Charlie Munger (00:02:48):

It worked so far. It worked so far.

Warren Buffet (00:02:53):

In case you missed it, Charlie says it’s worked so far. And we would die psychologically if we lost a lot of under people’s money. We wouldn’t take it in the first place. It’d be crazy to take people’s money and lose it if you’re going to feel terrible about doing it. So the one thing I can tell you about Berkshire, I can’t predict what our earnings will be, and I can’t predict what the stock will do, and I can’t… we don’t know. We don’t know what the economy will do and all of that sort of thing, but we do know that we wake up every morning and we want to be safer in terms of your eventual investment. Not whether you make the most money or anything, we do not want you to get a terrible result because you’ve decided to become our partner. And that’s a pleasure to live by.

Clay Finck (00:03:35):

Then Buffet went on to show a slide of Berkshire’s cash position. At year end for 2021, their cash stood at around $143 billion. And interestingly, at the end of the most recent quarter, their cash declined all the way down to a $102 billion. So Berkshire has been busy purchasing more public equities. $3.2 billion of what they purchased was simply buying back their own shares. They increased their stake in Chevron from $4.5 billion to $25.9 billion. So Chevron alone accounts for roughly half of the purchases they made in the quarter. Berkshire added $6 billion to their Occidental petroleum position and the remainder of the cash went towards $11 billion for their purchase of the insurer Allegheny and $4 billion towards HP. So despite all the talks of a potential recession coming up with the high inflation, rising rates, and the international conflicts, Buffet is obviously ignoring anything that’s going on in the macro economy and just focusing on buying individual businesses to hold for a very long time.

Clay Finck (00:04:34):

I think it’s interesting that much of the cash he deployed went into the commodity sector. He increased his position in Chevron by over $20 billion, which would benefit significantly should commodities continue to move higher as they are a producer of oil. Then again, they had $6 billion in purchases in Occidental Petroleum. Then Buffet hit on the idea that Berkshire will always have plenty of cash and treasury bills on the sidelines, since you never know when you’re going to need it. And this is nothing new for how Buffet invests. This allows them to weather through those massive downturns in the economy, like what we saw during the Financial Crisis, and this also gives them the opportunity to deploy that cash into businesses that are trading at really good prices. So having that extra cash allows Berkshire to operate in a way that is very conservative for shareholders to ensure that the company is able to withstand any type of environment they might encounter.

Robert Leonard (00:05:26):

That’s well said, Clay, and I just want to start my first response by saying nothing I say in any of my responses in this episode are financial advice, just kind of my opinion on what Buffet said, and also kind of how I approach my portfolio and my investing. It’s not something you should run out and just implement yourself. You should do your own due diligence, see what fits for you, and make your own decision. But what I really like about this clip is I like how he talked about losing people’s capital and their money and how he mentioned that he would actually die psychologically. And I just want to say that when he mentions psychologically, it kind of pained me a little bit in the heart because it made me just remember that Buffet and Munger, they are mortal and they are going to die eventually. So it is a bummer that unfortunately, they’re not going to be around with us forever, and they’re probably not going to be around that much longer and so we should try to learn as much from them while they’re here as we can.

Robert Leonard (00:06:15):

I think the losing people’s capital and their money part is important not because people are investing other people’s money, I don’t invest other people’s money, most people listening to the show probably don’t invest other people’s money, but it’s this philosophy, it’s this principle that really speaks to Buffet’s character and it speaks to how he has always said that if you lose money for the firm, he’ll be fine with it. But if you lose a shred of reputation, he’s going to be ruthless. I just think that’s a really important principle that even if it’s not applied to money or investing, because you’re not investing other people’s money, if it’s something you can apply to your life, I think that that could be really important. And I’ll speak to that a little bit more in one of the later clips that we listen to, but I just think it’s interesting as to how he talked about how he thinks of losing other people’s capital and their money.

Robert Leonard (00:06:59):

I also think it’s important to note that he’s talking a lot about preserving capital versus maximizing returns. And I think that’s a big distinction for people listening to the show to make, especially for myself. I mentioned just a couple minutes ago that he’s nearing the end of his life, unfortunately. And a lot of people listening to the show, we’re relatively at the beginning and so we’re at very different points in our lives than Buffet and that changes how you have to invest. So for somebody like me, I’m really more in that phase of wealth accumulation, and I’m really more trying to maximize my returns. I’m not really looking for the safety or preserving my capital. In reality, I don’t really have much capital to preserve.

Robert Leonard (00:07:36):

Most of us who are young, we’re really trying to maximize our returns so we can get that capital up and then we’ll worry about preserving it then. Buffet, Munger, and even Berkshire Hathaway in a sense are already towards the end of that cycle and they’ve already got to the point where they’ve maximized their returns and now they’re preserving capital. So this is not to say that this isn’t valuable advice or something that you can learn from Buffet, it’s just you can’t take everything they say as gospel and you need to think about how it might apply to your life and how what you’re doing, it might be a little bit different. And the last thing I want to mention about the clip is that even though a lot of people think the markets are frothy, there are still deals out there.

