it if not below and saw the mine supply rolling over. So I thought my downside was very limited there. And so once I started comparing that to everything else kind of colors your view of like why would I accept this? Why wouldn't I just size up this position? Obviously to a point where my rules of position sizing come in and I won't push past it. Yeah. And you always do that with um physical exchange traded vehicles I suppose. So like ETFs or something like I I don't see you stacking physical roodium uh under that bookshelf there. So I tried to I literally tried to buy it. Yeah. I went right around the world um reaching out to brokers um discussing how can I put it in a vault. But the problem there is it was such a large bit off a spread on it. So they were trying to make you pay up um north of 15%. And so when you're talking like decent figures, the fact that I was going to get taken to the clean is probably 50% on the way in. And I'm guessing they wouldn't be any kinder to me. So maybe 20% on the way out. And they quite a few of them even had a clause that you weren't allowed to transfer it out of the vault. They you they would be the sole seller at the end. Um so I I dislike that. I was like that's that's a recipe for just getting an absolute haircut at the end. So I passed on that. There's there's pretty much there's two vehicles you can buy physical rodeium with. one that's accessible on quite a few um broader exchanges has got a massive bit off spread. So if you're going to play with that, you got to just be super patient with limit orders. And there's one in South Africa, and that's one I really heavily went after. And it looks a liquid, but actually um it's actually quite liquid. It just has to push above NAV and then they'll issue shares of buy more rodeium. Yeah. How many positions do you have right now? Cuz again, it seems like it's it's a lot. You know, you're talking about other stuff as well that we we could end up talking about. And I know you like um oil and gas and and and the drillers I believe is something you you've done really well on recently. So how how many positions do you typically keep at any one time? I wouldn't say I've done well on the drillers. I have that's been my biggest positions have been a round trip to nowhere. So yeah, something short there. Yeah, but the I've done really well on some of the small plays, but the problem was I weighted them too small. So yeah, but overall positions I'd say probably got like 30 or 40. I haven't actually counted how many I in the portfolio. We've got quite a few like sort of 5enters and then a whole lot of like 1 percenters. Yeah. And and the 5enters a lot of them are um like physical as I was just talking about. So got 5% in physical rodeium. Yeah. Oh, see size seismic is what you've done well on. That's what I'm uh geospace. Well, yeah. Anyways, uh it's uh that's what I'm uh that's what I'm thinking about. Not the drillers actually that you've done well that you've done really well on that. I've never heard anybody talk about this and I have absolutely no idea what's going on or is that something you're still bullish on? Oh god. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the um the way so the way I frame it is like there's with how pessimistic everyone is on the oil space. You then go to subse like what are people most pessimistic on within the oil space? they obviously hate the oil space in the first place and what what's like the most punished sector within that space then and one sector which I just mentioned that I've had a rough time in um is the oil rigs which have all um largely all went bankrupt ocean and they all relisted at various times was doing quite well and it's been a round trip to nowhere on most of them I still think they've got a great future but what I'd argue has had an even rougher time than the um in the offshore rigs has been the seismic companies particularly the um sort of marine seismic companies leave the space had a 60% attrition rate. So from the peak in 2012 13 um over 60% of the companies went bankrupt were taken over were merged or just closed. Um and so when you comb through there's very few left. Um and even some of the bigger players like um SlumberJ they um largely got rid of a lot of their um like a lot of it's actually in private hands like this some of the companies so there's very few to sort through and the companies have survived are actually surprisingly quality um like you just mentioned um Geospace that's actually a really good company it's just been capital starved it's um no one's wanted to give it a contract because um the whole IEA um we're not going to need oil in a few years and that whole narrative um has everyone sort of believing that these companies are um extinct essentially and I'm I really want to take the other side of that and I've been taking the other side of that my most my recent positions have actually been in that I've bought my last piece before the piece I just wrote was um was largely buying um more seismic companies yeah and buying call options on seismic companies as well elongated that's where And that's essentially what you're saying here as well. It's like it's and I'm quoting it's where I feel most comfortable in this market filling the portfolio with these startups unquote. But you're up 300 300% of almost on um on on geospace technologies. So you're that's I'm not up that much because that that's just on a three year time frame. I bought it a bit um I bought it a bit after that. Yeah. I just ran all all the charts on three year time frame because otherwise if I tried to run them exactly when I bought it, it would have been an absolute mess. But yeah. Well, but but so you're up and and and well and and and these stocks are are up generally up. Um they're they're up well. I mean the other two that you compare it with, one of it is actually not up, but the other one is still up like 35 and a half%. And so my question is how do you how do you deal with that? like how do you I I you're you have this bullish narrative but it's already up so much. How do you know to still keep deploying capital into it or or how do you build the confidence to to keep deploying capital into something that's already ran? So I I don't keep deploying capital into it. I I size the likes of Geospace. I've got a 5year time frame on that. I've allocated 1% to it and it's now um whatever it is up to 200 something odd percent. I'm just going to let that run. My my some of my problems have been like when do I actually start trimming these because I've I've had cases where I've just let stuff get silly and I kind of regret it with miners. Particularly these companies will be harder because these are actually good companies and I could lally hold some of these um for a long time. That the other one there um is that's doing well. I I see I honestly think they'll probably get taken over though, which is a sad thing. I doubt I'll I'll get sort of a 10 bagger out of that because it'll get taken over um well before that. And um the one I've only just bought, but that that's the largest in the space and that's just made a whole lot of dumb decisions with um with wind and it's got its ass handed to it. And I think that business really turns round and they're quality businesses. They're um if anyone's ever looked at seismic companies, there's a lot of um technology. I I've often joked I think like the AI bros will come for them when the other stuff stops working. Like it's it's stuff that AI would really assist and once the spotlight comes on the fact that um well oil oil demand's going to hold up for the foreseeable future and as a result um going to need need to be more exploration. Um we're not going to be running the world on wind and solar and or everyone driving EVs. Um and that that yeah that's another part I haven't really mentioned is a lot of my a lot of my portfolio is largely taking the other side of kind of net zero um in in some in some fashion whether it's the PGMs which is the idea that world will completely run on EVs and we won't need catalytic converters for internal combustion engines or um yeah just as just mentioned seismic which is saying that there won't be a need for future oil exploration offshore whereas I think that's where the majority of future where it was going to come from. So, what is it that you're looking for in these companies? Is there like a onestop metric where you're looking for, I don't know, FCF growth or or pay to book value or some of the most traditional valuation metrics or what are you looking for in these companies? Little bit of everything. Looking for them to have manageable debts. The first one I don't want um large debt majority maturities that I don't think they can handle. Um, some of them got decent like um, CH Space got a decent amount of cash. Last time I looked I think it's like 20 30 million and no debt. So they um, give them a long runway cuz the worst thing in these is they're not going to get contracts. Um, it could be a long period between getting contracts so you don't um, can be quite lumpy the earnings. So you don't want them to be levered and and generally the ones that were levered have already gone bust anyway if I'm honest. And then you have um others which are more special situations like the other one and there is um that's recently kind of they had a um what do you call it like a shares and B shares and um that's been conjoined and so it's actually makes it a lot cleaner and previously the company had to pay dividends to the A shares and it kind of sucked all the cash flow in it which is a messy situation. Now that's been cleaned up. I think that company can really rerate now and yeah earnings look good. um it's not got no leverage and um just gradually signing contracts. So um just incremental improvement really. Um yeah, what are you looking for then in terms of a a sell signal here? Or is it something where you like owners start to add vessels or something or you know activate cold stacks or I'm way out of my depth here so I'm just kind of trying to name words that I've heard before but yeah what is it that you're looking for to end that yeah we got to head for the exit with um any any vessel based is like just keep an eye on the order book and historically knowing once your order book starts rising your um your time's limited before there's going to be more supply these the likes of rigs and tankers and OSVs and everything. They're terrible businesses overall because inherently they um they overorder um this creates a glut. There's just a massive um sort of a what do you call a consolidation phase where a whole lot of them go bast and go bankrupt. Um that gets overdone. Everyone hates the industry. Um there's so few left. Order book gets too low. Booms again. They make crazy money over order and then round and round you go. I've actually got a chart of I believe it's tankers and it goes right back to like the 1800s and it's just boom bust boom bust boom bust. Even even the um even some of the seismic companies that have survived just boom bust boom bust. It's um they've they've had multiple boom and busts since the um since the um 80s. Yeah. And so it's just understanding that cyclicality and coming back to the Howard Mars course, not being too early as well because um yeah, as I said, a lot of these you didn't want to be early to the likes of offshore drillers. You had a horrible time. Um granted, I I admittedly had back in I had some completely go bust on me. had originally had a position in Valaris that went to zero and also had a position in CYPM that pretty much went to zero because of the just sheer amount of dilution. The thing with that is kind of had to stomach it and buy it again when it relisted and with CYPM stumped up more capital and went again after the the recap and that position's done really well. And yeah, so sometimes you just accept you're wrong and have to go again. I'm looking at something that seems to be more bust than boom and that's uh nickel. Just trying to see year on year it's not done too well. It's not the worst performing commodity but it's something that seems to be completely forgotten and it seems like it it always is completely forgotten besides those brief periods when it's not and then everyone's always talking about it. So is there anything anything you like uh in in in the nickel space again Indonesia owns the field so that makes it more challenging but not too dissimilar to PGM and South Africa so yeah what is uh what do you are you looking at in Nicole seeing anything there yes I' I've looked through nickel I I can't get excited about it because it was too recent that it was part of the whole sort of transition metals theme and there was quite a bit of and still has reasonable amount of money has been poured. Well, obviously not recently, it's all really died down. There was a decent amount of money put into it. So, whenever I see a theme like that, I'm like, if there's any price action, there will be a whole lot of sort of marginal projects that will jump on it. Again, I when I get excited about a commodity, I want it to be like the supply side, like properly dead and buried. And even then, it can take a surprisingly long time. like uranium is like a perfect example of how many times we heard the supply deficits um going to cause sort of a a um a massive gap and utilities are going to have to come in and panic and like here we are like um years and years into the thesis and the utilities haven't kind of shown up there the um the supply shortfall hasn't actually forced into the table just yet and so I always think of that when I'm looking at some of these areas like how recently was capital being poured into this and it is often a very large lag I I think like lithium is going to show this for years to come is just how much money got um thrown into the um exploration and sort of development side of that that that will forever kind of not forever forever is a long word. it'll pressure um prices and that for for years to come. And I'm a bit um iffy on I think a lot of the projections were wildly optimistic for how um much lithium would be required for sort of grid batteries and EVs. So yeah, all all things equal. I want something that that there's a sort of a belief it's not needed. I I saw that with PGMs like sort of there were comments of it's in terminal decline because it just won't be needed for catalytic converters. So, like why would you need to invest in it for the future? I love when I see that. And similar to what we've been talking about seismic, why would you even consider these companies when there's no need to search for more in the future? With Nickel, it's interesting the the narrative moving away from NMC batteries and toward LFP batteries, right? So, so saying that we're not going to need it, but that's not that's not everything nickels used for, of course. So, that that's not that framework. