SEC Reporting Changes: Discussion on Trump's proposal to shift SEC reporting from quarterly to semiannually, highlighting potential alpha opportunities from structural market changes.
Elon Musk's Tesla Purchase: Analysis of Elon Musk's $1 billion open market purchase of Tesla stock, emphasizing its unprecedented size and the mixed historical performance of large insider buys.
Investment Improvement: Reflections on personal growth as an investor, stressing the importance of avoiding mindless practice and seeking continuous improvement through writing and deep analysis.
Meme Stocks and Market Sentiment: Observations on the current surge in meme stocks and the challenges faced by short sellers, questioning the rationale behind investments in companies with questionable fundamentals.
AI in Investing: Mention of Portrait Analytics, an AI tool for investment research, highlighting its potential to enhance portfolio management and trend analysis.
Transcript
You're about to listen to the Yet Another Value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Today is September 20th. It is my monthly rambling for the month of September. Obviously, none of this investing advice. See the disclaimer at the end of the podcast, but I am going to talk about Oh, where's my list of things I'm going to talk about? I'm going to talk about a few things. First, I want to talk about Trump and his proposal to change the SEC reporting requirements from quarterly to semiannually. just think about how moderate changes in the game structure could be used to generate alpha. So have that discussion. Then wanted to talk about Elon Musk's open market purchase of a billion dollars in Tesla. I think I don't think people realize just how unique and how crazy that purchase is. So a little bit on that. But finally, we're going to talk a little bit about improving as an investor. And then we're going to and then I wrap this up with a discussion of stocks that I know people are in who when I hear people in them, I just I can't believe that they're serious that they're in them. Uh, that was probably the weakest part of the pod, but you know, it's something that's been on my mind just because we've just been seeing I I guess not unique here, but as you see just crazy business models and memecoin and meme stocks explode upwards and wild things on Twitter. I mean, it is truly the season. Short sellers have been despondent in my opinion recently. So, I've just been thinking about getting rich off these crazy companies, how you think about investors that. So, anyway, those are the four things we're going to talk about. Uh, we're going to get to that podcast in a second, but first a word from our sponsors. This podcast is sponsored by Portraitan Analytics.ai. Portrait Analytics is a whole new way to use AI investing. They've got a unique set of AI tools that will help you discover, research, and monitor new investment ideas with unprecedented depth, including allowing you to automatically screen and monitor your portfolio while creating summaries of trends and tailwinds that are driving your stocks. But don't just take my word for it. I had a listener email me and tell me, "I've never thanked anyone for helping me to spend thousands of dollars before, but I never would have heard about Portrait Analytics without your podcast, and I'm just thrilled with how much time it's freed up for me to do highle analysis and portfolio management. It's super accurate and reliable. It's been a complete game changer for me. Like my listener said, Portrait is simple to use, super fast, and really intuitive. Check out Portrait Analytics today and see how they can improve your research process." That's Portrait Analysts at portraitanalytics.ai. All right. Hello and welcome to the yet another value podcast. With me today, I'm happy to have on myself. Uh it is Saturday, September 20th. The longtime listeners know that once a month I I get on and I just ramble for about 30 minutes and talk about everything I've been thinking about for the past month. Uh I really enjoy it. Hopefully you enjoy it, too. We'll get to the ramblings in a second. Well, I guess you know what? I'll tell you what I'm going to ramble about first. First, I want to talk about uh Trump changing the suggesting that the companies change reporting from quarterly to semiannually. Why? Because I just think it's a lot of fun to talk about and think about and I I think there are some interesting nuggets there. So, let's talk about that. I want to talk about the enormous open market purchase that Elon Musk made of Tesla. I want to talk about, as I always do, a little bit of improving and thoughts on improving yourself and kind of learning curves angles. I want to talk about uh things that you change your mind on. And then I want to talk about some meme stocks because you know what? If you're if you're following the markets in September of 2025, it is meme stock and to shitcoin company season and it's just it's just wild out there. So I wanted to put some thoughts on that. So going to jump into all that. But before we do, quick disclaimer, remind everyone nothing on this podcast is investing advice. That's always true, particularly true today because you know I'm just going to ramble for 30 minutes. So let's hop into everything. Uh the first thing I want to start start by talking about is earlier I think it was this week Trump tweeted about changing the reporting changing companies reporting requirements from quarterly to semiannually and the SEC at least seems to be thinking about doing that and why do I want to talk about it? Look, I if you're telling me you're investing in companies for the long term, you you've got great compounders, you're you're buying great AI companies, you're buying great data, whatever it is, do I think it matters if companies report quarterly versus semiannually? No, absolutely not. You know, I I will say if you look at the UK, I think it's been really tough where they do semiannual reporting and then the companies come out with these kind of to be honest BS uh trading updates every quarter where they will selectively disclose stuff. I I don't like it. I would rather companies report quarterly, but I don't think it matters hugely semiannually versus quarterlys. However, I do think it's a really interesting thing to change about. Why is that? Because it is a structural change in the market and it's a moderate structural change and moderate structural changes can present alpha opportunities. You know, I think I like to use sports analogies a lot in basketball. It the three-point line is introduced and guess what? If you were faster to adopt the three-point line, and I think NBA teams benefit, hindsight, were very slow to adopt it. If you were faster to adopt the three-point line, then your team benefited. And that, you know, you look in the 2010s, the teams that were pushing the envelope on taking three-pointers were the they were getting huge structural advantages in the game. Three-pointers versus quarterly/ semiannually reporting. Okay, may maybe we're being a little bit facicious. But you know what? In the 90s in basketball, they moved the three-point line in by two feet. And I think it really changed a lot of the strategy and everything, too. And that might be more. But think about quarterly versus annually. If I told you tomorrow all companies are going to reporting semiannually versus quarterly, you could make alpha really fast. Just one way you could do it is if you think about options. Option prices tend to be highest right after quarterly earnings. Why? Because there's volatility on earnings. Everybody knows, you know, follow Netflix, the stock is up 10% or down 10% after every earnings. You know, if you're buying an option that includes an earnings release, it's going to be more valuable because there's more volatility giving the quarterly earnings. If you tell me tomorrow that all companies are going to switch from quarteries to semiannually, you could make alpha by going and selling a bunch of April and October call options. Why? Because right now those call options have the volatility of sorry I said April. I think it would be May and May and November actually because May, you know, most companies report their Q1 earnings in late April. So May options incorporate that Q1 earnings volatility. November options, most companies report Q3 earnings in late October, early November. November options include that Q3 earnings volatility. If Q3 and Q1 reporting go away, will the volatility on those options come down? And then the volatility, there's going to be more volatility in the Q2 and Q4 updates because instead of getting, you know, if you think of a company that they report Q1 earnings and they miss or they beat or whatever and they give guidance, well, that takes away some volatility from the Q2 earnings because now you know how the things are going. Well, Q2 and Q4 earnings are going to be lit in this scenario, right? Because now companies might be coming out and giving you, you know, it's six months of information instead of three months of information. So you could make alpha by selling the overpriced at this point options that incorporate the Q1 and Q earnings. So that would be the Mays and November and buying options that incorporate the that don't incorporate the heightened volatility of the Q2 and Q4 earnings. So that would be kind of, you know, if I'm doing it, most companies report their Q2 earnings in late July. So you'd probably want August earnings. And then most companies report their full year earnings, you know, somewhere in February to early March. So maybe you want March. That could be a systematic trade that would generate insane amounts of alpha if you believed it. And you know, please go see the full disclaimer. I'm not saying anyone individually should put this on. This is the type of thing that quant shops would do, right? Like they would