Robert Leonard (00:08:12):

Of course, there’s a lot of turbulence in the market right now as we record this, the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, the markets were going down a little bit. And as of this episode’s release, things have gotten quite a bit crazier, but still nonetheless for the last year or two, people have thought things were frothy. So to see that Buffet was still able to buy things, I think is an interesting point for people listening because a lot of people will just throw their hands up in the air and say, “Oh, the market’s expensive. There’s nothing to buy.” And I’m generally these days talking about this in the real estate realm. People ask me all the time, “Oh, should I wait to buy until the market crashes?” And people ask me the same thing about the stock market, but I’m just focused more on real estate these days, but the philosophy is the same. If I can find a company to invest in the stock market that’s really cheap to me, then I’m willing to buy it.

Robert Leonard (00:08:55):

And the same with real estate. If I find a real estate deal that the numbers are really good and it seems like a great deal, then I’m willing to buy it regardless of market conditions. So I think it’s really interesting that even though most people think things are frothy, Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway were able to still find some deals. So what you can take away from that is maybe there’s not deals everywhere. You’re not going to just turn on your computer, open a stock screener and find deals right away. Or with real estate, you’re not going to just hop on the MLS and find every property is a deal, but what you’ll hear a little bit later about Buffet and Allegheny is how he’s been researching it for 60 years. So if you put in the work and you do the research and spend the time to try to find these deals, there are opportunities out there.

Robert Leonard (00:09:32):

What I take away from this is not to just give up because the market overall seems expensive.

Clay Finck (00:09:37):

Great points, Robert. Let’s transition to play the clip of the first question they asked Buffet. They only got through six or seven questions in the morning session, which is much fewer than what they typically get through in the morning session, but let’s start with the first one as I think there’s some interesting insights here.

Speaker 6 (00:09:54):

Thanks Warren. The first question comes from Jack [SusaLeski 00:09:58] and he says, “In the annual letter that you wrote in February 26th, you mentioned that Charlie and you saw a little that excites us in the market.” Yet around March 10th, the deal for Allegheny was announced and then later the accidental announcement, then did the disclosure of the HP investment. His question is, “What changed from the time you dated the letter to the time the investments were announced? Did the names suddenly become interesting in the space of a month and a half or half a month?”

Warren Buffet (00:10:22):

Well, Charlie, do you want to give your version, I’ll give my version.

Charlie Munger (00:10:26):

Well, my version would be, we found some things we prefer to owning to treasury bills.

Warren Buffet (00:10:31):

Yeah. And as usual, Charlie’s given the total answer, but I’ll talk longer and say less. Actually, the letters dated February 26th, where we’re confessing our inability to find anything, which was a Saturday, but the day before that, February 25th, I got a email. Actually, my assistant, Debbie Bosanek, gets it because I can’t figure out quite how to handle the machinery. She brought it in and, or actually she puts a bunch on the edge of her desk and then I collect them occasionally, and there was a note, just a few lines long, from a fellow that was a friend of mine and that worked for Berkshire than many years ago. And this is on February 25th, the day before the… and he said he’d now become CEO of Allegheny Corp. I’d been following Allegheny Corp for 60 years. I read their annual reports. I had four big file drawers full of it because it was an interesting company and all companies interested me.

Warren Buffet (00:11:36):

So I knew a lot about Allegheny Corp. And Joe said, “This is my first annual report as CEO and I just wanted to send it along to you. Just like you write for your sister,” he says, “I write this report as if I’m writing to you.” And I sent a note back to Joe and I said, “I’m going to read it over the weekend,” or whatever I said to him on it, which was true. I mean, I looked forward to reading it. And I said, “By the way, I’m going to be in New York on March 7th and can we get together. I’d like to see you.” I think I may have said, “I got an idea.” Well, I didn’t have that idea the day before. I mean, this thing happened to come in on Friday the 26th and I knew I’d buy Allegheny at a price.

Warren Buffet (00:12:25):

And if he hadn’t sent me the note, it never would’ve occurred to me to write him and say, “Why don’t we to get together on March 7th,” or anything of the sort. It just wouldn’t have happened, except for the fact that Joe wanted to send me along this annual report that he’d just written. So that’s the orderly and decision making progress. I didn’t call up investment packers and say, “Will you prepare me a report on this and what’s your advice?” and all this stuff. I knew we’d buy Allegheny at the price we offered. And if it was of interest Allegheny, fine if it wasn’t. But otherwise, if that email hadn’t been sent, we would not have made an offer for Allegheny. So give credit to the fact that Joe had written the annual report. And if he’d sent it a week earlier, well, I wasn’t going to make a special trip to New York, but I wanted to sit down with him and tell him what Berkshire would do. But that explains the $11 billion.

Warren Buffet (00:13:16):

And what happened was that a few stocks got very interesting to us and we also spent a lot of money at… what happened, the market, and this is really important to understand, in the last couple of years is our market has probably… it’s always been a combination of a casino and a… and when I talk about Wall Street, I’m talking about the whole capital formation market and trading market et etcetera, but the market has been extraordinary. Sometimes it’s quite investment oriented, kind of like always you’ve read about in the books and everything, what capital markets are supposed to do and you study it in school and all that. And other times it’s almost totally a casino and it’s a gambling parlor and that existed to an extraordinary degree in the last couple years, encouraged by Wall Street because the money is in turning over stocks.

Warren Buffet (00:14:12):

I mean, people say how wonderful you’d done if you bought Berkshire in middle 1965 or something and held it, but you broker would have starved to death. I mean, Wall Street makes money one way or another catching the crumbs that fall off the table of capitalism and an incredible economy that nobody could have ever dreamed of a couple hundred years ago, but they don’t make money unless people do things and that they get a piece of them. And they make a lot more money when people are gambling than when they’re investing. I mean, it’s much better to have somebody that’s going to trade 20 times a day and got all excited about just like pulling the handle on the slot machine. You may not say that you want that person, you’d like the other kind of person too maybe, but that’s where you make the money.