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a great framework of Yeah, obviously it's a small very small percentage, but it's enough that I I I just I've got limited capital and limited themes and I just think the um the like the story like the PGM story is a lot tighter, a lot more compelling and I can wrap my head around a lot more. And I think nickels down the list um yeah would be the way I'd date it I guess. Yeah. With lithium too, it's kind of hard to me specifically hard for me because of the supply side of it. Like it seems seems like the guys in in South America, they they produce it at I don't know negative cash cost or something. And I'm joking of course, but they just produce it very very cheaply, right? And every time there's a little bit of a bump, they they turn on supply really quickly as well because it just works it just works differently as well. And again, I I don't know the nickel market enough to to be able to make uh conclusions like that for like in general, but just for myself, it's hard to it's much harder to understand than than something like even something like copper, but but definitely something like uranium where where the supply deficits have been apparent for a long time. So, yeah, lithium. Anything else you want to add on lithium there? Well, it's just um it's okay to say like I just like like with me, I find it too hard to understand. I can't get as bullish. Like I I um I I think the simpler the thesis is the better. And with PGMs, I thought I could really wrap my head around that. Like once once I understood it was the whole supply side um for particularly platinum and rodium was just in South Africa and then I could start reading literally free companies reports you just go alter um spany and impala is vast majority of it um read them and understand what they're saying where their break evens are where they're losing money what they're shutting in um it's it's not that hard to understand nor nickel um it's like producers largely as a byproduct is platium heavy So that even if they bring on more, they're not bringing on much platinum and roodium. So it doesn't actually impact and even then they were pushing back their projects. And that's four companies that I just need to sit down um for a few days and go through all their filings and reports and read that and then then the next step is finding the smartest people in the sector that have um got the best information. You actually had an interview um with Dr. David Davis. I think you might have got someone else to interview for you but he was like the expert on the area on PGMs particularly in South Africa and he just did amazing work on it unfortunately passed away last year and so otherwise I would love to interview him but he was the absolute sector expert and there's usually very few of them left like he was obviously at the end of the career that's what he done his whole career and so he stuck with it but I'm seeing that in a lot of areas where the guys that got all the experience are either retiring or dying off And so like you um you having that like with uranium it's a good example like I kind of worry when I sort of see John Bto like he like he's a guy that can actually deliver mine like I don't know how much longer he's going to last. And so you've got that as well that um I put a to tie this to my piece I just wrote. I've actually got a chart in there where I'm talking about how everyone's been um pouring into the sort of um flashy jobs of tech of um white collar service work which has been where everyone wants to be and I think the the entry level gets absolutely massacred by AI and I had a a chart or a survey below it which was like what industries do you want to work in and asking like young workers and it was like absolutely not and it was like mining oil um like anything kind of um sort of dirty or um and everyone wants to be in um tech and everyone wants to be in um finance and healthcare and I just find that's like cyclicality at a tea everyone's everyone's training for the safest job of the last decade not what will be the highest paying job for the next decade and and can you blame them I mean some of these guys are getting you know sign on bonuses that are multi-million there there's this one, you know, outlier story, but the guy who got hundred million dollars as a sign on bonus to work in AI, right? And so natural to go and chase that and not go and ch, you know, nobody wants to be a coal miner, I suppose. Um, so so that's what it comes down and that's actually it goes back to what you just said about an easy thesis. I mean, you you just look where people don't want to be and that that's really pointing you in the right direction probably. What what do you think is the easiest thesis right now? Is it is it PGMs? like is that it is that just the easiest uh thesis right now that you have? Yeah, I'd say it is. I'd say it's the um I've got one chart that I love. I don't actually put it in um any presentations yet, but it's just running platinum by the money supply. And it's just the thing hasn't even moved. And when you kind of frame it in that way, like I um I started the piece with I think literally they're in a position where they're going to have to print the difference. um the Fed that that it's whether it's employment rising, whether it's inflation kicking off, whether it's AI spending um coming back to Earth, it's we're going to go through a phase of higher inflation to get the um the debt down, inflated away essentially because there's no no willingness to cut entitlements, defense, everything that would actually move the needle. There's no willingness to do it. And you just want to be in a hard asset. And I think fatuki position in something that is already so um so hated was um like platinum was like essentially went nowhere for like a full decade. It just crawled along um like anyone that's invested in it has had the most frustrating time and my experience is when it breaks out just um plays catch up. obviously touched on the South African side that's the primary supply is like dropping six five six% year on year and I think with my Asian B thesis I think the industrial is going to really surprise the upside I think catalytic converters will continue to um surprise the upside on the back of hybrids being the main um vehicles that will be adopted I think this is like the BYD um BYD what they've done with um some their recent vehicles that can get over 2,000ks on a single tank of gas and a charge and you can buy these vehicles for just over like low teens um in like sort of 13 14,000 US is just absurd like the value proposition nothing else comes close. I've actually got a chart which is really fascinates me in that it's it's the only chart I've ever seen at which it cuts um vehicles sold in all the major and it doesn't do the sort of EVs versus um normal vehicles. It just does catalyzed vehicles versus non-catalyzed vehicles. So, it's um full battery electric or catalyzed. And 97% of um vehicles sold in emerging world have all been catalyzed. And so that's for me platinum and rodium will continue to surprise the upside. Well, supply will continue and that's before getting to the the um obviously platinum you got the jewelry demand and you've also got investment demand. You've got people can um and the likes of China has really shown that they um they're willing to really ramp up the investment side. um when gold gets too expensive there's a substitution with white gold as well and that's what's been driving the price more recently has largely been jewelry and investment um and to finish off on it the above ground inventory is now below 3 months and I think that even overstates how bad the scenario is because the majority of that's held with China and they don't trade raw platinum of the world they keep it for their domestic producers to add value and so the likes of Europe and Japan, they're largely hand-to-mouth with the miners and so and the South African miners which have got all sorts of issues um historically and so yeah I I think the riskreward there is um very skewed to the upside over the long term. I think your dog either agrees with you there or he's just tired of listening to my voice. Uh I miss seeing him by the way. He used to be by the window when we did interviews. No, he's not. Um and I can see why or I can hear why. super fat. He's nearly 20. He's nearly 20 kgs now. Yeah, he's in his old age. He just ate. That's a big boy. Uh you on the topic though of of simple thesis. I just dug up a a tweet of mine where I think I felt smarter than I really am. Uh because I wrote uranium supply equals fragile and shrinking. Uranium demand equals inelastic and expand expanding. It's not that hard, folks. Even I get it. That's the whole tweet. And it's like that still feels like it's a thesis, but this tweet is from November 27, 2024. Looking at the price, basically the exact same price as it was today. But from there, the price just kept declining down from it was about 778 down to like 63. It seems to be back up, you know, coming back up again. WNA just um uh just finished, I suppose. and and and but but again frustrating even though it's simple it's been it's been a frustrating trade overall I think um what are you what are you doing with uranium is it is it getting you frustrated as well in the meantime have you trimmed or are you adding any positions what's going on there yeah so it's um yeah I'd say has been extremely frustrating even though I've done very well it was just I think expectations got ahead of themselves in I honestly thought utilities would have come to the table and would have contracted far past um replacement rate. I thought we would be at a period now where they would have driven term significantly higher and would be contracting um yeah sort of 110 120 like like well over the whatever 190 odd u million pounds of replacement rate. it would I would have thought it would been well north and that just hasn't happened. That just if anything like the most recent I saw RFP from a sort of Korean utility that was just thrown out 65 floor and 100 um ceiling with no escalation and I'm just like it's a broken market and so well I've done done very well out of uranium. um got just essentially got lucky with some um purchases in um the sort of co era and rode them up and some down a bit much but over overall did very well and I've kind of adjusted how I'm positioning now because I see to survive a lot of the sort of producers overcontracted and I think think there's going to be a different regime like a it's going to be a real step up in a lot of these producers that have um filled their books with suboptimal contracts are going to get quite hurt by it because at the same time they're kind of having costs blow out. Like even the even the old beer case which was casatron will just flood the market like they're I was looking at their latest asset um all in sustaining cost and it was up like the 2025 guidance was up 220% from 2020. Um and they were supposedly the ones that were going to flood everyone with low cost uranium and then obviously had um even chemico dial back um was what was it just lost 34 million pounds um and then you can just go through the absolute disaster that is the entire sort of um all the all the producers and even the names that have done well like some of the US names like largely it's um kind of strategic value u I think is is pretty wildly overvalued honestly like he's just a great marketer and he's obviously positioned himself very well but I'd say the riskreward there is terrible um yeah I always had a crime with that anyway I just disliked as soon as I read read through that company and sort of paying himself he's got a separate company that he pays himself and a few of the other management and yeah never never particularly liked it so where I've come to with it is I want a heavy physical um position and kind of quite like the appeal of we've we've only recently now only in the last week you can now get exposure to um call options on the actual physical which is quite a clean play so that's only just become available granted that I prefer if you could actually get leaps on it would be great but they're quite short they're only up to June 26 um and I kind of leaning more into into sort of green field projects that are kind of trying to hold off um final investment decision. Ideally, it's got no um haven't sold any sales agreements. So, when ideally when they do start um signing contracts, I think we'll be in a new sort of structure will have far higher floors like a thrown out that floors I see being sort of 120 and ceilings like 180 200 like I see just a real step up because nothing's really come on like there's just a massive like the tweet you started with. still massive supply demand imbalance and what we've seen out of all the prospective producers is largely just face plant after face plant. You've got likes and peninsula which actually had to do a raise to get the money to get itself out of this offtake agreement that had signed. So there's those like you can even question what they're actually going to produce in the coming years. Um then you got boss which is um obly um scared the pants off the market with sort of um saying they're not sure where they sit post um 2027 with the guidance and then you got um Encore which is massively overcontracted and had lots of cost blowouts. I don't really understand how they produce much much cash flow. Um yeah, you just go around the whole sector and there's not many and the ones that are supposedly going to bring on the big pounds like got to kind of question on current form of all the particularly all the ISR like it's kind of after you seen Peninsula Boss Encore like