they would really monetize that. But it's just an example of hey, that would be kind of quote unquote free alpha that you could systematically make if you really thought and understood how the structure of the the markets change. You know, the other one I do think is right now around earnings. Uh it's not lost some people that a lot of the pod shops I think it's a little overwhelmed but a lot of the pod shops model is figuring you know company X is reporting earnings now we get our position 3 days in advance of it we've got the whisper numbers we've got views on the quarters and everything the quarter happens and there's lots of changing and positioning stuff you do wonder if that happens four times a year that's one thing if that happens two times a year how does that affect the pawn shop model how does that affect all of us who are trading against the it's just really interesting to think about and you could imagine lots of bolt-on effects. You know, 20 years ago, there was lots of alpha around index kicks, right? Uh the S&P drop something and there was just all this forelling. Today, the a lot of quant shops make a lot of gains off of anticipating the index kicks, right? If they think a stock's going to get booted in June, they start shorting it in April and they they've got, you know, up totheminute models of what's likely to be included, deleted, all this sort of stuff. you could imagine lots of ways like moderate structural things like this could create a lot of alpha for someone who's thinking about it. So I I just wanted to mention it and think about it. You know, I I I think it's been a little underdised that yes, if you're a value investor, if you're doing long-term investing, if you're not doing like crazy quantity models, it probably doesn't matter for the long term, but it could matter for game selection and where you can pick up alpha and things that are mispriced. I could imagine lots of ways it could do that. I I'll just give one more example. If you get more volatility around earnings, that could be even if you're not trading earnings, that could be a lot more opportunity to buy stocks, you know, a company comes out and instead of Q1 earnings, they miss, they come out in Q2 earnings, it's the first time they've heard and they miss and they miss badly and they up their date their guidance badly. If that's a company you really like, this stock is probably more likely to overshoot to the downside. So, I even if you're not playing the quarterly earnings game, you could imagine how it changes. Hey, you know, it's more important for me to wait for a company to report earnings because if they slightly miss, I'm going to get my shot to buy really good companies because they're more likely to overshoot to the downside. So, uh, just wanted to mention that. I I think it's really fun to think about. I'm not saying I'm doing anything there. I I don't know if the change is going to be implemented, all that sort of stuff, but anytime you have a structural change, I do think it it's useful to think about and to start incorporated and thinking, hey, how can I use this structural change to my advantage? I've kind of laid out the ways I think I would probably use it, particularly the maybe a little more dry powder waiting for more volatility around earnings. But I I I think that's very interesting to think about. Let me move on to the second thing I want to talk about. Now, this if you read the blog, I'm at it. I'm recording this September 20th. I'm actively working on a blog post that I'm probably going to put up September 22nd. So, might duplicate the blog a little bit, might not. Who knows? I'll include a link to the blog in the show notes if you want to go read it. But Elon Musk bought a billion dollars of Tesla on the open market last week. I think he temp tech technically did it September 12th and filed the form for September 15th. And I was a little surprised. You know, everybody mentioned I saw lots of mentions. CNBC covered. Everyone covered it. It's Elon, it's Tesla, it's a huge it's a billion dollar buy. Really nice round number work there. A lot of coverage of it just saying, "Hey, this signals Elon's bullishness." All this sort of stuff. And that's probably true. You know the old adage insiders buy for insiders sell for a lot of reasons but they only buy for one reason. They think the stock's going up. And you know say what you will I think a lot of insiders under started to understand that hey the we buy a token amount of stock and it signals confidence in the business and gets our investors offer back. So you know I I'm pretty dismissive when I see oh CEO who's making $4 million per year buys $4,000 of stock on the open market. A billion dollars is a really big number and it is curious, you know, in the wake of Elon's worth so much money. Is a billion dollars a token amount to Elon or not? I I don't fully know the answer, but you know, still it's a billion dollars. It's a big purchase. So, all that kind of got covered. What I was surprised by was I don't think people understand quite the scope of how big this is, right? I I I spend a lot of time following insider purchases and my favorite way to use insider purchases now is actually not looking at individual company insider purchases. Though I do think those are important and useful signals and all that type of stuff. I've actually come to have really good success to be honest with you. I I wish I had leaned harder into it and I'm going to lean harder into it. It's one of the reasons I've been thinking about Elon Musk following sectorwide transactions. So what do I mean by that? I'm not looking, hey, you know, is the CEO at Bank X is their stock down and he's buying the the bank stock. That's that's nice. But in mid 2023 in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank failing and First Republic getting taken over by JP Morgan, all the regional banks got crushed. They were all trading below book value. And I was very bullish on uh banks uh when all this happened. I've got the the post to prove it. You know, I wish I had been more so bullish banks. And one of the reason I was bullish on bank was just across the board. across the spectrum. You could throw a dart at any regional bank and you would find directors buying on the open market, the CEO buying on the open market. And often these weren't in enormous enormous sizes. You know, we weren't talking about a CEO going and buying out a billion dollars of stock, but you were talking about directors buy, you know, multiple directors buying a full year worth of their boards fee on the in the open market for a lot of them for the first time ever making insider purchases. CEOs putting you know hundreds of thousands of dollars here. So you were seeing it across the board and I've come to believe that type of across the board insider buying is really really interesting and I can really only point to two places where it's happened for me and both of them have been great success. Maybe it's NF2 but one was banks in mid 2023 and the other would be busted biotech which I was pounding the table on earlier this year again not and I'm not tooting my own horn. I'm I'll be happy to throw my nose in the myriad amounts of mistakes I've made in the past, but I I do think those are interesting as signals. So anyway, I follow these closely because of those signals. And what I think is getting mis under reportported on Elon Musk is just the pure size of this. I cannot find another insider transaction that comes anywhere close to this size. And part of that is just because there aren't a lot of people with a billion dollars lying around and there aren't a lot of companies that can take a billion dollars of insider buying on the open market. But, you know, the closest I could find, and by the way, the SEC's website is not easy to track on this, but if I just look, the closest I could find would be Dusk Dustin Muskovitz at Asana. The ticker there is ASAN. He bought 350 million of Asana stock in 2022. Now, that was directly from the company. So, even that was not on the open market. Now, Dustin, if you go and look at Asana, again, the ticker is ASAN, that is a very interesting history because I actually believe he has made the most aggressive insider purchasing of all time. He did that 350 million slug directly from the company, but he also filed a bunch of 10b plans to buy stock on the open market at Asana. I I believe from late 2021 till uh the end of 2022, he bought a billion dollars of stock on the open market, including multiple hundred million open market slugs. So, I think that's the largest insider buy of all time before Elon. Uh, that one's interesting because the stock's been a disaster. So, uh, I I think that's interesting. But, so that's one, right? You kind of get through a year's worth of a 10B5 buying on the open market. You kind of get to a billion dollars, including a 350 million slug directly from the company. The only other one that I could find that even rivals this size is Berkshire buying 3 billion of Oxytock on the open market in early 2022. That was one form4 they bought three billion of Oxy stock. They actually bought more than that. You know, people remember Buffett used to there was like I think it was $60 per share or $55 per share. I think he had like kind of a limit and if it went below that Bergkshire would make huge huge purchases of Oxy. I think they probably bought six or seven billion of Oxy on the open market back in 2022. Now, why is that interesting? It's not a direct comparable because Birkshire is a financial buyer, not an insider, right? They're only filing a form four because they own more than 10%. That's the only other one of similar size that I can find. Uh, but it was through a form four. So, that's I don't think that's a comparable like Elon buying. It's not an insider, but that's the only other one. If we were talking form four, just like straight