Charlie Munger (00:15:01):

Well, have we ever had anything that quite like what we have now in terms of the volumes of pure gambling activity that go on daily and the people lathering the gamblers up so they can rook them. It’s not pretty and I don’t find it’s ingate glory for capitalism or anything, anymore than a bunch of people throwing dice at a table. What good does that do the rest of the world?

Warren Buffet (00:15:25):

It’s a great way to become rich though, just figure out ways to insert yourself into the system somehow. And jobs to some extent self-select many years ago. And I’ve got all kinds of friends in Wall Street, not as many as I had before I had started talking this way an hour so called, but I really do. I mean, people make… they let make lots of decisions in life. And the truth is that overall, the American system has worked extremely well. It may be very unfair in many ways, but it has produced incredible difference in the goods and services available to me versus what my grandfather had available. I do not want to go back to pre air conditioning and people pouring whiskey down me while they drill my teeth or something of the sort. I mean, this is a lot better world.

Charlie Munger (00:16:18):

Well, I think we’ve made more because of the crazy gambling. I think it’s made it easier for us net over the decades we’ve been operating.

Warren Buffet (00:16:28):

Well, I mean, we’ve depended on it.

Charlie Munger (00:16:30):

Yes.

Warren Buffet (00:16:32):

I mean, we depend on mispriced businesses through a mechanism where we’re not responsible for the mispricing of them. And overall, we learned something a long time ago that doesn’t take a high IQ, doesn’t take anything, it just takes the right attitude. We may talk more about that later, but I think we ought prove that we’ve got an audience here by going to section one.

Clay Finck (00:16:55):

Now, there’s a couple pieces here I think are worth pointing out. First, Munger doesn’t hold back in that they chose to invest some of their capital on the sidelines because they thought it would be good to do so. They’ve just found good opportunities that they thought, Berkshire would benefit from purchasing. And I just thought it was incredible that Buffet mentioned that he had been following Allegheny for 60 years. I can’t imagine how much he knows about the company today, given how much he has read about them and gotten to know the management over time. The 60 years piece just blew my mind, as it’s over two of my lifetimes as I myself am under 30 years old. It’s just so interesting given that you’ll see people go out and buy stocks after 30 or 60 minutes of research, just remember that Buffet puts in countless hours prior to making any investment decisions.

Clay Finck (00:17:41):

Then they hit on the idea that the stock market in 2021 very much looks like a casino for some stocks, such as the ARK fund and the meme stock craze, which I thought it was interesting for him to point that out, as I don’t believe they made any big purchases in 2021 outside of buying back their own shares. They were able to see that the markets were pretty frothy and they’d be happy to sit on the sidelines and remain patient and wait for those good opportunities.

Clay Finck (00:18:07):

I just want to say that the recollection that Buffet has for dates was super impressive. He was rattling off these dates in that response and I was just very blown away. I’m young, much younger than Buffet, and a lot of us are too, and I do not have half the memory that Buffet does. So I thought that was pretty impressive personally. I also thought it was interesting. He said that he got an email and then he changed his response a little bit and said, “Actually my assistant did because I can’t figure out how to use technology.” So we’re going to talk a bit about Bitcoin a little bit later in one of Buffet’s responses. But regardless of whether it’s Bitcoin, technology stocks, the ARK fund, meme stocks, whatever it is, as I mentioned in my first response, we’re in different stages of our lives and our capital kind of life cycle than Buffet and Berkshire are.

Clay Finck (00:18:56):

So the other thing that Buffet talks about is circle of competency. A lot of us have a different circle of competency than Buffet. Buffet mentions he can’t even figure out technology to read an email. A lot of people listening to the show that I’ve talked to are programmers, so they have great understanding of technology. So you need to be able to take Buffet’s principles and apply them to your own life and say, “Okay, Buffet really understands insurance, commodities, et cetera, whatever it is, that’s within his circle of competence, and I have a different circle of competence.” So that doesn’t mean that just because Buffet says Bitcoin’s bad or whatever other technologies that he doesn’t understand is bad, maybe it’s bad for him, but it might be right for you. So I just think it’s interesting that the small comment about emails would probably be glossed over by most people. But if you really listen and you read between the lines and you think about it critically, you can apply some of Buffet’s principles to what he’s saying and apply it to your own life and get some real valuable information from it like that.

Clay Finck (00:19:50):

I also mentioned before that Buffet spent significant amount of time prepping for the Allegheny deal and this response to the question was exactly what I was referencing. And for those who have watched the podcast on YouTube and seen the video, they’ve probably seen behind me in my office at home, I have a quote on the wall and it says, “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” and I think that this is a perfect example of that. Over the years, Buffet had kind of stayed in touch with this gentleman from Allegheny and he even said he wasn’t really looking to acquire it, but when he emailed him, it reminded him of it. And the reality is that if Buffet hadn’t put in the work for the last 60 years to really understand Allegheny, he wouldn’t have been able to jump at it.