look out to something like um Denn and you say like is it they're trying a new method is it kind of um is it smart to think they'll just execute perfectly? Yeah. And so yeah, I've I've really adjusted my strategy with that. I don't really want any miners. I don't really want um large contract books. I prefer quality green field and a large physical position. Yeah. Um it seems like a lot of the a lot of these things have turned out to be true and and kind of through overengineering of portfolios, a lot of money has been lost in in the meantime as well, I think. and and and it comes down to the physical just because the market is such a mess within uranium which actually exacerbates the whole the whole bull thesis because of how how much of a mess the the actually the whole the whole the whole chain like from exploration through development and production it's based almost every company is a is a big mess in uranium which which makes the thesis more exciting to the to the upside in terms of um the metal price but it makes it harder to get exposure to besides It's I guess the physical. What about if if Spra and and or financials just in general, not only Sprad, but what if they pull the demand forward again? What's your kind of don't get cued exit rule on on uranium? When are you going to throw in the towel or when are you going to, you know, scale out completely? Yeah. So, it's I the way I come at it now, just a sort of a relative value. I I've got a whole post on like what I would see to start scaling out red uranium and it was being too cute in hindsight with the vehicles in place. Like I sort of saying like I take X amount off when it gets to 120 and then I'll take I still kind of I still use that as a game plan if we get a real run in uranium. But I think generally when you exit something, it's just because you've you've had a good run and you see something that's far more attractive, which has got a better riskreward with lower downside. Like if you if you're lucky enough to had something that's gone up 5 10x and you see something that can be an easy double that's bottom crawling, it's silly not to move that capital along. And that's um I've I've paid the price for sort of riding something too far when it was um I was well aware of superior riskrewards and I was kind of glued to the thesis of I'm going to ride this exactly till the utilities show up and I see exactly these metrics before I start trimming and that yeah that that damage returns um left a lot of money on the table by doing that and so yeah I'd blame more on the sort of relative value and and especially if it can be um stuff that hasn't inherently kind of lowered downside than like miners. Like um just you kind of hit the nail on the head in the fact that like the thesis has got stronger, but the applications for the thesis and all these miners has got a lot worse. Like a lot of these guys that have really contracted heavily have just damaged themselves. Um especially when they're like fixed contracts and uh yeah, it's just um and they're just having so many struggles with the production process. um itself and so yeah it is it is super tough and the way I exit it would be yeah gradually and probably try and be putting into something um I see that's just got a bottom crawler something that is um is off everyone's radar and is is just a hop and a jump from sort of a double kind of what I've been seeing at the moment with um some sort of some small caps in the Asian market Um it's just no one really cares like sort of I bought one recently that was a pipe um pipe producer has been doing really well that was like um it was like 50 million and yeah it's um had just a chairman that he's um he owns 70% of the company. He's owned it um for decades. Yeah. And um paid down my debt and they've been um doing good things lately and no one cares about it. no one even sees it like it's yeah something off 90% of people's radar and I just want to keep finding stuff like that. What's the most complicated thesis though in that case? I mean every basically everything you you've told me here seems relatively straightforward and because again even I can get most of the things that you're talking about here. What about what's the most complicated thesis that you're exposed to right now? Um that's a good question. It's complicated. I try and keep stuff simple. If it's complicated, I'm probably fooling myself. I'm probably going to lose money. Um, what's something complicated in the portfolio? What's the thing that has the most variables in it where you need like, oh, if that goes well and that goes well and that goes well, then I do well. Um, yeah. Well, one what I've been tracking I'm I've um it's not my trade at all and it's um is Sable Offshore and it's just like event driven and it's one that I'm glad I didn't get involved in um like talking about um cuz it's so complicated. There's so many legal back and fors and this this um this has been tabled and this has been like I just like that is so far outside my circle of competence that um boggles my mind. one I'm trying to get up to speed on now that I want to write a piece at a piece about in the future is um Canadian um oil producers and how there's like a no one explains in pure English the difference between like the sort of producing reserves potential um and like like all there's like all the different um levels of what they find and how they're graded and how you can buy really cheap producing um reserves and I just I've never come across a piece that explained And so I'm trying to learn the sort of AI. Got a a friend who he's explained it to me and I love kind of wrapping my head around it. Then once I fully can understand it, then I can try and explain it in a simple way. I I think like yeah, a sign of really understanding something is I can kind of try and explain it to my toddler some like it's that whole fman. Um you don't really understand it unless you teach it to like a a 5-year-old. That's uh that's a that's a an interesting way to put that and and maybe you should explain it to me in that way as well. Maybe write it down and then when you come to talk to me on a podcast, explain it to me that way as well. If you I want to work toward wrapping it up here, I want to keep you up um all night. But if if you had to manage capital for for other people, let's say, and and people who who don't really or maybe understand it as well as as you said your your toddler does, but like they don't want volatility, but they want the returns that you generate. What do you put that in? Like what commodity theme would that be? Or commodity equities? What do you think would would survive kind of your own critique today or or or yeah, just survive the market today? That's pretty much what I'm doing. I I guess I'd be heavy physical um platinum, roodium, uranium. Um those are a big chunk of my portfolio. Just not trying to be too smart. Um if we get a big smash in the market, I'll try and leverage them in some way. Like like if we get a a real liberation day, too, I'll probably try and load up on some um some uranium um some physical uranium options. And and what I love about them as well is it's not a it's not a speculation as much as if if I buy them at the money, I intend to often exercise that position. Like I've got um got quite a few calls in a company called CYPM in Europe and um I bought those with the full intention of like exercising them in when they expire in in December 2027. And so that company's paying um a really high singledigit dividend. Um I'd like to own that company for um for years to come. And the fact I can get in there with a a cheap option without having to outlay much capital at start and then when I eventually exercise it, I won't have to come up with much capital. I love those trades. And that's that's also why I try and keep I try and keep 5% of C the portfolio in cash because I've got a few of these um that I kind of have in mind. If we see some real disorderly trading, I'll put in what I call like stink bids. Like I'll just put um I'll put in like bids that I'll dance around the room if I get hit. Like it it always struck me when um when I first met Brad and I was talking to him about I was trying a bit of forex trading at the time and he was just like just stop losses are just foolish because you people will always hunt out where you are in the market with like a stop loss like you'll get that that long tail down that'll just fill itself. It'll be the low of the night and that's where you'll get taken out of the position. And he said the way to conceptualize that is that's like short volatility. You want you want to be on the other side of that. You want to be that that bugger that's got the um the limit order that's just way out of money and that that last person that panics hits your bid before the thing um rips back um and you end up a lot in in no time. And so I've always kind of taken that on on board that I love to some of some of it's just as well feeling um as Brad say if you're having fun you'll stay at the table a lot and like I love even if um there's a massive crash and I've only got a few% to work with. If I feel like I can get a win it's really good for your um sort of mental state through that as well. Like it there's nothing worse than being fully invested and you have a an absolute meltdown. You just got to watch your portfolio go lower every day. Like it is quite important to even have a little bit to to deploy. Yeah, it's funny the sort of way the mind works. So, similar to selling like if you um I I always say to kind of avoid binary decisions like just trim stuff gradually to get out because otherwise if you sell it all at once then um there are occasions when you should sell all at once obviously if some something really changes with the but if it's just cuz of um it's run too much then keep trimming and then you'd be surprised how much it sort of it eases the burden of seeing it going higher if you still own like maybe 10% of your position, you can just ride it to like silly levels. Um that's how I've often framed that as well is um yeah, like never make binary decisions with selling um unless there's a real reason for it. Well, it's funny you mentioned that because it's uh I never actually played blackjack before this summer. I went to uh I went to the Yukon in a couple of site visits. It was like this uh sort of charity casino where the proceeds go to the community or something like that. And so we went there kind of for the laughs. I put in some money into the slots obviously lost it. The guy next to me, the guy that I was with, he actually put in five bucks and got in like 130 out of it like on the first pole and I and I lost like 20 or whatever that put it in. And um it got me pissed off, but he's like, "Let's do let's sit on the blackjack table." So I sit down, start playing, and like beginner's luck, I got two blackjacks back to back and uh and then a third one later on. I'm like, "This is great. I want to stay here." But Eventually, I realized that I tripled my money from from going in. I think I went like with 40 bucks into the into the casino and um lost 20 and the 20 that I had left. I then tripled on the blackjack table. So, up 50% had fun for the night. But you got to leave like at at a certain point, you have even though it was it was a lot of fun. Like the first time there was a bunch of people there and uh it it was just a lot of fun, but you have to leave eventually and and uh I've been thinking about that. Maybe there's not I mean maybe maybe it's not too deep or anything. Uh it's just you know had luck in the casino essentially but it it is blackjack is close to to investing I think and and and so is poker and I've been thinking about that ever since but you do have to leave eventually. Yeah I love that observation as well because it's it's often doing the right thing is often the hardest um thing to do at the time. So selling well is often when the story is the best. It's the biggest update and you're the most excited about the prospects. Whereas um buying is often when the story feels the most hopeless. You kind of feel sick when you look at the stock. It's it's just human wire. We're wired wrong to make money in the markets. We're like behavioral animals. And uh like I say, some of my best purchases ever were simply I put the limit orders in when I was in a rational state before the market opened and then I nearly threw up when I saw they got filled and where the market traded and I wanted to jump in my account and sell it again and thought it was going to zero. So it's um yeah, I'd never never overestimate your ability to how you think you'll act rationally at the time. I I always love the um example of uh Stanley Draken Miller and he um he's like literally the most impeccable track record ever. He's never had a down year in like 30 years. He um knocks like Buffett and everyone else's um track records out of the water. and he had a period in uh the dotcom boom where he just couldn't handle watching a few young guys just absolutely um making tons of money and he jumped in um literally at the top of the market with a few billion and um and lost it and um yeah when he got asked about it he's like I knew I shouldn't do it I shouldn't have done it I was just emotional baskets case like I learned nothing from that whole experience just my emotions got the better of me and I was like if the mo most cold calculated guy can make that mistake Don't any of us think we're a puppet. Yeah. Just Well, I think LA, what was it last week? I think I talked to Ian Castle about exactly that. He wrote about it in one post and uh so I talked to him about exactly that situation with with Stanley there and uh with the drug. So, um yeah, there there's there's a lot that we can that we can talk about here. What do you think we're not talking about though? We talked about a lot of commodities. Um, gold, PGM, oil, the drillers, um, seismic even. We tal I took a whole bunch of notes. What are we What are we not talking about though? What did you come here hoping to talk about that I failed to bring up? Um I've I've been recently thinking more and more about like because because I've had this um scenario where I've got decent amount of money in this like thing that was like the South African road ETF that was really hard to