inside of binds, Dustin Mosvid as Asana would do it. Uh Harold Ham bought 200 million of CLR at the depths of COVID in 2000 June and July 2020, late June, early July 2020. That was $200 million across a couple of 50 million slugs around that time frame. Outside of those, there's Jamie Diamond bought 26 million of JP Morgan on the open market in late in early 2016. Toman Foretta who is not a who is not an insider at win but he does own over 10% and he's a gaming CEO. He bought I think he's got the largest insider purchase of 2025 before Elon. It was 27 million of Win stock in late March early 2000 early April of this year and then yeah I mean aside from that that's it. So look, I I I just listen to these guys, right? Like the biggest ones are 25 million. There's 100 one or 250 to 100 million one, but I think it shows just the pure scope. Like this is insane. And I I don't think it got talked about enough. You know, it kind of be like if Wilt Chamberlain came and scored a 180 points in today's NBA, right? Where the top NBA scorer might get 50 to 60. You'd be like, what? Like it it's so much higher than anyone else is scoring. teams aren't scoring this much and the man dropped something. I I have just never seen anything this scope. So, I think that's interesting. Just the size I think has been under reportported. But here's the other interesting thing. You know, most of the reporting centered on this is a bullish signal from Elon Musk and it is. He dropped a billion dollars of company a billion dollars of his own money on the company. People don't do that if they're bearish. But the other interesting thing is the history of these types of open market insider buys is actually really really poor. And you know, the first one I'd mentioned is Asana. You know, Dustin starts buying Asauna and the stock price is closer to $100 per share than you know, I think he starts buying in the 80s. Asana today, I'm pulling it up as you and I speak. Asana today is trading for, let's see, it's trading for $14 per share. I mean, this has been some of the it has been some of the worst capital allocation of all time. It's been a disaster. The other ones don't look great. Now Jamie Diamond buys JP Morgan that does very well. Tilman Fertitta, his purchase of Wayne looks like it's doing pretty well. You know, I'd say it's early, but it looks like he timed it well. It's doing pretty well, but again, he's not really an insider, so I don't know how to think about that. Uh Bergkshire, the three billion of purchases of Oxy. Oxy hasn't done that well since the Oxy stock is about flat since early 2022. It's underperformed the S&P 500. And it, you know, you can say, oh, it was oil and gas. There was uh a lot of macro stuff that happened since then. Yes, you're correct. But go pull up the largest oil and gas stock since uh when Bergkshire was buying Oxy back in 2022. Axon's about in line with the S&P 500, Chevron, all all these guys. Oxy's been a huge lagard. So Bergkshire, you know, Buffett's the smartest guy in every room he walks into. He's a legend. He's the goat. But the the Oxy purchases don't exactly cover him cover him in uh glory, right? So I think the history of these huge insider purchases is not just mixed. I I think it's actually kind of negative. It's not great. I'll give you one more. Patrick Sunoon I want to say who run all the Nance the he bought the LA Times and these are all the a lot of biotech firms back in 2020 right when the right when Harold Ham is doing the p purchase of CLR. Uh he Patrick puts $45 million into NK is the ticker at the time. I think it's Nat Nance. It's one of his Nance. It's NK K West is what it trades on in the open market. He puts 45 million into them. Now this is through a private placement, but I think it's a really interesting private placement because if you go back and read the filings, uh he puts money into Nance at about $12 per share. And alongside his $12 per share offering, the company goes and does a public offering that prices at $9 per share. So he puts money into the company at this big premium, you know, a 30% premium to where the public uh equity offering goes off and it's 45 million. So it's huge. Company's been a disaster since then. So again, I don't know uh I I don't know how this turns out for anyone, but I was just surprised. I'd never, you know, I saw lots of people say, "Hey, this is Elon's biggest insider buy of Tesla ever, which is 100% true." He's done a little bit of insider buying of Tesla in the past, but if you look, it's normally been alongside equity offerings, and it's much smaller than this. This is huge. It's orders of magnitude bigger than anything he's ever done. But it's also orders of magnitude bigger than anything else I can find in the public markets. So, I just think that size is really interesting. And then, you know, I saw a lot of bears who got real quiet when Elon bought a billion dollars of stock on the open market. Saw a lot of bulls who got real excited and probably rightly so. So, like this is a really good signal value, but I think if you look at the history of these big purchases, it's actually CEOs who are kind of getting high on their own supply. Now, again, that's not to say that this can't turn out well. If I go look at the Jamie the Jaime Diamond JP Morgan's uh purchase, JP Morgan's up almost 7x with dividends reinvested since he made that purchase in 2016. The indices are up 3x, right? If I go back, I mentioned Harold Ham. That's a really interesting one. Founder CLR depths of COVID late June, early July 2020, he buys 200 million of CLR for about $17 per share. He would take CLR private uh a few years later. I think it was late 2022 at like 70 mid to low70s per share. So, you know, he kind of set his own marks on both sides, but he's got a four to five background in his hand. So, not saying it's all a disaster, but the history of these, you know, you think about the NK investment I mentioned, you think about the Muskovitz investment, you think about the Birkshire for big foreign fours don't always mean super bullish stuff for people. So, I'll have a post on that. Uh, but I just thought it was really interesting and I wanted to point that out. Let me switch rapidly here. Let me go to improvement. And you know, I've been writing and talking a lot about improvement and improving investing. Uh I the Ardan Folken podcast number 333, we got just absolute rave reviews from people really enjoyed us talking about that. Uh one of the reasons I talk so much about improving is because I'm trying to improve, right? And I'll just give you one thing. Like I worry it's very easy to do mindless practice. Uh, I I'll give you an example. You know, I look at a few things in my life. One, grade school, I played a lot of golf with my dad, and that was awesome. We probably went to the driving range three to four times a week. I probably played a full 18 holes with my dad once a week, and we probably walked nine holes once or twice a week. So, that's a decent bit of practice. And to be honest, I just wasn't that good. I I just wasn't that good. And I I look back at the amount of time I was putting in grade school into doing this, and it was mainly time, I think, to spend with my dad. But, you know, I look at the amount of time I put into it. I'm like, damn, you were you're pretty damn bad for how much time you put into it. You know, I think like I'm not saying I needed to be a scratch golfer, but I I was in sixth, eighth grade. Not saying I need to be a scratch golfer, but you know, my peers were much better than me, and I think I was spending as much, if not more time at the driving range than them. or I look at in high school I probably played an average amount of video games versus my peers. But I kind of look at it and say, man, if you were playing an average amount of video games in high school and college versus your peers, you know, probably should have been better than I was to be honest at these games. And I I just look and say, hey, this was mindless practice. This was mindless time. Like even if you thought you were getting better when you were going to the driving range theater for times per week, you weren't really getting better. I think it was mindless. So, I'm pointing this out as a personal fail failing of myself, right? Uh I can look at the pure amount of time you put on something and the pure amount of times like kind of I just think of it as spinning my wheels, but it's not actually improving and getting better. It's just like mindless time. So, that's one of the reasons I've thought so much about improving and getting better always, but particularly recently because I spend a lot of eth and time doing investing, working on this, doing the product, and I want to make sure that the time I spend investing is driving towards something. It's getting better. It's not mindless. Why do I mention all this? A, I like to rant. I like to talk. And sometimes I think when I say stuff out loud, it makes more sense than when I'm writing it, which might suggest some failures as a writer. The reason I mentioned all now is someone pointed to I I was talking to someone and they pointed me to an old Todd Combmes Ted Wesler interview when they they had been at Berkshire for a year or two and one of them comes out and says look I'm in my mid-50s and joining Berkshire and working with Buffett for the past year or two however long it has been this has been the steepest learning curve of my career like I'm learning so much but it's been really difficult and it's involved a lot of work and I I thought that was really interesting. You know, I am I'm more late 30s than mid-30s at this point, but I don't consider myself a finished product by any means, but you know, I I I would say I I think of the learning curve and the work curve, and I I I think it's it was harder earlier than it is now. Uh and it it's it makes me excited that there's still that much