Clay Finck (00:20:29):

So what you need to realize is that sometimes you’re going to be doing the work, you’re going to get educated, you’re going to keep being prepared for when the opportunity arises for you. And you might not see any fruit of your labor right away, and you might not be able to connect the dots. There’s another quote that says, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only do it backwards,” and I’ve seen that in my life a ton of times. There’s so many times where I’ve done something. I didn’t know really why or what it was going to lead to. I knew it was probably going to do something good for me in the future, but I didn’t know exactly what. Then when I look back, I’m like, “Oh my God, it makes so much sense. Everything, lines up and connects.”

Clay Finck (00:20:59):

So this goes back to what I was saying about the market being frothy. You still need to put in the work. And if you put in the work, eventually you’re going to get lucky or you’re going to find yourself in an opportunity where you can take advantage of it. The last two things I want to mention about Buffet’s response here is the reminder that he gave about firms on Wall Street making money when people trade more. He basically said that they get the crumbs of capitalism. And I think this is important because Buffet and Munger, but specifically Munger, talks about incentives and he’s a big, big proponent of incentives and this is just a perfect example of how incentives with brokerages and even some media companies are not aligned with investors.

Clay Finck (00:21:36):

And here at TIP, we are rooted in value investing. So just because it seems like everybody these days is day trading or not holding for the long-term or value vesting is out of style, just take some time to think about the incentives and think about what the ad you’re reading or even the news articles you’re reading are trying to get you to do and how that benefits or makes money for the company that is producing that piece of content. And the last thing, I don’t really have a lot to add to it, but I just thought it was really interesting that Charlie said that the crazy gambling that’s going on in the markets these days actually makes it easier for him and Warren. A lot of people talk about how value investing is dead or that the markets are a lot more efficient today. So back when Buffet was in the library, reading 10Ks and 10QS, that it was actually easier back then.

Clay Finck (00:22:21):

And I don’t know necessarily that Charlie’s 100% right about this, but it is interesting nonetheless to hear that Charlie said he actually thinks it’s easier and that the gambling today makes it easier for him than it was any time previously. So I just thought that was a really interesting point that he made. And again, something that a lot of people might gloss over, so I just thought that was something worthwhile to chat about.

Robert Leonard (00:22:40):

Next, let’s go to a question from the audience that refers to timing the market.

Raji (00:22:45):

Hello Warren and Charlie. It is great to see you both and the wonderful Berkshire managers. Our thanks for everything that you do. My name is Rahji [inaudible 00:22:55] and I am from New Jersey. My question is on market timing. You have always said that it is impossible to time the markets. Yet if we look at your track record, you have had amazing timings with some of your key decisions. You got out of the stock markets in 1969, ’70, you got back in ’72, ’72, ’74 when the markets were really cheap. You did the same thing in ’87, ’99, 2000. And today, you are sitting on a significant amount of cash when the markets are going down. My question is, how do you time the big market moves so well?

Warren Buffet (00:23:33):

We’d like to offer you a job first.

Raji (00:23:36):

I will take it.

Warren Buffet (00:23:39):

The interesting thing is, obviously we having the faintest idea what the stock market’s going to do when it opens on Monday. We never have had. Charlie and I, I don’t think in all the time we worked together, and I’ll tell you something later on maybe about how learning takes place, but I don’t think we’ve ever made a decision that where either one of us has either said or been thinking, “We should buy or sell based on what the market’s going to do.”

Charlie Munger (00:24:09):

No.

Warren Buffet (00:24:09):

Or for that matter, on what the economy’s going to do. We don’t know. And the interesting thing is sometimes I get some credit someplace for the fact that how wonderful it was that we were optimistic in 2008 when everybody was down on stocks and all that sort of thing. We spent a big percentage of our net worth at a very dumb time. I shouldn’t say we, it’s I. We spent about $15 or $16 billion, which was a lot bigger to us then than it is now. We spent it in the last few weeks, a period of three or four weeks, between Wrigley and Goldman Sachs and generally at a terrible time as it turned out. I mean, I didn’t know it was going to be a good time or a bad time, but it was a really dumb time.

Warren Buffet (00:24:56):

And I wrote an article for the New York Times and buy American and all these things. Well, if I’d had any sense of timing and waited six months until… I think the low was in March. And in fact, I think I was on CNBC maybe that day or something, but I totally missed that opportunity. I totally missed in March of 2020. We have not been good at timing, we’ve been reasonably good at figuring out when we were getting enough for our money. And we had no idea when we bought anything. Well, we always hoped it would go down for a while, so we could buy more. And we hoped even after we were done buying and ran out of money, that if it was cheap, the company would keep buying, in effect taking our interest up. I mean, that’s stuff, you could learn it in fourth grade, but it’s not what’s taught in school.

Warren Buffet (00:25:47):

So never give us any credit. Well, actually give us all the credit. I mean, go out and tell everybody how smart we are, but we aren’t. We haven’t ever timed anything. We’ve never figured out insights into the economy. When I was 11 years old, March 12th, I guess, 1942, or March 11th, I bought stock when the Dow was 90… well, it was 101 in the morning, it was 99 at the end of the day, I think. And now it’s 34,000 or maybe it’s 1,000 less than it was on Thursday, but it’s one decision, that it’s a good thing to own American business. And if the Harvard Endowment had come to see me, this 11 year old, and or General Motors Pension Fund or something, and they said, “Well, no, but we have to have a balance and we have to maybe have 60% and then we have to sit around every three months and listen to a bunch of managers,” it was just done better if they’ve just taken some darts and thrown them and just said, “We’re going to be in America 50 years from now, and 100 years from now and we’ll do better in stocks than we will in bonds.