get access to and it's funny whenever I flick my um I've got like the use a stock app on um a MacBook and you can um flick to the side and you see all your positions and Rodium's in the middle of it and it's often Rodium just goes to a complete completely different beats the entire market. Like everything else will be deeply red and it's bright green. It's like up 5% when everything's down 3% and then it's the other way around. And I've thought about like there's I certainly want to take my trading to go places where just other people um aren't finding like it's just a little bit too hard. And so an example is I've been like kind of looking around Asia because my whole Asian ball thesis I'm like IB doesn't allow you to go into Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, um doesn't allow you to access a few classes of Chinese shares. Um uh Philippines. Um, I've actually I wrote a piece a while ago on um on emerging financials and I identified a few um Philippine small Philippine banks and they've been shooting the lights out and I did nothing about it because um couldn't access it and um um if I can like rectify that and I've just seen some crazy value and obviously it's um they haven't been a great place to be because the place to be has been US and um in front of passive flows like it's it's just you've um absolutely crushed in that. So, no one's even looking at all this stuff. So, it hasn't received any capital. It's been capital starve. If if any of these stocks are starting to go up, it's purely on their fundamentals. And I just I want to be there. I'm looking at one little Thailand company at the moment that's um it's only like 60 million and it's over 60% of the market cap's in cash and it's um trades like nearly 10% dividend. It just like and this is what bottom crawling. Yeah. I'm just like I give me that sort of stuff every day over even um even some stuff kind of gets a bit like tribal as well. Like I feel like sometimes uranium gets a bit tribal like whenever I talk about it like people oh my can't believe you're like thrown in the towel on that. When people are that wound up about it they're not thinking logically like I my ideal scenario is when I mention something and someone's like why would you want to own that? That's like the worst thing I've ever heard. like that's like sounds like an absolute waste of time. Like um seismic tell me tell me when oil actually starts to work and I'll look at seismic and that's like kind of what I where I want to be. I want to be like almost past peak past peak pessimisms like just complete indifference like why would you even look there? That's yeah that's going to um be such a a waste of um of capital. Well, I it'll be good to to catch up on on these um segments of the sector and and and different sectors in a couple of months time. I'll keep reading the Substack. In the meantime, for people listening, it's uh Trader Ferg on Substack. I think it's I actually read it in my email. So, let me just click through it so I can see the exact link. It's Yeah, traderf.substack.com is where you do your writing these days. You're not on Twitter much these days? No. No. Unfortunately, Twitter's Yeah. taken a turn for the worst. Yeah, I was got a lot to thank Twitter for back in the co days. That was like literally the first social media platform I ever jumped on and um yeah, really enjoyed it then. But it's yeah, it's been taken over by the bots and the the 4U tab and the it's just not a not a fun place to be anymore. Other than judging um market sentiment, I still like typing in tickers and see what everyone's ranting on and judge. Um there's a few people, smart people that put out good work on it, but on the whole, yeah, I don't really go on it nearly as often as I used to. Well, there's you have a free option on Substack, I believe, and then and then the pro version where you write about these articles that we've been talking about. So, again, it's um substack.comtraderf or traderf.substack. substant.com for people listening. Ferg, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I love this. Look forward to coming on again.
What is Trader Ferg Buying/Selling Right Now?
Summary
Transcript
Today on resource talks, everyone's favorite Kiwi is going to talking be talking to me about what he's buying, what he's selling, and uh what's really going on in with the world and whether everything really is right with the world. Uh just briefly for people watching or listening, if you want a summary of this conversation and all the other interviews that we do on Resource Talks, go to resourcealks.com. There's a free newsletter. It goes out once a week with a bullet point summary of all the conversations from the week before. And of course, uh, Kiwi I'm talking about is Trader Ferg. Ferg, thank you so much for investing your time with me today. Thank you for having me back on, Antonio. It's always a pleasure. My enjoy. Pleasure is mine. I think I I I think I called you an Aussie once like three years ago or something and I still cannot forget myself about it. So that's why I'm emphasizing the Kiwi part of it. Um it's uh it it was already a pleasure really reading your most recent post called portfolio speedrun and um the subtitle there was taking the axe to a few positions and you kick off the article really interestingly with uh Howard Mark's quote I think you you do like Howard Marks a lot. you quote you quote him a lot in um in the articles, but the second part of that quote is really interesting where he says quote, "We never know where we're going, but we sure as hell should know where we are," unquote. And that that's a that's probably like the whole podcast can be based really only on that thing, but where are we right now? What's going on with the markets these days? Yeah. So I started with that quote because it's it's literally my whole process is trying to just observe like what are what are the what are the things we can tune into that are actually going to give us an edge in the market. And this is a lot of this will um ring a bell from my mentor Brad that I've often talked about. But one of the first things he taught me was John Templeton's maxim which is bull markets are born in pessimist and um grow in skepticism, mature in optimism, die in euphoria. And it's kind of a like no one ever knows exactly where you are on those scales, but um you should always kind of have a feel for where you are on it. And that that's it's really an art like understanding like is something in maximum pessimism and like I've tried in some of my writing to point out like the point of like real maximum maximum pessimism. I I think I I wrote a piece recently called rules of thumb and I tried to like pinpoint it with um Cole and it was in believe it was in late um 2020 or even early 21 and there was um there was just nothing. You you couldn't find a single person that even was interested in it, covered it. You were like shunned if you even mentioned it. the the only ETF in the whole space delisted and literally dumped all the stocks. So, anyone that was trying to play it literally got dropped off at the bottom because the the vehicle literally unloaded and liquidated the equity. So, you couldn't have even made money by in in a sector that was about to um do really really well. You had the likes of Peabody threatened after going bankrupt in 2016 literally threatened to go bankrupt a second time and that uh put in the bottom. you had the vast majority of um majors trying to get rid of it. Like they were all saying um yeah, we're we're going to get this off our balance sheet. We're going to spin it out, dump it. And sentiment was just absolutely in the toilet. I remember I mentioned it in an interview and I started one of my coal pieces with it where I just took the clip below the YouTube interview and the first four comments, the first one was like this is he mentioned coal. This is the equivalent of um looting Jewish homes during the Holocaust. The second comment was like, "This guy has got no moral compass. I'm never listening to another one of your interviews like the for the host that was hosting me." And yeah, I can't remember the others. It was just Yeah, it was just people absolutely railing. And then obviously that that was what I kind of determined as absolute peak pessimism. And if you can find areas with that, like this whole game is a game of expectations. You want the absolute lowest expectations you can possibly have. Often often some of the best returns are when I've gone into a sector when I even struggle to come up with a bullish narrative. I was like, "Yeah, it's really really bad." But I think in the future it might be like it might not die. It might be like, "Okay, I've got a recent corner of the portfolio in seismic oil exploration." And to my surprise, it's actually one of my better performers. But when I went into it, I wrote a big the start of the thesis. I was like, you're going to have to go into this with a 5year time frame and expect nothing from these positions. The oil thesis hasn't even started working. So to expect these companies to make money is um yeah, like you're like super early and um surprisingly enough, some of those are actually because the expectations is so low, it's actually surprisingly easy to make money in some ways. And then to take that to the other end of the spectrum, like what does euphoria look like? And I'd argue euphoria is when it's like the Robert Melli um he gets over overly quoted, but just the idea that the valuation is so great that there's no way they can ever grow into it. Just everything is priced to perfection. He he literally goes through their valuation is like if you understand what this valuation means means everything is priced to perfection. And I' I'd argue some of the likes in Nvidia, if you start going out on how much they need to grow sales to justify that valuation, the numbers just get so big, it just like it's hopelessly euphoric on the extrapolation of what it needs to earn to justify its valuation. It's well, if if you have to piss off people to be a good investor, I think that is a task I'm up for. Uh it's something I've I've trained for my whole life. uh you always seem to have a a game plan as to how to position or deal with these things though. Um how how do you do that right now? I mean with everything that's going on, right? And it's um you're not like a doom and gloom personality. It's actually why I keep asking you on I'm tired really of the doom and gloom without clear direction or at least a minimum of some ideas as to how to actually deal with a situation like often times it's just oh the world's going to an end. That's the interview. Let's end it there or uh let us uh whatever different topic point is um again the current situation is not something most of us have lived through but again you always seem to have a game plan. So how how do you deal with it? What are you what are you doing right now? I'm pretty optimistic about a whole lot of sectors. Um I I recently wrote a piece I I see a massive um Asian bull market. I think there's going to be an absolute boom in that side of the world because they um a lot of the constraints are giving way like the the entire Asian market's really been held back by its ability um they've all had to essentially run surpluses, get a hold of US dollars to be able to um access um the commodities and energy they need to grow. like growth is ultimately usually comes down to accessibility to energy and um what's changed more recently is they can um start to trade with each other and that's when their own currencies and even net settle in gold which is another bull case for gold which um touched on but the fact that they can use their own currencies aren't constrained by the US dollar means they don't need to run the surpluses that they have which means kind of like someone having just been forced to save more. They can now use their income um to better themselves and that trade will lead to higher economic growth in my view and will really surprise the upside right across Asia. And when you consider Asia already consumes half of the energy in the um world is um and they're just the start of that sort of scurve which I always sort of reference like it's um when you when you're in poverty like Africans have will consume a lot more energy but you got too big a proportion that are in poverty and so they they don't even have access to electricity so they can't they can't sort of ramp up their demand when they don't even have access to it. Whereas someone in um in the likes of like here where I live in Indonesia, they're getting their their first fridge, their first air con, their first motorbike there and that just their energy demands really are ramping up and going parabolic. And so that's when I put that all together. Um I just yeah I I can't be bearish on this whole side of the world and especially with how much capital's being kind of sucked out of it as well. I'm just seeing crazy valuations across all sort of Asian small caps. Whereas where I am slightly bearish I guess would be just the extremes that passive has driven within the west combined with the extremity of the the situation US finds itself in um financially and that's kind of what I started that piece with as well just kind of I think everyone needs to understand how how desperate that position is and how few levers they have to pull now and that's why I have made a few adjust adjustments to the portfolio. With that in mind, I've lent heavily on physical metals over miners. Um I'm favoring small micro caps and sort of um emerging markets which haven't really benefited from a dollar of passive flows or anything for a long time. I like kind of label them the sort of bottom crawlers that are just hated and they're just starting to improve on their business fundamentals alone. um and trying to hold a little bit of cash, not too much because I think if you hold too much cash, it sort of can make you quite pessimistic on the world and and I don't see the need to hold cash as well with um the amount of opportunities I'm seeing as well. So, um yeah, I guess that's a a brief overview. I'm happy to dig into any areas you want to dive into. I'm I'm happy that that Indonesians are are beating the EU to getting their first aircon. That's something we still not