more to learn, and I I truly believe that, but it got me thinking like what about joining Bergkshire and joining Buffett was it that pushed the learning curve? so high like what were they doing? What what specifically was it? Was it the depth of Buffett's questions? Was there something else? Like what was it? How can I model it? How can I repeat it? How can I use it to get myself better? I have no good answers there. Like literally none. Uh I will say I I you know, and I can use the podcast for this as well. I I would suspect one of the things is the depth of questions, but I also think it's a fine line. I I I've never talked about it in person, but there's also a fine line that I find myself maybe I tap tiptoe around too much, but what is pushing and what is learning versus how do you do it without being a completely condescending know-it-all butthole? I again, I don't know the answer there, but it's one thing I've really been thinking about like, hey, how can I push myself to get better? How can I push the people who I talk to a lot to get better? How can I do the latter without being a complete butthole who you know they're people might get better if you yell at them a lot but you're just a butthole if you do that like how do it in a way that's collaborative that's encouraged like when I look at Bergkshire it does seem like a very collaborative environment that people do seem to like being there uh how do you push each other but in a way that everyone feels like they're getting better and they feel like they're they feel happy about it so a lot of stuff that has been on my mind on improvement there uh I I'm always open to suggestions. If you tell me, "Hey, Andrew, this is something that I do in my investment process that makes me a lot better of investor or that I feel like helped me improve, I'm open to it." I will tell you, for me personally, I think the thing that helps me improve, I think I improve the most when I am writing the most, when I am thinking the most, when I am putting stuff publicly out. One reason I like these ramblings, prepping for them helps me clarify my thoughts, help me deepen my thought. I tell people all the time, I've been writing the blog for, let's call it, 10 years. I go back and read the stuff I read wrote not just 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago. I'm embarrassed a lot of times and I'm kind of happy about that, you know, not happy to embarrass, but I'm happy that I think the person who is writing thinking would be doing this today would write something better, would do something better, would be better, would think about this better. I feel the same way with a lot of my investments as well. So, you know, always trying to improve, always trying to get better. Uh podcasts, I mean, the first podcast I did, I I'm just so embarrassed by, but I think I'm still getting better at that. So, I'm trying to get better. I'm always open to it. I was not rambling there. I I I think you can see that. Uh last thing I I wanted to mention, uh two two last things. St. You know what? Let's save stuff you change your mind on because I'm going to go back to the Charlie Mer and Warren Buffett. Well, I can save that for ne next month. I I'll leave you a little tease stuff you change your mind on. I'll leave you a little tease for next month because we're running long. Let me start I I want to end with the last thing and that's Shitco stocks, meme stocks, whatever you want to call them, right? There are a lot of them out there. And I the reason they're on my mind right now is if you are paying attention to the markets in September of 2025, uh, shitco, it is shitco stock season. I mean, these things are just going parabolic. I know short sellers have been borderline despondent re recently and probably with good reason. If you are a company with uh no revenue, a bad business model, or maybe no business model, a high short interest, and this last part is very important, and I don't own you, because if you've got the first three, and I own your stock, I guarantee you've been getting killed. But if you've got the combination of the three, and I don't own you, your stock has been a rocket ship recently. And I'm not going to name any of the stocks. Uh but I I'm sure everyone knows many of them and can point to some of them and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, I mentioned that because there are some that are controversial where I understand both sides of the controversy, right? I could see the bull case, I could see the bear case, I'm not involved. There are some where I can see the bull case and I'm involved. There are some where I can see the bear case and I'm probably not involved because I'm just not going to show this up. But there are some of of these controversial ones where it's clear to me the the bulls are just insane. And you would normally associate that with I I I hate to use retail, but you know, you think about some of the retail stocks that went bankrupt and had these cult followings behind them and stuff. I normally associate that with retail, but there's one or one or two or seven that when I look at them, it's just so clear to me that the technology is, you know, a bunch of smoke and mirrors and the company is just completely unserious and they are just hitting the ATM and insiders are selling non-stop and all this sort of stuff and the stocks have screamed higher. you know, they're uh the a 5x, a 10x, a 20x, whatever it is. But I I'll have people reach out to me and talk to me or I'll talk to my friends and they'll be invested in them. And it doesn't even have to be those. Uh there are some controlled companies where I think the management teams are clearly bad actors or their assets suck and I'll talk to people and they'll they'll love them. And anyway, the what I'm driving at is there are companies and stocks where when I talk I I think they're so clearly bad ideas that sometimes when I hear people are long them, I'm just like, hey, I don't know like I just take the person less seriously. And I I I don't know if I'm like, you know, everybody does I'd hate to be judged by what I do on my worst day. I'd love to be judged by what I do on my best day, but I'd hate if somebody, you know, like in the moment, rush hour traffic, I don't know, whatever. I did something uncharacteristic. I hate if people like looked at that one moment and apply that to the entire time of my life, right? I probably shouldn't be judging one investor, even if they're a concentrated investor, based on this one investment that I don't understand that for a lot of them have worked out really, really well, right? But when I look at that, when I look at being long these companies, I'm just like, I don't know how you can be a serious investor and be long this. And I don't know where I'm going with that. But, you know, I I'll talk to these people and I just I don't get it. And I don't know how much like if you are long if if you're a concentrated investor and long 10 companies and nine of them, you know, you and I can have a good discussion on and I'm having good, you know, we've got good points and I'm learning a lot from you. And then the 10th you say, "Hey, I'm I'm long this, you know, pot of magic beans because I think the magic beans actually sprout a uh giant beantock that grows to the sky and then we'll go up to the sky and we'll live with the giants and get rich off their riches forever." And I'm just like, "No, dude. This is just like a pot of magic beans that are actually just beans that are being sold to you." and all the red flags around this, you know, the insider selling, the insider selling, the ATM issuance, all all these red flags, the shady accounting, all this, like you just ignore it all because the magic beans will grow into a bean suck. I don't know how to think about that when I'm talking to other investors and when I'm doing work. So anyway, I it's on my mind because some of these like, you know, we're almost done with Q3. You're going to start getting Q3 letters or you can go on Twitter and you can find people taking these crazy victory laps. you know, retail people who went yolo long and choose your AI winner right before the Fed cut and now they've made 100x their money in, you know, 24 hours. And I guess good for them. I wish I had done that. But, you know, I'm more thinking about the serious people who have made five baggers this year on these companies or who continue to pitch these companies that have are controlled codes and aren't getting this. But, how do you judge somebody when they've got like one one to me error of omission that's just so glaring and so poor? I don't know. Maybe it's a failure of understanding on my end, but it's something I've been thinking about and it's going to get more. I think I'm going to be thinking about a lot further as, you know, I get hit with people who say, "Hey, I'm up 400% this year because I was long pot of magic beans that went up quite a bit." You know, how do you think about them as investor? And it's one of the reasons Art Folk and I I hate to bring it back to that conversation. We talked about a lot about how do you disagate someone's track record? And I I I think it's just really interesting. Okay, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble. I am rambling. This has been uh a lot of fun for me. It is September 20th. Uh I am looking forward I think we've got a great set of podcasts coming up for you. I'm looking forward to those. I am looking forward to getting my post up on Elon's open market purchase. I'll include a link in the show notes. Uh as always, you can reach out, love to chat, love to swap thoughts, love to have you help me improve as a podcaster, as an investor, all that sort of stuff. But I really enjoy doing these. I thank you for listening and I am looking forward to chatting next month. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial adviser. Thanks.