Warren Buffet (00:26:57):

It’s amazing how hard people make what a simple game it is, but, of course, if, if they told everybody what a simple game it was, then 90% of the income or more of the people that were speaking would disappear. So really, a little too much of us to expect.

Clay Finck (00:27:15):

This answer goes right in line with Buffet’s principles in that he just consistently looks to buy great businesses at what he believes is an attractive price. He isn’t trying to figure out if we’re about to enter a recession and try and get cute with timing the market and he’s really always operated that way when it comes to investing. I think the big takeaway from that is that if one of the best investors in the world doesn’t even try to time the market or time like a market correction or recession, then us as retail investors probably shouldn’t try and do that either. Because over the long run, you’re better off just continually buying. You might be lucky here and there and predict the next downturn, but it’s practically impossible to do consistently because there are just so many moving parts in the overall economy, and it can get extremely complex really fast when you really start to dive into how the macro economy works.

Clay Finck (00:28:03):

And I graduated college in 2017 and that’s when I really got involved with investing in the stock market. And I recall back in 2017, I thought the stock market was like really expensive. I’m like, “Oh, a recession has happened every five to eight years. So we’re nine years into this bull market, so a downturn’s going to be coming pretty soon.” And now today in 2022, stocks are obviously way higher than they were in 2017, so I’m really glad I ended up just staying the course and investing for the long run and not trying to get cute, trying to time the market. All right. Let’s move on to cover a question about inflation.

Daphne (00:28:39):

Dear Mr. Buffet and Mr. Munger, my name is Daphne, I’m from NYC and this is my fifth annual shareholder’s meeting.

Warren Buffet (00:28:46):

Well, we appreciate you coming. We do sincerely.

Daphne (00:28:53):

As you know, for the past four consecutive months, we’ve been going through inflation with an inflation weight north of 7% for the first time since 1982. You both have experienced this before from 1970 to 1975 at a time where your portfolio took paper losses. And yet, you made some of the best investment choices of your life. Reflecting on that, my question is if you had to pick one stock to bet on-

Warren Buffet (00:29:29):

You kind snuck up on us there for a second.

Daphne (00:29:33):

… and be resilient in the inflation, which would you choose and what specifically enables that stock to do very well in might very likely be a difficult market?

Warren Buffet (00:29:46):

Well, I’ll tell something even better than that one stock, maybe we’ll get to one stock, but the best thing you can do is to be exceptionally good at something. If you’re the best doctor in town, if you’re the best lawyer in town, if you’re the best whatever it may be, no matter whether people are paying you with a zillion dollars or paying you… they’re going to give you some of what they produce in exchange for what you deliver. And if you’re the one they pick out to do any particular activity, sing or play baseball or be their lawyer, whatever it may be, whatever abilities you have can’t be taken away from you. They can’t actually be inflated away from you. Somebody else will give you some of the wheat they produce or the cotton or whatever it may be, and they will trade you for the skill you have. So the best investment by far is anything that develops yourself. It’s not taxed, so that’s what I would do.

Warren Buffet (00:30:49):

Nobody can take away from you the talent you have. And the truth is that the world will always be willing… they’ll need to do something and some people will not have skills and they will get less of the product of the society than somebody who has other skills. And sometimes that has something to do with education, but a good bit of the time it doesn’t have anything to do with education. But figure out what you’d like to be and figure out how and… what you’d like to be is what you’re going to likely be good at. The world will always need somebody on that tube to tell us what’s going on, so study Becky Quick or somebody and figure out what makes her good and what you sort of naturally bring to the game.

Warren Buffet (00:31:36):

I mean, I could have, who’s the guy that says you got to spend 10,000 hours doing this or that. Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell would say, “Just spend 10,000 hours on something.” Well, I could have spent 10,000 hours trying to become a heavyweight boxer, but I don’t think I would have felt very good at the end of the 10,000 hours. You stumble in to what you really like doing, what you’re good at, what is useful to society and then it doesn’t make any difference whether the dollar bill is now worth, in terms of the purchasing power, a cent or a half a cent or a hundredth of a cent. If you’re the best doctor in town, they’ll bring you chickens, whatever they may do, but they can’t take it away from you. And my guess is that if you’ve come to five meetings, you’ve got a very good future ahead of you.

Warren Buffet (00:32:32):

I mean, that shows… it self-selects. So if you want to sell a piece of yourself, we’ll buy that as the best investment we can make. We’ll take 10% of your future earnings and we’ll give you a cash payment now. Well, we’ll have a terrific asset and you can have 100% of your future earnings. And if you develop your talent… maybe you’ll be a great dancer. People pay money to watch great dancer. We had Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. They came from Omaha. Their name was Austerlitz then, but they could dance. And Adele did whatever she did with it, moved to England. And Fred Astaire went on to do a whole bunch of other things. And Ginger Rogers had to do it all the same backwards in high heels and she didn’t get paid as much because she was a woman, but you’re going to do just fine. I’d bet a lot of money on you.

Clay Finck (00:33:26):

I could go both ways with Buffet’s answer on this. On the one hand, yes, the best investment one can make is in themselves. On the other hand, somebody could be a really good nurse or a really good accountant, even if the inflation rate in the economy is over 10%, odds are they’re not going to be able to get a 10 or 15% raise at their job. It’s just not feasible for a lot of people. So to really take advantage of your skillset, I think you’re going to have to start a business to fully capitalize on those skills and most people in society aren’t in a position to get a 10 or 15% raise. Also, there are many people in countries like Turkey that are currently experiencing inflation of around 70% per year and I think they’re going to have to do a lot more than just be the best in their field.