have figured out. So, I'm actually sitting here with a fan. Uh and uh and no, it's um it's also interesting by the way just how quickly it got dark over there. It's like what did it take like 10 minutes and it went from like day to night? Um I forgot how quickly the song is. No, but but so yeah, a couple of things that I want to talk about. Uh with you, you being bullish on on the whole Asian segment. Um you inevitably have to be bullish on like your your your main commodities and like your your copper and your oil and and and maybe your gas, but also because of what's happening in in the West, you probably also have to be bullish gold. So am I following kind of a thread here for you? Yep. No, 100%. I um got quite a large percentage of my portfolio now in just um straight um physical medals. Yeah. And so I I haven't directly bought gold or through. I'm starting to and just sort of a kind of almost a a monthly pan plan of just putting um money aside to buy it in a vault just completely separate from my broker because I don't like the fact that I'm so heavily exposed to pretty much just IBKR is the vast majority of my wealth. Um and so I'm trying to diversify a little bit in that way. Yeah, I um I'm a huge bull on gold to start with. I am mainly playing that via junior gold miners is I just find it crazy how hated they are. How the fact they've got very little inflows generally basket approach there because I'm don't think I'm smart enough to pick any winners. I think the um just the the average of that will do very well. I see gold uh remaining bid for the foreseeable future just because the fact it's largely being driven by central banks and a little bit emerging markets and there's been almost zero interest from um retail participants which I think will come pro most likely when inflation rears up and I see like in my recent piece I had sort of a a meme which is um the sort of the Brazilian phase and it's just the idea that um a lot of people think yeah when inflation re up you um equities will just hedge you and go up and that's not how it works. Um inflation absolute massacres is high valuations and once you get depressed valuations then um then equities start to as a hedge and so I'm kind of trying to get in front of that with things that I think are already um sort of joke had a full Brazilian like they're already trading at single um single digit multiples um low c high cash flow and um gold gold juniors or gold miners in general just at the top of that list for me. I I really don't think you can go wrong. Granted, you're not sort of yoloing on one junior. It's a really hard space to um to u pick winners. And then from there, I'm I'm a huge PGM bull. I've got a large percentage of my portfolio in um in physical PGMs and also some of the PGM miners. And so yeah, I'm um very long and I inend intend to stay very long um those sectors for um probably years to come. No. Um no ETFs in there though, I assume. And that might also get you talking about that broader point that you made also in that recent articles where actually the US now has more ETFs than it it's got US companies. So there's more ETFs and stocks out there which I think I think that was a very very interesting finding there. We're talking about no gold ETF fee. Yeah. No, I do have um so whole gold juniors via GDXJ. So I just I didn't think I um could pick gold juniors after going through the space and even even some of the um super knowledgeable people that have been have a great track track record just say how hard it is. I know Fred Hickey, he's got an impeccable track record with picking gold producers and he I've seen him say that just it's super tough with gold juniors. Um it's easier with PGMs because there's so few to pick from and I think some of them are real standout when you look at um at the actual mine life. Um granted they're in um pretty much your choices are in South Africa which is pretty rough. So I'm currently running like two/3 of physical and one/3 is a minor and I like that ratio as well because it kind of hedges me. If I get taken to the cleaners on my South African miners, I think I'll be looked after pretty well in my physical holdings. Um and so yeah, I like that kind of dynamic that there's a scenario in which I just do well on all of it and then there's a scenario on I get to taking um taken out of one and the other section will kind of play play it role in hedging it. So So you hold no separate positions in gold like you're not no like no eagles or beric or new mod like any of any of the majors where you hold separately for a specific reason. No, no, I haven't I haven't played that. Yeah, I regret it. I I researched New Gold and I I sort of as I was researching, it's one of those things that just started going and it I was like, I'll wait for it to pull back and it never pulled back. It was like, yeah, a few hundred% ago. Yeah, I just watch it every day. It just keeps going up. But yeah, no, never bought it and never Yeah. Well, that's that's actually uh an interesting point where you know you watch it go up and then you don't jump in because you also mentioned that article that you're buying there's micro caps where anyone who would be a seller has already sold essentially uh you know you have those charts that look a bit of a like the letter E the letter L I suppose uh sort of a sharp decline and then a flat for a period right so everyone who should be selling or who would be selling has already sold and that happens a lot in the junior in the junior market in bare market specifically the question always is though and and in junior mining the answer is is often company related as you just said but what what you're doing here how do you know the reversal is about to happen so that you position position properly before it happens as opposed to you know you want to go up and either chase it or miss it out yeah so start with with that um that pattern it doesn't actually work that well when your session junior min is like kind of like the bottom crawler or I refer to it as like a heartbeat like you see the and the patient getting sick and then dying when it's like flat and then you see the first sign of life when it first ticks up again. Um that with junior miners is actually because of an awful lot of junior miners look like that and what you got to um adjust for is share count. So if you're just looking at the stock price you um they can often be sort of going down but the stock uh the share count's just blowing out. So often when I'm looking at um those charts looking at like businesses that are hated like going back to seismic as well but the um the actual whether it's market cap or EV like enterprise value it's um that's gone down and just bottomlined there's no extra share issuance often these companies are reducing debt levels uh sales and um um earnings are moving in the right direction and so the business is really improving when it's in that flat line. And with juniors, that's often not not the case. They're just um kind of diluting into oblivion. And so that that's it's a real key distinction is that chart doesn't tell you anything in the in the junior mining space um once you adjust for shares outstanding. Um yeah, forgot the rest of your question. Well, yeah, you you are. And I think this goes back to one of your other recent articles where again you're quoting how Howard Marx where being too early is the same as being wrong essentially is what the quote is. I didn't write down the exact quote but that's what it comes down to. And um it's that balance that interests me, right? Not being too early but not being too too late either. Um so how do you know specifically it's not too early or maybe how do you know it is too early but after you've bought? So you buy something and you're like, you know, I expected it to move within six months been a year, it's not moved. Should I be going out or not? How do you Yeah. What do you what do you base that decision on? So this is something I've been really critiquing the last few years. So before I would often just plow straight into a chart that was bottom crawling and sort of um say like I don't need a catalyst. Now, I've often try and look behind the scenes, and the the ones I love are the ones that have kind of either had a big recap, maybe even had a bankruptcy and a relisting. So, they've got their um house in order. They've often had a sort of debt for equity swap, so they've cleaned up their um debt levels. They might um have just had their like a massive recap, like issued a ton of shares, and now um taken care of their debt levels and are in a far better place to move forward. Um, it can be the earnings have been deeply negative in that I love this chart where they you see the earnings finally make the first dollar of sort of whether it's net income or any u metric where they've been deeply in the red and they've come back around generally cyclical businesses and they're just starting to make their first dollar again. And often with so few active investors like kind of looking at the stuff, no one's really paying any attention till the numbers really start um stacking up and then the sort of momentum chase starts. And the other one is um so I've got one position that's very large now and that was um that was just physical roodium and it was doing this chart pattern crawling on the bottom and I obviously didn't have to worry about being too early because I'm in a physical commodity. I'm not going to get diluted. I don't have to worry about operational risk. And if anything, I benefit from operational risk because it's 85% of roodium comes from um pretty much one small part of the bushfeld in South Africa. Um and so I kind of love that trade as well. I I always try and it's in my recent piece as well. I'm I'm just trying to um I was trying to have a hurdle rate and I'm like if I can see this position doing well, I've got to comb through the portfolio and really ask myself why am I why am I in anything else if I don't see an equivalent payoff and also um equivalent sort of um like downside risk like a like if it's um the likes of physical rodium I saw very little downside risk with that. I thought it was roughly at the cost to produce it if not below and saw the mine supply rolling over. So I thought my downside was very limited there. And so once I started comparing that to everything else kind of colors your view of like why would I accept this? Why wouldn't I just size up this position? Obviously to a point where my rules of position sizing come in and I won't push past it. Yeah. And you always do that with um physical exchange traded vehicles I suppose. So like ETFs or something like I I don't see you stacking physical roodium uh under that bookshelf there. So I tried to I literally tried to buy it. Yeah. I went right around the world um reaching out to brokers um discussing how can I put it in a vault. But the problem there is it was such a large bit off a spread on it. So they were trying to make you pay up um north of 15%. And so when you're talking like decent figures, the fact that I was going to get taken to the clean is probably 50% on the way in. And I'm guessing they wouldn't be any kinder to me. So maybe 20% on the way out. And they quite a few of them even had a clause that you weren't allowed to transfer it out of the vault. They you they would be the sole seller at the end. Um so I I dislike that. I was like that's that's a recipe for just getting an absolute haircut at the end. So I passed on that. There's there's pretty much there's two vehicles you can buy physical rodeium with. one that's accessible on quite a few um broader exchanges has got a massive bit off spread. So if you're going to play with that, you got to just be super patient with limit orders. And there's one in South Africa, and that's one I really heavily went after. And it looks a liquid, but actually um it's actually quite liquid. It just has to push above NAV and then they'll issue shares of buy more rodeium. Yeah. How many positions do you have right now? Cuz again, it seems like it's it's a lot. You know, you're talking about other stuff as well that we we could end up talking about. And I know you like um oil and gas and and and the drillers I believe is something you you've done really well on recently. So how how many positions do you typically keep at any one time? I wouldn't say I've done well on the drillers. I have that's been my biggest positions have been a round trip to nowhere. So yeah, something short there. Yeah, but the I've done really well on some of the small plays, but the problem was I weighted them too small. So yeah, but overall positions I'd say probably got like 30 or 40. I haven't actually counted how many I in the portfolio. We've got quite a few like sort of 5enters and then a whole lot of like 1 percenters. Yeah. And and the 5enters a lot of them are um like physical as I was just talking about. So got 5% in physical rodeium. Yeah. Oh, see size seismic is what you've done well on. That's what I'm uh geospace. Well, yeah. Anyways, uh it's uh that's what I'm uh that's what I'm thinking about. Not the drillers actually that you've done well that you've done really well on that. I've never heard anybody talk about this and I have absolutely no idea what's going on or is that something you're still bullish on? Oh god. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the um the way so the way I frame it is like there's with how pessimistic everyone is on the oil space. You then go to subse like what are people most pessimistic on within the oil space? they obviously hate the oil space in the first place and what what's like the most punished sector within that space then and one sector which I just mentioned that I've had a rough time in um is the oil rigs which have all um largely all went bankrupt ocean and they all relisted at various times was doing quite well and it's been a round trip to nowhere on most of them I still think they've got a great future but what I'd argue has had an even rougher time than the um in the offshore rigs has been the seismic companies particularly the um sort of marine seismic companies leave the space had a 60% attrition rate. So from the peak in 2012 13 um over 60% of the companies went bankrupt were taken over were merged or just closed. Um and so when you comb through there's very few left. Um and even some of the bigger players like um SlumberJ they um largely got rid of a lot of their um like a lot of it's actually in private hands like this some of the companies so there's very few to sort through and the companies have survived are actually surprisingly quality um like you just mentioned um Geospace that's actually a really good company it's just been capital starved it's um no one's wanted to give it a contract because um the whole IEA um we're not going to need oil in a few years and that whole narrative um has everyone sort of believing that these companies are um extinct essentially and I'm I really want to take the other side of that and I've been taking the other side of that my most my recent positions have actually been in that I've bought my last piece before the piece I just wrote was um was largely buying um more seismic companies yeah and buying call options on seismic companies as well elongated that's where And that's essentially what you're saying here as well. It's like it's and I'm quoting it's where I feel most comfortable in this market filling the portfolio with these startups unquote. But you're up 300 300% of almost on um on on geospace technologies. So you're that's I'm not up that much because that that's just on a three year time frame. I bought it a bit um I bought it a bit after that. Yeah. I just ran all all the charts on three year time frame because otherwise if I tried to run them exactly when I bought it, it would have been an absolute mess. But yeah. Well, but but so you're up and and and well and and and these stocks are are up generally up. Um they're they're up well. I mean the other two that you compare it with, one of it is actually not up, but the other one is still up like 35 and a half%. And so my question is how do you how do you deal with that? like how do you I I you're you have this bullish narrative but it's already up so much. How do you know to still keep deploying capital into it or or how do you build the confidence to to keep deploying capital into something that's already ran? So I I don't keep deploying capital into it. I I size the likes of Geospace. I've got a 5year time frame on that. I've allocated 1% to it and it's now um whatever it is up to 200 something odd percent. I'm just going to let that run. My my some of my problems have been like when do I actually start trimming these because I've I've had cases where I've just let stuff get silly and I kind of regret it with miners. Particularly these companies will be harder because these are actually good companies and I could lally hold some of these um for a long time. That the other one there um is that's doing well. I I see I honestly think they'll probably get taken over though, which is a sad thing. I doubt I'll I'll get sort of a 10 bagger out of that because it'll get taken over um well before that. And um the one I've only just bought, but that that's the largest in the space and that's just made a whole lot of dumb decisions with um with wind and it's got its ass handed to it. And I think that business really turns round and they're quality businesses. They're um if anyone's ever looked at seismic companies, there's a lot of um technology. I I've often joked I think like the AI bros will come for them when the other stuff stops working. Like it's it's stuff that AI would really assist and once the spotlight comes on the fact that um well oil oil demand's going to hold up for the foreseeable future and as a result um going to need need to be more exploration. Um we're not going to be running the world on wind and solar and or everyone driving EVs. Um and that that yeah that's another part I haven't really mentioned is a lot of my a lot of my portfolio is largely taking the other side of kind of net zero um in in some in some fashion whether it's the PGMs which is the idea that world will completely run on EVs and we won't need catalytic converters for internal combustion engines or um yeah just as just mentioned seismic which is saying that there won't be a need for future oil exploration offshore whereas I think that's where the majority of future where it was going to come from. So, what is it that you're looking for in these companies? Is there like a onestop metric where you're looking for, I don't know, FCF growth or or pay to book value or some of the most traditional valuation metrics or what are you looking for in these companies? Little bit of everything. Looking for them to have manageable debts. The first one I don't want um large debt majority maturities that I don't think they can handle. Um, some of them got decent like um, CH Space got a decent amount of cash. Last time I looked I think it's like 20 30 million and no debt. So they um, give them a long runway cuz the worst thing in these is they're not going to get contracts. Um, it could be a long period between getting contracts so you don't um, can be quite lumpy the earnings. So you don't want them to be levered and and generally the ones that were levered have already gone bust anyway if I'm honest. And then you have um others which are more special situations like the other one and there is um that's recently kind of they had a um what do you call it like a shares and B shares and um that's been conjoined and so it's actually makes it a lot cleaner and previously the company had to pay dividends to the A shares and it kind of sucked all the cash flow in it which is a messy situation. Now that's been cleaned up. I think that company can really rerate now and yeah earnings look good. um it's not got no leverage and um just gradually signing contracts. So um just incremental improvement really. Um yeah, what are you looking for then in terms of a a sell signal here? Or is it something where you like owners start to add vessels or something or you know activate cold stacks or I'm way out of my depth here so I'm just kind of trying to name words that I've heard before but yeah what is it that you're looking for to end that yeah we got to head for the exit with um any any vessel based is like just keep an eye on the order book and historically knowing once your order book starts rising your um your time's limited before there's going to be more supply these the likes of rigs and tankers and OSVs and everything. They're terrible businesses overall because inherently they um they overorder um this creates a glut. There's just a massive um sort of a what do you call a consolidation phase where a whole lot of them go bast and go bankrupt. Um that gets overdone. Everyone hates the industry. Um there's so few left. Order book gets too low. Booms again. They make crazy money over order and then round and round you go. I've actually got a chart of I believe it's tankers and it goes right back to like the 1800s and it's just boom bust boom bust boom bust. Even even the um even some of the seismic companies that have survived just boom bust boom bust. It's um they've they've had multiple boom and busts since the um since the um 80s. Yeah. And so it's just understanding that cyclicality and coming back to the Howard Mars course, not being too early as well because um yeah, as I said, a lot of these you didn't want to be early to the likes of offshore drillers. You had a horrible time. Um granted, I I admittedly had back in I had some completely go bust on me. had originally had a position in Valaris that went to zero and also had a position in CYPM that pretty much went to zero because of the just sheer amount of dilution. The thing with that is kind of had to stomach it and buy it again when it relisted and with CYPM stumped up more capital and went again after the the recap and that position's done really well. And yeah, so sometimes you just accept you're wrong and have to go again. I'm looking at something that seems to be more bust than boom and that's uh nickel. Just trying to see year on year it's not done too well. It's not the worst performing commodity but it's something that seems to be completely forgotten and it seems like it it always is completely forgotten besides those brief periods when it's not and then everyone's always talking about it. So is there anything anything you like uh in in in the nickel space again Indonesia owns the field so that makes it more challenging but not too dissimilar to PGM and South Africa so yeah what is uh what do you are you looking at in Nicole seeing anything there yes I' I've looked through nickel I I can't get excited about it because it was too recent that it was part of the whole sort of transition metals theme and there was quite a bit of and still has reasonable amount of money has been poured. Well, obviously not recently, it's all really died down. There was a decent amount of money put into it. So, whenever I see a theme like that, I'm like, if there's any price action, there will be a whole lot of sort of marginal projects that will jump on it. Again, I when I get excited about a commodity, I want it to be like the supply side, like properly dead and buried. And even then, it can take a surprisingly long time. like uranium is like a perfect example of how many times we heard the supply deficits um going to cause sort of a a um a massive gap and utilities are going to have to come in and panic and like here we are like um years and years into the thesis and the utilities haven't kind of shown up there the um the supply shortfall hasn't actually forced into the table just yet and so I always think of that when I'm looking at some of these areas like how recently was capital being poured into this and it is often a very large lag I I think like lithium is going to show this for years to come is just how much money got um thrown into the um exploration and sort of development side of that that that will forever kind of not forever forever is a long word. it'll pressure um prices and that for for years to come. And I'm a bit um iffy on I think a lot of the projections were wildly optimistic for how um much lithium would be required for sort of grid batteries and EVs. So yeah, all all things equal. I want something that that there's a sort of a belief it's not needed. I I saw that with PGMs like sort of there were comments of it's in terminal decline because it just won't be needed for catalytic converters. So, like why would you need to invest in it for the future? I love when I see that. And similar to what we've been talking about seismic, why would you even consider these companies when there's no need to search for more in the future? With Nickel, it's interesting the the narrative moving away from NMC batteries and toward LFP batteries, right? So, so saying that we're not going to need it, but that's not that's not everything nickels used for, of course. So, that that's not that framework. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a great framework of Yeah, obviously it's a small very small percentage, but it's enough that I I I just I've got limited capital and limited themes and I just think the um the like the story like the PGM story is a lot tighter, a lot more compelling and I can wrap my head around a lot more. And I think nickels down the list um yeah would be the way I'd date it I guess. Yeah. With lithium too, it's kind of hard to me specifically hard for me because of the supply side of it. Like it seems seems like the guys in in South America, they they produce it at I don't know negative cash cost or something. And I'm joking of course, but they just produce it very very cheaply, right? And every time there's a little bit of a bump, they they turn on supply really quickly as well because it just works it just works differently as well. And again, I I don't know the nickel market enough to to be able to make uh conclusions like that for like in general, but just for myself, it's hard to it's much harder to understand than than something like even something like copper, but but definitely something like uranium where where the supply deficits have been apparent for a long time. So, yeah, lithium. Anything else you want to add on lithium there? Well, it's just um it's okay to say like I just like like with me, I find it too hard to understand. I can't get as bullish. Like I I um I I think the simpler the thesis is the better. And with PGMs, I thought I could really wrap my head around that. Like once once I understood it was the whole supply side um for particularly platinum and rodium was just in South Africa and then I could start reading literally free companies reports you just go alter um spany and impala is vast majority of it um read them and understand what they're saying where their break evens are where they're losing money what they're shutting in um it's it's not that hard to understand nor nickel um it's like producers largely as a byproduct is platium heavy So that even if they bring on more, they're not bringing on much platinum and roodium. So it doesn't actually impact and even then they were pushing back their projects. And that's four companies that I just need to sit down um for a few days and go through all their filings and reports and read that and then then the next step is finding the smartest people in the sector that have um got the best information. You actually had an interview um with Dr. David Davis. I think you might have got someone else to interview for you but he was like the expert on the area on PGMs particularly in South Africa and he just did amazing work on it unfortunately passed away last year and so otherwise I would love to interview him but he was the absolute sector expert and there's usually very few of them left like he was obviously at the end of the career that's what he done his whole career and so he stuck with it but I'm seeing that in a lot of areas where the guys that got all the experience are either retiring or dying off And so like you um you having that like with uranium it's a good example like I kind of worry when I sort of see John Bto like he like he's a guy that can actually deliver mine like I don't know how much longer he's going to last. And so you've got that as well that um I put a to tie this to my piece I just wrote. I've actually got a chart in there where I'm talking about how everyone's been um pouring into the sort of um flashy jobs of tech of um white collar service work which has been