September 2025 Random Ramblings
Summary
Transcript
You're about to listen to the Yet Another Value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Today is September 20th. It is my monthly rambling for the month of September. Obviously, none of this investing advice. See the disclaimer at the end of the podcast, but I am going to talk about Oh, where's my list of things I'm going to talk about? I'm going to talk about a few things. First, I want to talk about Trump and his proposal to change the SEC reporting requirements from quarterly to semiannually. just think about how moderate changes in the game structure could be used to generate alpha. So have that discussion. Then wanted to talk about Elon Musk's open market purchase of a billion dollars in Tesla. I think I don't think people realize just how unique and how crazy that purchase is. So a little bit on that. But finally, we're going to talk a little bit about improving as an investor. And then we're going to and then I wrap this up with a discussion of stocks that I know people are in who when I hear people in them, I just I can't believe that they're serious that they're in them. Uh, that was probably the weakest part of the pod, but you know, it's something that's been on my mind just because we've just been seeing I I guess not unique here, but as you see just crazy business models and memecoin and meme stocks explode upwards and wild things on Twitter. I mean, it is truly the season. Short sellers have been despondent in my opinion recently. So, I've just been thinking about getting rich off these crazy companies, how you think about investors that. So, anyway, those are the four things we're going to talk about. Uh, we're going to get to that podcast in a second, but first a word from our sponsors. This podcast is sponsored by Portraitan Analytics.ai. Portrait Analytics is a whole new way to use AI investing. They've got a unique set of AI tools that will help you discover, research, and monitor new investment ideas with unprecedented depth, including allowing you to automatically screen and monitor your portfolio while creating summaries of trends and tailwinds that are driving your stocks. But don't just take my word for it. I had a listener email me and tell me, "I've never thanked anyone for helping me to spend thousands of dollars before, but I never would have heard about Portrait Analytics without your podcast, and I'm just thrilled with how much time it's freed up for me to do highle analysis and portfolio management. It's super accurate and reliable. It's been a complete game changer for me. Like my listener said, Portrait is simple to use, super fast, and really intuitive. Check out Portrait Analytics today and see how they can improve your research process." That's Portrait Analysts at portraitanalytics.ai. All right. Hello and welcome to the yet another value podcast. With me today, I'm happy to have on myself. Uh it is Saturday, September 20th. The longtime listeners know that once a month I I get on and I just ramble for about 30 minutes and talk about everything I've been thinking about for the past month. Uh I really enjoy it. Hopefully you enjoy it, too. We'll get to the ramblings in a second. Well, I guess you know what? I'll tell you what I'm going to ramble about first. First, I want to talk about uh Trump changing the suggesting that the companies change reporting from quarterly to semiannually. Why? Because I just think it's a lot of fun to talk about and think about and I I think there are some interesting nuggets there. So, let's talk about that. I want to talk about the enormous open market purchase that Elon Musk made of Tesla. I want to talk about, as I always do, a little bit of improving and thoughts on improving yourself and kind of learning curves angles. I want to talk about uh things that you change your mind on. And then I want to talk about some meme stocks because you know what? If you're if you're following the markets in September of 2025, it is meme stock and to shitcoin company season and it's just it's just wild out there. So I wanted to put some thoughts on that. So going to jump into all that. But before we do, quick disclaimer, remind everyone nothing on this podcast is investing advice. That's always true, particularly true today because you know I'm just going to ramble for 30 minutes. So let's hop into everything. Uh the first thing I want to start start by talking about is earlier I think it was this week Trump tweeted about changing the reporting changing companies reporting requirements from quarterly to semiannually and the SEC at least seems to be thinking about doing that and why do I want to talk about it? Look, I if you're telling me you're investing in companies for the long term, you you've got great compounders, you're you're buying great AI companies, you're buying great data, whatever it is, do I think it matters if companies report quarterly versus semiannually? No, absolutely not. You know, I I will say if you look at the UK, I think it's been really tough where they do semiannual reporting and then the companies come out with these kind of to be honest BS uh trading updates every quarter where they will selectively disclose stuff. I I don't like it. I would rather companies report quarterly, but I don't think it matters hugely semiannually versus quarterlys. However, I do think it's a really interesting thing to change about. Why is that? Because it is a structural change in the market and it's a moderate structural change and moderate structural changes can present alpha opportunities. You know, I think I like to use sports analogies a lot in basketball. It the three-point line is introduced and guess what? If you were faster to adopt the three-point line, and I think NBA teams benefit, hindsight, were very slow to adopt it. If you were faster to adopt the three-point line, then your team benefited. And that, you know, you look in the 2010s, the teams that were pushing the envelope on taking three-pointers were the they were getting huge structural advantages in the game. Three-pointers versus quarterly/ semiannually reporting. Okay, may maybe we're being a little bit facicious. But you know what? In the 90s in basketball, they moved the three-point line in by two feet. And I think it really changed a lot of the strategy and everything, too. And that might be more. But think about quarterly versus annually. If I told you tomorrow all companies are going to reporting semiannually versus quarterly, you could make alpha really fast. Just one way you could do it is if you think about options. Option prices tend to be highest right after quarterly earnings. Why? Because there's volatility on earnings. Everybody knows, you know, follow Netflix, the stock is up 10% or down 10% after every earnings. You know, if you're buying an option that includes an earnings release, it's going to be more valuable because there's more volatility giving the quarterly earnings. If you tell me tomorrow that all companies are going to switch from quarteries to semiannually, you could make alpha by going and selling a bunch of April and October call options. Why? Because right now those call options have the volatility of sorry I said April. I think it would be May and May and November actually because May, you know, most companies report their Q1 earnings in late April. So May options incorporate that Q1 earnings volatility. November options, most companies report Q3 earnings in late October, early November. November options include that Q3 earnings volatility. If Q3 and Q1 reporting go away, will the volatility on those options come down? And then the volatility, there's going to be more volatility in the Q2 and Q4 updates because instead of getting, you know, if you think of a company that they report Q1 earnings and they miss or they beat or whatever and they give guidance, well, that takes away some volatility from the Q2 earnings because now you know how the things are going. Well, Q2 and Q4 earnings are going to be lit in this scenario, right? Because now companies might be coming out and giving you, you know, it's six months of information instead of three months of information. So you could make alpha by selling the overpriced at this point options that incorporate the Q1 and Q earnings. So that would be the Mays and November and buying options that incorporate the that don't incorporate the heightened volatility of the Q2 and Q4 earnings. So that would be kind of, you know, if I'm doing it, most companies report their Q2 earnings in late July. So you'd probably want August earnings. And then most companies report their full year earnings, you know, somewhere in February to early March. So maybe you want March. That could be a systematic trade that would generate insane amounts of alpha if you believed it. And you know, please go see the full disclaimer. I'm not saying anyone individually should put this on. This is the type of thing that quant shops would do, right? Like they would they would really monetize that. But it's just an example of hey, that would be kind of quote unquote free alpha that you could systematically make if you really thought and understood how the structure of the the markets change. You know, the other one I do think is right now around earnings. Uh it's not lost some people that a lot of the pod shops I think it's a little overwhelmed but a lot of the pod shops model is figuring you know company X is reporting earnings now we get our position 3 days in advance of it we've got the whisper numbers we've got views on the quarters and everything the quarter happens and there's lots of changing and positioning stuff you do wonder if