Clay Finck (00:34:07):

They’re going to have to buy assets that aren’t linked to their currency, such as US stocks or even US dollars as two examples, if that is even possible for them. I know that some countries have capital controls to try and keep people from escaping the local currency. So I personally didn’t love Buffet’s answer to the inflation question. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this, Robert.

Robert Leonard (00:34:28):

First off, I think it was a bad question. I do agree with the response and the sentiment from Buffet about investing in yourself and I agree with a lot of what you said. I’m a big believer in self-development, but I also agree with what you said, Clay, that just investing in yourself won’t necessarily combat inflation for those people. People can become entrepreneur, kind of like what Buffet is saying, but that’s really just not right for everybody. You can go out there and start your own business or side hustle and I think that’s great. I personally love that, but it’s not right for everybody. So like you said, Clay, is if you just become really, really good at your job that doesn’t necessarily mean that your employer is going to give you a raise because your skills got that much better and you might not be able to combat inflation.

Robert Leonard (00:35:10):

So I do agree with his response. I do think investing in yourself and self-development is really important. And I agree with this sentiment, but I don’t necessarily agree that it actually works in practice. It’s one of those things that sounds really great in theory, but it might not be so great in practice. In regard to overall inflation and macro environment, I’m pretty boring and I think that comes just from a decade of studying Buffet and him saying he doesn’t worry about macro. I really also don’t really focus too much on macro, just like Buffet. And you, Clay, actually sent me a really interesting thread about US debt yesterday on Twitter. And I read through it and it definitely is interesting and it can be a little bit scary and it can change the way you invest. But just for me, there’s so much to figure out on a personal basis when it comes to investing that if you try to focus on what you’re analyzing and understanding, and also the macro environment, can be really difficult and you might not be good at either one.

Robert Leonard (00:36:02):

If you try to chase both rabbits, you might catch neither. So for me, I’m pretty boring when it comes to kind of the inflation talk, the overall macro conditions.

Clay Finck (00:36:13):

I do agree, Robert, that it was a pretty poor question. It feels like every year someone will ask Buffet what is the one stock he would recommend buying in. We all know that Buffet isn’t going to tell you what stock to buy. It’s funny, you mentioned the macro environment. With the level of involvement the Fed has had in markets the last few years, I sometimes have a hard time not researching the macro. Preston kind of got me wrapped into it. And I always enjoy listening to his episodes on his show about the macro environment and what’s kind of happening. It feels like there’s new stuff happening every week. Anyways, I had sent Robert a thread that talked about how if interest rates continue to rise on the treasury yield curve, then the US government could be running into some financial issues as far as servicing the new debt that they will need to roll over as their existing debt expires. I don’t want to get too much into the details, but that was a thread that Preston retweeted here on May 11th, 2022.

Clay Finck (00:37:12):

What also caught my attention is that Buffet mentioned that success is self-selecting. He mentioned that it was impressive that the young person who asked the question has been to five Berkshire Hathaway meetings, which is pretty impressive. Odds are if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re thinking about how you can combat inflation, then that alone says that you’re probably already in a good position. They say that the first half of success is simply showing up. And the fact that someone that young is thinking about how they can get ahead of inflation of say eight or 10%, that speaks volumes in my opinion. Next, let’s transition to a question to Charlie about his investments in China.

Speaker 6 (00:37:54):

This question comes from Steve Blackmore in Bozeman, Montana. This is to Charlie. He says, “In the past, you’ve made favorable statements about investing in China in part based upon valuation metrics. What is your opinion now and how much weight do you put on the actions of the government in your analysis? Do the recent communist party activities in China, including human rights violations, blatant cyber theft from US companies and others, crackdowns on speech from business, and media, et cetera, cause you to change your opinion on investing in China? And how do you evaluate the clear dangers of investing under authoritarian regimes as recently evidenced by Russian atrocities in Ukraine?”

Charlie Munger (00:38:34):

Well, those are good questions. And there’s no question about the fact that the government of China has worried the investors from the United States who invest in China more in recent months and years than it did in earlier periods. So there’s been some tension and it’s affected the prices of some of the Chinese stocks, particularly internet stocks. Just in the last day or two, the Chinese leader has sort of reverse coursed on that and said he went too far and he’s going to pull way back and so on and so on, so we’re having some hopeful signs. But yes, there are more difficulties investing… I mean, dealing with the regime in China than there are in the United States and it’s different. It’s a long way away and they have their own culture and their own loyalties and so on and so on.

Charlie Munger (00:39:23):

And the reason that I invested in China is I could get so much better companies at so much lower prices and I was willing to take a little political risk to get into the better companies, the lower prices. Other people might reach the opposite conclusion. And everybody is more worried about China now than they were two, three years ago. So that’s just the way it is.

Warren Buffet (00:39:48):

I have nothing to add.

Clay Finck (00:39:53):

I figured that someone was going to ask Charlie about China as many of the Chinese companies are down significantly most notably Alibaba. China is something that I personally avoid as I’m not sure I fully understand the political situation there and I know enough smart enough people that avoid it as well, so it’s just something that I naturally shy away from.