where everyone wants to be and I think the the entry level gets absolutely massacred by AI and I had a a chart or a survey below it which was like what industries do you want to work in and asking like young workers and it was like absolutely not and it was like mining oil um like anything kind of um sort of dirty or um and everyone wants to be in um tech and everyone wants to be in um finance and healthcare and I just find that's like cyclicality at a tea everyone's everyone's training for the safest job of the last decade not what will be the highest paying job for the next decade and and can you blame them I mean some of these guys are getting you know sign on bonuses that are multi-million there there's this one, you know, outlier story, but the guy who got hundred million dollars as a sign on bonus to work in AI, right? And so natural to go and chase that and not go and ch, you know, nobody wants to be a coal miner, I suppose. Um, so so that's what it comes down and that's actually it goes back to what you just said about an easy thesis. I mean, you you just look where people don't want to be and that that's really pointing you in the right direction probably. What what do you think is the easiest thesis right now? Is it is it PGMs? like is that it is that just the easiest uh thesis right now that you have? Yeah, I'd say it is. I'd say it's the um I've got one chart that I love. I don't actually put it in um any presentations yet, but it's just running platinum by the money supply. And it's just the thing hasn't even moved. And when you kind of frame it in that way, like I um I started the piece with I think literally they're in a position where they're going to have to print the difference. um the Fed that that it's whether it's employment rising, whether it's inflation kicking off, whether it's AI spending um coming back to Earth, it's we're going to go through a phase of higher inflation to get the um the debt down, inflated away essentially because there's no no willingness to cut entitlements, defense, everything that would actually move the needle. There's no willingness to do it. And you just want to be in a hard asset. And I think fatuki position in something that is already so um so hated was um like platinum was like essentially went nowhere for like a full decade. It just crawled along um like anyone that's invested in it has had the most frustrating time and my experience is when it breaks out just um plays catch up. obviously touched on the South African side that's the primary supply is like dropping six five six% year on year and I think with my Asian B thesis I think the industrial is going to really surprise the upside I think catalytic converters will continue to um surprise the upside on the back of hybrids being the main um vehicles that will be adopted I think this is like the BYD um BYD what they've done with um some their recent vehicles that can get over 2,000ks on a single tank of gas and a charge and you can buy these vehicles for just over like low teens um in like sort of 13 14,000 US is just absurd like the value proposition nothing else comes close. I've actually got a chart which is really fascinates me in that it's it's the only chart I've ever seen at which it cuts um vehicles sold in all the major and it doesn't do the sort of EVs versus um normal vehicles. It just does catalyzed vehicles versus non-catalyzed vehicles. So, it's um full battery electric or catalyzed. And 97% of um vehicles sold in emerging world have all been catalyzed. And so that's for me platinum and rodium will continue to surprise the upside. Well, supply will continue and that's before getting to the the um obviously platinum you got the jewelry demand and you've also got investment demand. You've got people can um and the likes of China has really shown that they um they're willing to really ramp up the investment side. um when gold gets too expensive there's a substitution with white gold as well and that's what's been driving the price more recently has largely been jewelry and investment um and to finish off on it the above ground inventory is now below 3 months and I think that even overstates how bad the scenario is because the majority of that's held with China and they don't trade raw platinum of the world they keep it for their domestic producers to add value and so the likes of Europe and Japan, they're largely hand-to-mouth with the miners and so and the South African miners which have got all sorts of issues um historically and so yeah I I think the riskreward there is um very skewed to the upside over the long term. I think your dog either agrees with you there or he's just tired of listening to my voice. Uh I miss seeing him by the way. He used to be by the window when we did interviews. No, he's not. Um and I can see why or I can hear why. super fat. He's nearly 20. He's nearly 20 kgs now. Yeah, he's in his old age. He just ate. That's a big boy. Uh you on the topic though of of simple thesis. I just dug up a a tweet of mine where I think I felt smarter than I really am. Uh because I wrote uranium supply equals fragile and shrinking. Uranium demand equals inelastic and expand expanding. It's not that hard, folks. Even I get it. That's the whole tweet. And it's like that still feels like it's a thesis, but this tweet is from November 27, 2024. Looking at the price, basically the exact same price as it was today. But from there, the price just kept declining down from it was about 778 down to like 63. It seems to be back up, you know, coming back up again. WNA just um uh just finished, I suppose. and and and but but again frustrating even though it's simple it's been it's been a frustrating trade overall I think um what are you what are you doing with uranium is it is it getting you frustrated as well in the meantime have you trimmed or are you adding any positions what's going on there yeah so it's um yeah I'd say has been extremely frustrating even though I've done very well it was just I think expectations got ahead of themselves in I honestly thought utilities would have come to the table and would have contracted far past um replacement rate. I thought we would be at a period now where they would have driven term significantly higher and would be contracting um yeah sort of 110 120 like like well over the whatever 190 odd u million pounds of replacement rate. it would I would have thought it would been well north and that just hasn't happened. That just if anything like the most recent I saw RFP from a sort of Korean utility that was just thrown out 65 floor and 100 um ceiling with no escalation and I'm just like it's a broken market and so well I've done done very well out of uranium. um got just essentially got lucky with some um purchases in um the sort of co era and rode them up and some down a bit much but over overall did very well and I've kind of adjusted how I'm positioning now because I see to survive a lot of the sort of producers overcontracted and I think think there's going to be a different regime like a it's going to be a real step up in a lot of these producers that have um filled their books with suboptimal contracts are going to get quite hurt by it because at the same time they're kind of having costs blow out. Like even the even the old beer case which was casatron will just flood the market like they're I was looking at their latest asset um all in sustaining cost and it was up like the 2025 guidance was up 220% from 2020. Um and they were supposedly the ones that were going to flood everyone with low cost uranium and then obviously had um even chemico dial back um was what was it just lost 34 million pounds um and then you can just go through the absolute disaster that is the entire sort of um all the all the producers and even the names that have done well like some of the US names like largely it's um kind of strategic value u I think is is pretty wildly overvalued honestly like he's just a great marketer and he's obviously positioned himself very well but I'd say the riskreward there is terrible um yeah I always had a crime with that anyway I just disliked as soon as I read read through that company and sort of paying himself he's got a separate company that he pays himself and a few of the other management and yeah never never particularly liked it so where I've come to with it is I want a heavy physical um position and kind of quite like the appeal of we've we've only recently now only in the last week you can now get exposure to um call options on the actual physical which is quite a clean play so that's only just become available granted that I prefer if you could actually get leaps on it would be great but they're quite short they're only up to June 26 um and I kind of leaning more into into sort of green field projects that are kind of trying to hold off um final investment decision. Ideally, it's got no um haven't sold any sales agreements. So, when ideally when they do start um signing contracts, I think we'll be in a new sort of structure will have far higher floors like a thrown out that floors I see being sort of 120 and ceilings like 180 200 like I see just a real step up because nothing's really come on like there's just a massive like the tweet you started with. still massive supply demand imbalance and what we've seen out of all the prospective producers is largely just face plant after face plant. You've got likes and peninsula which actually had to do a raise to get the money to get itself out of this offtake agreement that had signed. So there's those like you can even question what they're actually going to produce in the coming years. Um then you got boss which is um obly um scared the pants off the market with sort of um saying they're not sure where they sit post um 2027 with the guidance and then you got um Encore which is massively overcontracted and had lots of cost blowouts. I don't really understand how they produce much much cash flow. Um yeah, you just go around the whole sector and there's not many and the ones that are supposedly going to bring on the big pounds like got to kind of question on current form of all the particularly all the ISR like it's kind of after you seen Peninsula Boss Encore like look out to something like um Denn and you say like is it they're trying a new method is it kind of um is it smart to think they'll just execute perfectly? Yeah. And so yeah, I've I've really adjusted my strategy with that. I don't really want any miners. I don't really want um large contract books. I prefer quality green field and a large physical position. Yeah. Um it seems like a lot of the a lot of these things have turned out to be true and and kind of through overengineering of portfolios, a lot of money has been lost in in the meantime as well, I think. and and and it comes down to the physical just because the market is such a mess within uranium which actually exacerbates the whole the whole bull thesis because of how how much of a mess the the actually the whole the whole the whole chain like from exploration through development and production it's based almost every company is a is a big mess in uranium which which makes the thesis more exciting to the to the upside in terms of um the metal price but it makes it harder to get exposure to besides It's I guess the physical. What about if if Spra and and or financials just in general, not only Sprad, but what if they pull the demand forward again? What's your kind of don't get cued exit rule on on uranium? When are you going to throw in the towel or when are you going to, you know, scale out completely? Yeah. So, it's I the way I come at it now, just a sort of a relative value. I I've got a whole post on like what I would see to start scaling out red uranium and it was being too cute in hindsight with the vehicles in place. Like I sort of saying like I take X amount off when it gets to 120 and then I'll take I still kind of I still use that as a game plan if we get a real run in uranium. But I think generally when you exit something, it's just because you've you've had a good run and you see something that's far more attractive, which has got a better riskreward with lower downside. Like if you if you're lucky enough to had something that's gone up 5 10x and you see something that can be an easy double that's bottom crawling, it's silly not to move that capital along. And that's um I've I've paid the price for sort of riding something too far when it was um I was well aware of superior riskrewards and I was kind of glued to the thesis of I'm going to ride this exactly till the utilities show up and I see exactly these metrics before I start trimming and that yeah that that damage returns um left a lot of money on the table by doing that and so yeah I'd blame more on the sort of relative value and and especially if it can be um stuff that hasn't inherently kind of lowered downside than like miners. Like um just you kind of hit the nail on the head in the fact that like the thesis has got stronger, but the applications for the thesis and all these miners has got a lot worse. Like a lot of these guys that have really contracted heavily have just damaged themselves. Um especially when they're like fixed contracts and uh yeah, it's just um and they're just having so many struggles with the production process. um itself and so yeah it is it is super tough and the way I exit it would be yeah gradually and probably try and be putting into something um I see that's just got a bottom crawler something that is um is off everyone's radar and is is just a hop and a jump from sort of a double kind of what I've been seeing at the moment with um some sort of some small caps in the Asian market Um it's just no one really cares like sort of I bought one recently that was a pipe um pipe producer has been doing really well that was like um it was like 50 million and yeah it's um had just a chairman that he's um he owns 70% of the company. He's owned it um for decades. Yeah. And um paid down my debt and they've been um doing good things lately and no one cares about it. no one even sees it like it's yeah something off 90% of people's radar and I just want to keep finding stuff like that. What's the most complicated thesis though in that case? I mean every basically everything you you've told me here seems relatively straightforward and because