that happens four times a year that's one thing if that happens two times a year how does that affect the pawn shop model how does that affect all of us who are trading against the it's just really interesting to think about and you could imagine lots of bolt-on effects. You know, 20 years ago, there was lots of alpha around index kicks, right? Uh the S&P drop something and there was just all this forelling. Today, the a lot of quant shops make a lot of gains off of anticipating the index kicks, right? If they think a stock's going to get booted in June, they start shorting it in April and they they've got, you know, up totheminute models of what's likely to be included, deleted, all this sort of stuff. you could imagine lots of ways like moderate structural things like this could create a lot of alpha for someone who's thinking about it. So I I just wanted to mention it and think about it. You know, I I I think it's been a little underdised that yes, if you're a value investor, if you're doing long-term investing, if you're not doing like crazy quantity models, it probably doesn't matter for the long term, but it could matter for game selection and where you can pick up alpha and things that are mispriced. I could imagine lots of ways it could do that. I I'll just give one more example. If you get more volatility around earnings, that could be even if you're not trading earnings, that could be a lot more opportunity to buy stocks, you know, a company comes out and instead of Q1 earnings, they miss, they come out in Q2 earnings, it's the first time they've heard and they miss and they miss badly and they up their date their guidance badly. If that's a company you really like, this stock is probably more likely to overshoot to the downside. So, I even if you're not playing the quarterly earnings game, you could imagine how it changes. Hey, you know, it's more important for me to wait for a company to report earnings because if they slightly miss, I'm going to get my shot to buy really good companies because they're more likely to overshoot to the downside. So, uh, just wanted to mention that. I I think it's really fun to think about. I'm not saying I'm doing anything there. I I don't know if the change is going to be implemented, all that sort of stuff, but anytime you have a structural change, I do think it it's useful to think about and to start incorporated and thinking, hey, how can I use this structural change to my advantage? I've kind of laid out the ways I think I would probably use it, particularly the maybe a little more dry powder waiting for more volatility around earnings. But I I I think that's very interesting to think about. Let me move on to the second thing I want to talk about. Now, this if you read the blog, I'm at it. I'm recording this September 20th. I'm actively working on a blog post that I'm probably going to put up September 22nd. So, might duplicate the blog a little bit, might not. Who knows? I'll include a link to the blog in the show notes if you want to go read it. But Elon Musk bought a billion dollars of Tesla on the open market last week. I think he temp tech technically did it September 12th and filed the form for September 15th. And I was a little surprised. You know, everybody mentioned I saw lots of mentions. CNBC covered. Everyone covered it. It's Elon, it's Tesla, it's a huge it's a billion dollar buy. Really nice round number work there. A lot of coverage of it just saying, "Hey, this signals Elon's bullishness." All this sort of stuff. And that's probably true. You know the old adage insiders buy for insiders sell for a lot of reasons but they only buy for one reason. They think the stock's going up. And you know say what you will I think a lot of insiders under started to understand that hey the we buy a token amount of stock and it signals confidence in the business and gets our investors offer back. So you know I I'm pretty dismissive when I see oh CEO who's making $4 million per year buys $4,000 of stock on the open market. A billion dollars is a really big number and it is curious, you know, in the wake of Elon's worth so much money. Is a billion dollars a token amount to Elon or not? I I don't fully know the answer, but you know, still it's a billion dollars. It's a big purchase. So, all that kind of got covered. What I was surprised by was I don't think people understand quite the scope of how big this is, right? I I I spend a lot of time following insider purchases and my favorite way to use insider purchases now is actually not looking at individual company insider purchases. Though I do think those are important and useful signals and all that type of stuff. I've actually come to have really good success to be honest with you. I I wish I had leaned harder into it and I'm going to lean harder into it. It's one of the reasons I've been thinking about Elon Musk following sectorwide transactions. So what do I mean by that? I'm not looking, hey, you know, is the CEO at Bank X is their stock down and he's buying the the bank stock. That's that's nice. But in mid 2023 in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank failing and First Republic getting taken over by JP Morgan, all the regional banks got crushed. They were all trading below book value. And I was very bullish on uh banks uh when all this happened. I've got the the post to prove it. You know, I wish I had been more so bullish banks. And one of the reason I was bullish on bank was just across the board. across the spectrum. You could throw a dart at any regional bank and you would find directors buying on the open market, the CEO buying on the open market. And often these weren't in enormous enormous sizes. You know, we weren't talking about a CEO going and buying out a billion dollars of stock, but you were talking about directors buy, you know, multiple directors buying a full year worth of their boards fee on the in the open market for a lot of them for the first time ever making insider purchases. CEOs putting you know hundreds of thousands of dollars here. So you were seeing it across the board and I've come to believe that type of across the board insider buying is really really interesting and I can really only point to two places where it's happened for me and both of them have been great success. Maybe it's NF2 but one was banks in mid 2023 and the other would be busted biotech which I was pounding the table on earlier this year again not and I'm not tooting my own horn. I'm I'll be happy to throw my nose in the myriad amounts of mistakes I've made in the past, but I I do think those are interesting as signals. So anyway, I follow these closely because of those signals. And what I think is getting mis under reportported on Elon Musk is just the pure size of this. I cannot find another insider transaction that comes anywhere close to this size. And part of that is just because there aren't a lot of people with a billion dollars lying around and there aren't a lot of companies that can take a billion dollars of insider buying on the open market. But, you know, the closest I could find, and by the way, the SEC's website is not easy to track on this, but if I just look, the closest I could find would be Dusk Dustin Muskovitz at Asana. The ticker there is ASAN. He bought 350 million of Asana stock in 2022. Now, that was directly from the company. So, even that was not on the open market. Now, Dustin, if you go and look at Asana, again, the ticker is ASAN, that is a very interesting history because I actually believe he has made the most aggressive insider purchasing of all time. He did that 350 million slug directly from the company, but he also filed a bunch of 10b plans to buy stock on the open market at Asana. I I believe from late 2021 till uh the end of 2022, he bought a billion dollars of stock on the open market, including multiple hundred million open market slugs. So, I think that's the largest insider buy of all time before Elon. Uh, that one's interesting because the stock's been a disaster. So, uh, I I think that's interesting. But, so that's one, right? You kind of get through a year's worth of a 10B5 buying on the open market. You kind of get to a billion dollars, including a 350 million slug directly from the company. The only other one that I could find that even rivals this size is Berkshire buying 3 billion of Oxytock on the open market in early 2022. That was one form4 they bought three billion of Oxy stock. They actually bought more than that. You know, people remember Buffett used to there was like I think it was $60 per share or $55 per share. I think he had like kind of a limit and if it went below that Bergkshire would make huge huge purchases of Oxy. I think they probably bought six or seven billion of Oxy on the open market back in 2022. Now, why is that interesting? It's not a direct comparable because Birkshire is a financial buyer, not an insider, right? They're only filing a form four because they own more than 10%. That's the only other one of similar size that I can find. Uh, but it was through a form four. So, that's I don't think that's a comparable like Elon buying. It's not an insider, but that's the only other one. If we were talking form four, just like straight inside of binds, Dustin Mosvid as Asana would do it. Uh Harold Ham bought 200 million of CLR at the depths of COVID in 2000 June and July 2020, late June, early July 2020. That was $200 million across a couple of 50 million slugs around that time frame. Outside of those, there's Jamie Diamond bought 26 million of JP Morgan on the open market in late in early 2016. Toman Foretta who is not a who is not an insider at win but he does own over 10% and he's