Robert Leonard (00:40:14):

I have found it pretty interesting that Charlie was so bullish on China. I wasn’t necessarily sure how I felt about it for the last few years as this became common knowledge and then I started to hear about Ray Dalio actually being really bullish on China as well. At least in his book, he talks a bit about China and being pretty bullish on it. So I was like, “Okay, well, two of the richest men in the world are really interested in China. Maybe there’s something there.” Now, with that said, I don’t fully agree personally. Now, remember both these guys are billionaires. They’re extremely smart, way smarter than me. I’m nobody. I’m just a small time individual investor, so what they say is probably right. But for me, it’s hard to really like truly understand a business in your own home country. I don’t personally want to add the additional complexity that comes in from other countries. Not only do you have to understand the business fully, but then you also have to understand maybe the different accounting or political factors that play into the investment.

Robert Leonard (00:41:12):

So for the most part, I just personally avoid it. There are certain instances where I feel like the company is very similar to companies that we have in the US and that the political environment is a bit more steady and so I’ll consider it. I have had a couple positions in some international stocks, individual stocks. But generally speaking, I like to just keep it simple and focus on the US. And I would just buy ETFs to cover the international markets if I wanted that international exposure.

Clay Finck (00:41:40):

Let’s go to everyone’s favorite topic and that’s Bitcoin. Let’s see if Warren and Charlie have changed their minds at all on it.

Speaker 6 (00:41:48):

We got a lot of questions on this topic. I’ll ask this one that came from Raj. He says, “Have you changed your views on Bitcoin and/or cryptocurrency in any respect? I’m conflicted about this because his own views have slightly evolved during the past two years from Bitcoin is a fraud and waste, to Bitcoin is in a speculative bubble, but might have some uses.”

Warren Buffet (00:42:09):

Well, I shouldn’t answer any questions on the subject, but I will. There’s all kinds of people watching this that are long Bitcoin and there’s nobody that’s short and nobody wants their wind pipe stepped on. I don’t blame them. I don’t like people to step on my wind pipe. But I would say this, that if the people in this room owned all of the farmland in the United States and you offered me a 1% interest in it, and you said for 1% interest in all the farmland in the United States, pay me, pay our group, well, let’s see, pay us this bargain price, $25 billion. I’ll write you check this afternoon. $25 billion. Now I own 1% of the farmland. If you tell me you own 1% of the apartment houses in the United States and you offer me a 1% interest, so I’ll have a 1% in all the apartment houses in the country and you want whatever it may be for it, another 25 billion or something, I’ll write you a check. It’s very simple.

Warren Buffet (00:43:09):

Now, if you told me you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it because what would I do with it? I have to sell it back to you one way or another. I mean, maybe not the same people, but it isn’t going to do anything. The apartments are going to produce rental and the farms are going to produce food. And if I’ve got all the Bitcoin, I’m back where whatever his name was who may or may not have existed was 15 years ago. If I’ve got it all, he could create a mystery about it, but everybody knows what I’m like. I mean, so if I’m trying to get rid of it, people will say, “Well, why should I buy some Bitcoin from you? I mean, why don’t you call a buffet coin? Make your own or do something, but I’m not going to give you anything for it.” And you’d be right incidentally, but that explains the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy got.

Warren Buffet (00:44:02):

Now, net, if you look at it, a lot of commissions have been paid and, I mean, there’s all kinds of frictional costs that are very real that somebody has paid to much of people who facilitate this game. But whenever one group of the public is taken out, or one group of owners, that’s come in from other people. I mean, it’s other people have entered the room and they move money around, but no money has… there’s no more money in the room, it’s just changed hands with a lot of maybe fraud and costs involved and a whole bunch of things you’ll lose. You forget the numbers or forget the equation. You can do that with a lot of things. I mean, it’s been done throughout history.

Warren Buffet (00:44:42):

Certain things have value that don’t produce something tangible. I mean, you can say a great painting probably will have some value 500 years from now. It may not, but the odds are pretty good that if it was a big enough name, at some point. There will be a few things. I mean, you can find something [inaudible 00:45:05]. If somebody wants to sell you a pyramid or something and you can charge the viewers, it’ll be around a long time and won’t produce anything, but people will find it interesting to go there because they’ve been to lots of pyramids. But basically assets to have value, they have to deliver something to somebody. And there’s only one currency that’s acceptable in the United States. I mean, you can come up with all kinds of things. We can put out Berkshire coins or we can put out Berkshire money or anything like that, but we’d get in trouble, I guess, if we call it money.

Warren Buffet (00:45:34):

But in the end, this is money and there’s no reason in the world why the United States government, whose currency people prefer, would… literally, there’s just under 2.3 trillion just of these little pieces of paper floating around some places. 7,000 for every man, woman, a child in the United States. And of course, most of them probably aren’t the United States, who knows, but this is the only thing that’s money. And anybody that thinks the United States is going to change to where they let Berkshire money replace theirs is out of their mind. So anyway, with those few deficiencies, whether it goes up or down in the next year or five years, 10 years, I don’t know, but the one thing I’m pretty sure of is that if it doesn’t multiply, doesn’t produce anything, it’s got a magic to it and people have attached magics to lots of things. I mean, it’s the golden Wall Street, green magic.