again even I can get most of the things that you're talking about here. What about what's the most complicated thesis that you're exposed to right now? Um that's a good question. It's complicated. I try and keep stuff simple. If it's complicated, I'm probably fooling myself. I'm probably going to lose money. Um, what's something complicated in the portfolio? What's the thing that has the most variables in it where you need like, oh, if that goes well and that goes well and that goes well, then I do well. Um, yeah. Well, one what I've been tracking I'm I've um it's not my trade at all and it's um is Sable Offshore and it's just like event driven and it's one that I'm glad I didn't get involved in um like talking about um cuz it's so complicated. There's so many legal back and fors and this this um this has been tabled and this has been like I just like that is so far outside my circle of competence that um boggles my mind. one I'm trying to get up to speed on now that I want to write a piece at a piece about in the future is um Canadian um oil producers and how there's like a no one explains in pure English the difference between like the sort of producing reserves potential um and like like all there's like all the different um levels of what they find and how they're graded and how you can buy really cheap producing um reserves and I just I've never come across a piece that explained And so I'm trying to learn the sort of AI. Got a a friend who he's explained it to me and I love kind of wrapping my head around it. Then once I fully can understand it, then I can try and explain it in a simple way. I I think like yeah, a sign of really understanding something is I can kind of try and explain it to my toddler some like it's that whole fman. Um you don't really understand it unless you teach it to like a a 5-year-old. That's uh that's a that's a an interesting way to put that and and maybe you should explain it to me in that way as well. Maybe write it down and then when you come to talk to me on a podcast, explain it to me that way as well. If you I want to work toward wrapping it up here, I want to keep you up um all night. But if if you had to manage capital for for other people, let's say, and and people who who don't really or maybe understand it as well as as you said your your toddler does, but like they don't want volatility, but they want the returns that you generate. What do you put that in? Like what commodity theme would that be? Or commodity equities? What do you think would would survive kind of your own critique today or or or yeah, just survive the market today? That's pretty much what I'm doing. I I guess I'd be heavy physical um platinum, roodium, uranium. Um those are a big chunk of my portfolio. Just not trying to be too smart. Um if we get a big smash in the market, I'll try and leverage them in some way. Like like if we get a a real liberation day, too, I'll probably try and load up on some um some uranium um some physical uranium options. And and what I love about them as well is it's not a it's not a speculation as much as if if I buy them at the money, I intend to often exercise that position. Like I've got um got quite a few calls in a company called CYPM in Europe and um I bought those with the full intention of like exercising them in when they expire in in December 2027. And so that company's paying um a really high singledigit dividend. Um I'd like to own that company for um for years to come. And the fact I can get in there with a a cheap option without having to outlay much capital at start and then when I eventually exercise it, I won't have to come up with much capital. I love those trades. And that's that's also why I try and keep I try and keep 5% of C the portfolio in cash because I've got a few of these um that I kind of have in mind. If we see some real disorderly trading, I'll put in what I call like stink bids. Like I'll just put um I'll put in like bids that I'll dance around the room if I get hit. Like it it always struck me when um when I first met Brad and I was talking to him about I was trying a bit of forex trading at the time and he was just like just stop losses are just foolish because you people will always hunt out where you are in the market with like a stop loss like you'll get that that long tail down that'll just fill itself. It'll be the low of the night and that's where you'll get taken out of the position. And he said the way to conceptualize that is that's like short volatility. You want you want to be on the other side of that. You want to be that that bugger that's got the um the limit order that's just way out of money and that that last person that panics hits your bid before the thing um rips back um and you end up a lot in in no time. And so I've always kind of taken that on on board that I love to some of some of it's just as well feeling um as Brad say if you're having fun you'll stay at the table a lot and like I love even if um there's a massive crash and I've only got a few% to work with. If I feel like I can get a win it's really good for your um sort of mental state through that as well. Like it there's nothing worse than being fully invested and you have a an absolute meltdown. You just got to watch your portfolio go lower every day. Like it is quite important to even have a little bit to to deploy. Yeah, it's funny the sort of way the mind works. So, similar to selling like if you um I I always say to kind of avoid binary decisions like just trim stuff gradually to get out because otherwise if you sell it all at once then um there are occasions when you should sell all at once obviously if some something really changes with the but if it's just cuz of um it's run too much then keep trimming and then you'd be surprised how much it sort of it eases the burden of seeing it going higher if you still own like maybe 10% of your position, you can just ride it to like silly levels. Um that's how I've often framed that as well is um yeah, like never make binary decisions with selling um unless there's a real reason for it. Well, it's funny you mentioned that because it's uh I never actually played blackjack before this summer. I went to uh I went to the Yukon in a couple of site visits. It was like this uh sort of charity casino where the proceeds go to the community or something like that. And so we went there kind of for the laughs. I put in some money into the slots obviously lost it. The guy next to me, the guy that I was with, he actually put in five bucks and got in like 130 out of it like on the first pole and I and I lost like 20 or whatever that put it in. And um it got me pissed off, but he's like, "Let's do let's sit on the blackjack table." So I sit down, start playing, and like beginner's luck, I got two blackjacks back to back and uh and then a third one later on. I'm like, "This is great. I want to stay here." But Eventually, I realized that I tripled my money from from going in. I think I went like with 40 bucks into the into the casino and um lost 20 and the 20 that I had left. I then tripled on the blackjack table. So, up 50% had fun for the night. But you got to leave like at at a certain point, you have even though it was it was a lot of fun. Like the first time there was a bunch of people there and uh it it was just a lot of fun, but you have to leave eventually and and uh I've been thinking about that. Maybe there's not I mean maybe maybe it's not too deep or anything. Uh it's just you know had luck in the casino essentially but it it is blackjack is close to to investing I think and and and so is poker and I've been thinking about that ever since but you do have to leave eventually. Yeah I love that observation as well because it's it's often doing the right thing is often the hardest um thing to do at the time. So selling well is often when the story is the best. It's the biggest update and you're the most excited about the prospects. Whereas um buying is often when the story feels the most hopeless. You kind of feel sick when you look at the stock. It's it's just human wire. We're wired wrong to make money in the markets. We're like behavioral animals. And uh like I say, some of my best purchases ever were simply I put the limit orders in when I was in a rational state before the market opened and then I nearly threw up when I saw they got filled and where the market traded and I wanted to jump in my account and sell it again and thought it was going to zero. So it's um yeah, I'd never never overestimate your ability to how you think you'll act rationally at the time. I I always love the um example of uh Stanley Draken Miller and he um he's like literally the most impeccable track record ever. He's never had a down year in like 30 years. He um knocks like Buffett and everyone else's um track records out of the water. and he had a period in uh the dotcom boom where he just couldn't handle watching a few young guys just absolutely um making tons of money and he jumped in um literally at the top of the market with a few billion and um and lost it and um yeah when he got asked about it he's like I knew I shouldn't do it I shouldn't have done it I was just emotional baskets case like I learned nothing from that whole experience just my emotions got the better of me and I was like if the mo most cold calculated guy can make that mistake Don't any of us think we're a puppet. Yeah. Just Well, I think LA, what was it last week? I think I talked to Ian Castle about exactly that. He wrote about it in one post and uh so I talked to him about exactly that situation with with Stanley there and uh with the drug. So, um yeah, there there's there's a lot that we can that we can talk about here. What do you think we're not talking about though? We talked about a lot of commodities. Um, gold, PGM, oil, the drillers, um, seismic even. We tal I took a whole bunch of notes. What are we What are we not talking about though? What did you come here hoping to talk about that I failed to bring up? Um I've I've been recently thinking more and more about like because because I've had this um scenario where I've got decent amount of money in this like thing that was like the South African road ETF that was really hard to get access to and it's funny whenever I flick my um I've got like the use a stock app on um a MacBook and you can um flick to the side and you see all your positions and Rodium's in the middle of it and it's often Rodium just goes to a complete completely different beats the entire market. Like everything else will be deeply red and it's bright green. It's like up 5% when everything's down 3% and then it's the other way around. And I've thought about like there's I certainly want to take my trading to go places where just other people um aren't finding like it's just a little bit too hard. And so an example is I've been like kind of looking around Asia because my whole Asian ball thesis I'm like IB doesn't allow you to go into Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, um doesn't allow you to access a few classes of Chinese shares. Um uh Philippines. Um, I've actually I wrote a piece a while ago on um on emerging financials and I identified a few um Philippine small Philippine banks and they've been shooting the lights out and I did nothing about it because um couldn't access it and um um if I can like rectify that and I've just seen some crazy value and obviously it's um they haven't been a great place to be because the place to be has been US and um in front of passive flows like it's it's just you've um absolutely crushed in that. So, no one's even looking at all this stuff. So, it hasn't received any capital. It's been capital starve. If if any of these stocks are starting to go up, it's purely on their fundamentals. And I just I want to be there. I'm looking at one little Thailand company at the moment that's um it's only like 60 million and it's over 60% of the market cap's in cash and it's um trades like nearly 10% dividend. It just like and this is what bottom crawling. Yeah. I'm just like I give me that sort of stuff every day over even um even some stuff kind of gets a bit like tribal as well. Like I feel like sometimes uranium gets a bit tribal like whenever I talk about it like people oh my can't believe you're like thrown in the towel on that. When people are that wound up about it they're not thinking logically like I my ideal scenario is when I mention something and someone's like why would you want to own that? That's like the worst thing I've ever heard. like that's like sounds like an absolute waste of time. Like um seismic tell me tell me when oil actually starts to work and I'll look at seismic and that's like kind of what I where I want to be. I want to be like almost past peak past peak pessimisms like just complete indifference like why would you even look there? That's yeah that's going to um be such a a waste of um of capital. Well, I it'll be good to to catch up on on these um segments of the sector and and and different sectors in a couple of months time. I'll keep reading the Substack. In the meantime, for people listening, it's uh Trader Ferg on Substack. I think it's I actually read it in my email. So, let me just click through it so I can see the exact link. It's Yeah, traderf.substack.com is where you do your writing these days. You're not on Twitter much these days? No. No. Unfortunately, Twitter's Yeah. taken a turn for the worst. Yeah, I was got a lot to thank Twitter for back in the co days. That was like literally the first social media platform I ever jumped on and um yeah, really enjoyed it then. But it's yeah, it's been taken over by the bots and the the 4U tab and the it's just not a not a fun place to be anymore. Other than judging um market sentiment, I still like typing in tickers and see what everyone's ranting on and judge. Um there's a few people, smart people that put out good work on it, but on the whole, yeah, I don't really go on it nearly as often as I used to. Well, there's you have a free option on Substack, I believe, and then and then the pro version where you write about these articles that we've been talking about. So, again, it's um substack.comtraderf or traderf.substack. substant.com for people listening. Ferg, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I love this. Look forward to coming on again.