a gaming CEO. He bought I think he's got the largest insider purchase of 2025 before Elon. It was 27 million of Win stock in late March early 2000 early April of this year and then yeah I mean aside from that that's it. So look, I I I just listen to these guys, right? Like the biggest ones are 25 million. There's 100 one or 250 to 100 million one, but I think it shows just the pure scope. Like this is insane. And I I don't think it got talked about enough. You know, it kind of be like if Wilt Chamberlain came and scored a 180 points in today's NBA, right? Where the top NBA scorer might get 50 to 60. You'd be like, what? Like it it's so much higher than anyone else is scoring. teams aren't scoring this much and the man dropped something. I I have just never seen anything this scope. So, I think that's interesting. Just the size I think has been under reportported. But here's the other interesting thing. You know, most of the reporting centered on this is a bullish signal from Elon Musk and it is. He dropped a billion dollars of company a billion dollars of his own money on the company. People don't do that if they're bearish. But the other interesting thing is the history of these types of open market insider buys is actually really really poor. And you know, the first one I'd mentioned is Asana. You know, Dustin starts buying Asauna and the stock price is closer to $100 per share than you know, I think he starts buying in the 80s. Asana today, I'm pulling it up as you and I speak. Asana today is trading for, let's see, it's trading for $14 per share. I mean, this has been some of the it has been some of the worst capital allocation of all time. It's been a disaster. The other ones don't look great. Now Jamie Diamond buys JP Morgan that does very well. Tilman Fertitta, his purchase of Wayne looks like it's doing pretty well. You know, I'd say it's early, but it looks like he timed it well. It's doing pretty well, but again, he's not really an insider, so I don't know how to think about that. Uh Bergkshire, the three billion of purchases of Oxy. Oxy hasn't done that well since the Oxy stock is about flat since early 2022. It's underperformed the S&P 500. And it, you know, you can say, oh, it was oil and gas. There was uh a lot of macro stuff that happened since then. Yes, you're correct. But go pull up the largest oil and gas stock since uh when Bergkshire was buying Oxy back in 2022. Axon's about in line with the S&P 500, Chevron, all all these guys. Oxy's been a huge lagard. So Bergkshire, you know, Buffett's the smartest guy in every room he walks into. He's a legend. He's the goat. But the the Oxy purchases don't exactly cover him cover him in uh glory, right? So I think the history of these huge insider purchases is not just mixed. I I think it's actually kind of negative. It's not great. I'll give you one more. Patrick Sunoon I want to say who run all the Nance the he bought the LA Times and these are all the a lot of biotech firms back in 2020 right when the right when Harold Ham is doing the p purchase of CLR. Uh he Patrick puts $45 million into NK is the ticker at the time. I think it's Nat Nance. It's one of his Nance. It's NK K West is what it trades on in the open market. He puts 45 million into them. Now this is through a private placement, but I think it's a really interesting private placement because if you go back and read the filings, uh he puts money into Nance at about $12 per share. And alongside his $12 per share offering, the company goes and does a public offering that prices at $9 per share. So he puts money into the company at this big premium, you know, a 30% premium to where the public uh equity offering goes off and it's 45 million. So it's huge. Company's been a disaster since then. So again, I don't know uh I I don't know how this turns out for anyone, but I was just surprised. I'd never, you know, I saw lots of people say, "Hey, this is Elon's biggest insider buy of Tesla ever, which is 100% true." He's done a little bit of insider buying of Tesla in the past, but if you look, it's normally been alongside equity offerings, and it's much smaller than this. This is huge. It's orders of magnitude bigger than anything he's ever done. But it's also orders of magnitude bigger than anything else I can find in the public markets. So, I just think that size is really interesting. And then, you know, I saw a lot of bears who got real quiet when Elon bought a billion dollars of stock on the open market. Saw a lot of bulls who got real excited and probably rightly so. So, like this is a really good signal value, but I think if you look at the history of these big purchases, it's actually CEOs who are kind of getting high on their own supply. Now, again, that's not to say that this can't turn out well. If I go look at the Jamie the Jaime Diamond JP Morgan's uh purchase, JP Morgan's up almost 7x with dividends reinvested since he made that purchase in 2016. The indices are up 3x, right? If I go back, I mentioned Harold Ham. That's a really interesting one. Founder CLR depths of COVID late June, early July 2020, he buys 200 million of CLR for about $17 per share. He would take CLR private uh a few years later. I think it was late 2022 at like 70 mid to low70s per share. So, you know, he kind of set his own marks on both sides, but he's got a four to five background in his hand. So, not saying it's all a disaster, but the history of these, you know, you think about the NK investment I mentioned, you think about the Muskovitz investment, you think about the Birkshire for big foreign fours don't always mean super bullish stuff for people. So, I'll have a post on that. Uh, but I just thought it was really interesting and I wanted to point that out. Let me switch rapidly here. Let me go to improvement. And you know, I've been writing and talking a lot about improvement and improving investing. Uh I the Ardan Folken podcast number 333, we got just absolute rave reviews from people really enjoyed us talking about that. Uh one of the reasons I talk so much about improving is because I'm trying to improve, right? And I'll just give you one thing. Like I worry it's very easy to do mindless practice. Uh, I I'll give you an example. You know, I look at a few things in my life. One, grade school, I played a lot of golf with my dad, and that was awesome. We probably went to the driving range three to four times a week. I probably played a full 18 holes with my dad once a week, and we probably walked nine holes once or twice a week. So, that's a decent bit of practice. And to be honest, I just wasn't that good. I I just wasn't that good. And I I look back at the amount of time I was putting in grade school into doing this, and it was mainly time, I think, to spend with my dad. But, you know, I look at the amount of time I put into it. I'm like, damn, you were you're pretty damn bad for how much time you put into it. You know, I think like I'm not saying I needed to be a scratch golfer, but I I was in sixth, eighth grade. Not saying I need to be a scratch golfer, but you know, my peers were much better than me, and I think I was spending as much, if not more time at the driving range than them. or I look at in high school I probably played an average amount of video games versus my peers. But I kind of look at it and say, man, if you were playing an average amount of video games in high school and college versus your peers, you know, probably should have been better than I was to be honest at these games. And I I just look and say, hey, this was mindless practice. This was mindless time. Like even if you thought you were getting better when you were going to the driving range theater for times per week, you weren't really getting better. I think it was mindless. So, I'm pointing this out as a personal fail failing of myself, right? Uh I can look at the pure amount of time you put on something and the pure amount of times like kind of I just think of it as spinning my wheels, but it's not actually improving and getting better. It's just like mindless time. So, that's one of the reasons I've thought so much about improving and getting better always, but particularly recently because I spend a lot of eth and time doing investing, working on this, doing the product, and I want to make sure that the time I spend investing is driving towards something. It's getting better. It's not mindless. Why do I mention all this? A, I like to rant. I like to talk. And sometimes I think when I say stuff out loud, it makes more sense than when I'm writing it, which might suggest some failures as a writer. The reason I mentioned all now is someone pointed to I I was talking to someone and they pointed me to an old Todd Combmes Ted Wesler interview when they they had been at Berkshire for a year or two and one of them comes out and says look I'm in my mid-50s and joining Berkshire and working with Buffett for the past year or two however long it has been this has been the steepest learning curve of my career like I'm learning so much but it's been really difficult and it's involved a lot of work and I I thought that was really interesting. You know, I am I'm more late 30s than mid-30s at this point, but I don't consider myself a finished product by any means, but you know, I I I would say I I think of the learning curve and the work curve, and I I I think it's it was harder earlier than it is now. Uh and it it's it makes me excited that there's still that much more to learn, and I I truly believe that, but it got me thinking like what about joining Bergkshire and joining Buffett was it that pushed the learning curve? so high like what were they doing? What what specifically was it? Was it the depth of Buffett's questions? Was there something else? Like what was it? How can I model it? How can I repeat it? How can I use it to get myself better? I have no good answers there. Like literally none. Uh I will say I I you know, and I can use the podcast for this as well. I I would suspect one of the things is the depth of questions, but I also think it's a fine line. I I I've never talked about it in person, but there's also a fine line that I find myself maybe I tap tiptoe around too much, but what is pushing and what is learning versus how do you do it without being a completely condescending know-it-all butthole? I again, I don't know the answer there, but it's one thing I've really been thinking about like, hey, how can I push myself to get better? How can I push the people who I talk to a lot to get better? How can I do the latter without being a complete butthole who you know they're people might get better if you yell at them a lot but you're just a butthole if you do that like how do it in a way that's collaborative that's encouraged like when I look at Bergkshire it does seem like a very collaborative environment that people do seem to like being there uh how do you push each other but in a way that everyone feels like they're getting better and they feel like they're they feel happy about it so a lot of stuff that has been on my mind on improvement there uh I I'm always open to suggestions. If you tell me, "Hey, Andrew, this is something that I do in my investment process that makes me a lot better of investor or that I feel like helped me improve, I'm open to it." I will tell you, for me personally, I think the thing that helps me improve, I think I improve the most when I am writing the most, when I am thinking the most, when I am putting stuff publicly out. One reason I like these ramblings, prepping for them helps me clarify my thoughts, help me deepen my thought. I tell people all the time, I've been writing the blog for, let's call it, 10 years. I go back and read the stuff I read wrote not just 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago. I'm embarrassed a lot of times and I'm kind of happy about that, you know, not happy to embarrass, but I'm happy that I think the person who is writing thinking would be doing this today would write something better, would do something better, would be better, would think about this better. I feel the same way with a lot of my investments as well. So, you know, always trying to improve, always trying to get better. Uh podcasts, I mean, the first podcast I did, I I'm just so embarrassed by, but I think I'm still getting better at that. So, I'm trying to get better. I'm always open to it. I was not rambling there. I I I think you can see that. Uh last thing I I wanted to mention, uh two two last things. St. You know what? Let's save stuff you change your mind on because I'm going to go back to the Charlie Mer and Warren Buffett. Well, I can save that for ne next month. I I'll leave you a little tease stuff you change your mind on. I'll leave you a little tease for next month because we're running long. Let me start I I want to end with the last thing and that's Shitco stocks, meme stocks, whatever you want to call them, right? There are a lot of them out there. And I the reason they're on my mind right now is if you are paying attention to the markets in September of 2025, uh, shitco, it is shitco stock season. I mean, these things are just going parabolic. I know short sellers have been borderline despondent re recently and probably with good reason. If you are a company with uh no revenue, a bad business model, or maybe no business model, a high short interest, and this last part is very important, and I don't own you, because if you've got the first three, and I own your stock, I guarantee you've been getting killed. But if you've got the combination of the three, and I don't own you, your stock has been a rocket ship recently. And I'm not going to name any of the stocks. Uh but I I'm sure everyone knows many of them and can point to some of them and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, I mentioned that because there are some that are controversial where I understand both sides of the controversy, right? I could see the bull case, I could see the bear case, I'm not involved. There are some where I can see the bull case and I'm involved. There are some where I can see the bear case and I'm probably not involved because I'm just not going to show this up. But there are some of of these controversial ones where it's clear to me the the bulls are just insane. And you would normally associate that with I I I hate to use retail, but you know, you think about some of the retail stocks that went bankrupt and had these cult followings behind them and stuff. I normally associate that with retail, but there's one or one or two or seven that when I look at them, it's just so clear to me that the technology is, you know, a bunch of smoke and mirrors and the company is just completely unserious and they are just hitting the ATM and insiders are selling non-stop and all this sort of stuff and the stocks have screamed higher. you know, they're uh the a 5x, a 10x, a 20x, whatever it is. But I I'll have people reach out to me and talk to me or I'll talk to my friends and they'll be invested in them. And it doesn't even have to be those. Uh there are some controlled companies where I think the management teams are clearly bad actors or their assets suck and I'll talk to people and they'll they'll love them. And anyway, the what I'm driving at is there are companies and stocks where when I talk I I think they're so clearly bad ideas that sometimes when I hear people are long them, I'm just like, hey, I don't know like I just take the person less seriously. And I I I don't know if I'm like, you know, everybody does I'd hate to be judged by what I do on my worst day. I'd love to be judged by what I do on my best day, but I'd hate if somebody, you know, like in the moment, rush hour traffic, I don't know, whatever. I did something uncharacteristic. I hate if people like looked at that one moment and apply that to the entire time of my life, right? I probably shouldn't be judging one investor, even if they're a concentrated investor, based on this one investment that I don't understand that for a lot of them have worked out really, really well, right? But when I look at that, when I look at being long these companies, I'm just like, I don't know how you can be a serious investor and be long this. And I don't know where I'm going with that. But, you know, I I'll talk to these people and I just I don't get it. And I don't know how much like if you are long if if you're a concentrated investor and long 10 companies and nine of them, you know, you and I can have a good discussion on and I'm having good, you know, we've got good points and I'm learning a lot from you. And then the 10th you say, "Hey, I'm I'm long this, you know, pot of magic beans because I think the magic beans actually sprout a uh giant beantock that grows to the sky and then we'll go up to the sky and we'll live with the giants and get rich off their riches forever." And I'm just like, "No, dude. This is just like a pot of magic beans that are actually just beans that are being sold to you." and all the red flags around this, you know, the insider selling, the insider selling, the ATM issuance, all all these red flags, the shady accounting, all this, like you just ignore it all because the magic beans will grow into a bean suck. I don't know how to think about that when I'm talking to other investors and when I'm doing work. So anyway, I it's on my mind because some of these like, you know, we're almost done with Q3. You're going to start getting Q3 letters or you can go on Twitter and you can find people taking these crazy victory laps. you know, retail people who went yolo long and choose your AI winner right before the Fed cut and now they've made 100x their money in, you know, 24 hours. And I guess good for them. I wish I had done that. But, you know, I'm more thinking about the serious people who have made five baggers this year on these companies or who continue to pitch these companies that have are controlled codes and aren't getting this. But, how do you judge somebody when they've got like one one to me error of omission that's just so glaring and so poor? I don't know. Maybe it's a failure of understanding on my end, but it's something I've been thinking about and it's going to get more. I think I'm going to be thinking about a lot further as, you know, I get hit with people who say, "Hey, I'm up 400% this year because I was long pot of magic beans that went up quite a bit." You know, how do you think about them as investor? And it's one of the reasons Art Folk and I I hate to bring it back to that conversation. We talked about a lot about how do you disagate someone's track record? And I I I think it's just really interesting. Okay, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble. I am rambling. This has been uh a lot of fun for me. It is September 20th. Uh I am looking forward I think we've got a great set of podcasts coming up for you. I'm looking forward to those. I am looking forward to getting my post up on Elon's open market purchase. I'll include a link in the show notes. Uh as always, you can reach out, love to chat, love to swap thoughts, love to have you help me improve as a podcaster, as an investor, all that sort of stuff. But I really enjoy doing these. I thank you for listening and I am looking forward to chatting next month. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial adviser. Thanks.