Clay Finck (00:46:30):

I’m not surprised at all that this topic ended up getting brought up. We all know Warren and Charlie’s opinion on it and there were some people at the meetup that were wanting to ask them if they changed their mind on Bitcoin at all. And I told him just to avoid the question entirely because we already know the answer for Warren and Charlie. Now, Warren has always been an equities person and equities are businesses that are productive assets that usually produce free cash flows and pay out quarterly dividends. And he’s saying he would not want to own Bitcoin because it isn’t a productive asset, like the same argument he gives to gold. What it is though is that Bitcoin’s a capital good. Andy Edstrom actually addressed this exact point in my episode with him back on episode 128. And Jim Kreider and I also did an episode recently called What is Money, which is episode 164.

Clay Finck (00:47:16):

If you’d like to hear the other side of the argument to find out what money is, what makes good money, and why it’s important, then I recommend checking out those Millennial Investing episodes and forming your own opinion. Again, that’s episode 128 with Andy Edstrom and 164 with Jim Kreider. He also mentions that there’s only one currency that is acceptable. He’s referring to the US dollar when it comes to the US, but Bitcoin has only been around for 13 years and it’s already legal tender in two smaller countries and that trend seems to be accelerating with things like zero capital gains taxes happening around the world and more friendly regulations being released around it. It seems like every week I’m seeing new regulations from different jurisdictions that are being friendly to Bitcoin and pro Bitcoin.

Clay Finck (00:47:57):

Another thing I will say is that Fiat currencies historically have always ended up failing as money. I’m not trying to be an alarmist or anything saying that the US dollar is going to zero anytime soon, I’m just pointing out that history tells us that Fiat currencies have always eventually failed. That is why people have always valued something like gold and people still value it today as a way to store value. And gold has historically been a good form of money or way of storing value as it holds its value over long periods of time. Fiat currencies, which aren’t backed by gold but are just issued by governments is a way governments can have more control over their economy. The faith in that currency is purely based on trust. And time and time again, governments have abused the power of printing their own currency that eventually trust is lost in it, meaning that some new money will have to fill in as a way to exchange value in an economy.

Clay Finck (00:48:46):

So with that, time will tell whether Buffet and Munger will be right on if it will all end well or not for Bitcoin. I’m excited to see it all play out.

Robert Leonard (00:48:54):

With this question, Clay, I’m not really surprised that you have a lot more to say about it than I do. I am a Bitcoin fan, but I know you’re a lot more involved in Bitcoin than I personally am, but I do have two things that I’ll say. And the first is that I don’t know what Bitcoin is going to do. It could go to zero or it could go to a million like some people propose. But for me, there are enough smart people that are involved in it that it’s at least worth a small bet from me with a small portion of my portfolio.

Robert Leonard (00:49:23):

The way I think about it is that there’s a really asymmetric opportunity here. And for me, I would rather put a little bit of money in and at least participate on the upside than worry that I missed a big opportunity. I’m okay with putting in some money and losing it all so that I can potentially experience some of the upside and so that’s really just how I view it is I would be more mad at myself if I missed out on the upside than I will be if I lose the money. It seems like it fits my personality, it fits my style, and it fits my portfolio. There’s a quote from Tom Engel from the Motley fool, where he says, “If this company is the next great growth stock, a little bit is all I need. And if it’s not, then a little bit is all I want.”

Robert Leonard (00:50:07):

In this quote, he’s talking about specific growth companies and the reason he’s saying that is because if you have a little bit, if the company does really, really well and it really is a growth company and explodes in value, then a little bit turns into a lot. And you can see this in some of Buffet’s investments, even probably in a lot of most people’s portfolio and even the S&P 500, returns are often driven by just a few outliers that do really, really well. Then on the downside, if you lose just a little bit, that’s all you’re out. So for me, I think of the… he was talking about growth companies in that quote. But for me, I think about Bitcoin the exact same way. And I don’t think that Buffet’s opinion is wrong. I actually like the examples he gave about real estate and the farm. What he said is right for him.

Robert Leonard (00:50:49):

This goes back to what I was saying earlier about different points in our lives and different spots in this lifecycle of growing your capital. If you’re listening to this, you’re probably a little bit younger. You might be looking to actually grow your capital instead of just preserve it and so Bitcoin might give you that opportunity to grow it. Whereas, if you’re looking to preserve capital, I’m not so sure that I’d want to put big money into Bitcoin either. If I was Buffet and I was trying to preserve capital, or if I was even older and just myself but older, I don’t know if I’d put money into Bitcoin to preserve it.

Robert Leonard (00:51:16):

I know there are arguments that say it’s an inflation hedge or it’s like gold and the whole point is to be a store of value, but just that aside, I just personally think at this point it can be worth an asymmetric bet if you’re younger and somebody that’s looking to grow your capital and not preserve it. So for me personally, I don’t think Buffet’s wrong, I just think it’s a different perspective on where he is in life and what he needs his money to do for him.

Clay Finck (00:51:43):

All right, let’s roll the next question we have for you.

Saihedge (00:51:46):

Hello, Mr. Buffet and Mr. Monger. My name is [Saihedge 00:51:51]. I’m from New Jersey and I’m currently a freshman at Rutgers University. You knew quite early on that you wanted to be investors and you’ve obviously been amazing at it. What advice would you have for someone who’s still trying to figure out what they want to focus on and find their calling?

Warren Buffet (00:52:09):

Well, it is a very interesting question because I was very, very lucky in that I found what I wanted to do because my dad happened to be in the business that he wasn’t interested in, but they had some books down there and I loved my dad and I’d go down, read the books and they interested me. And I’m glad he wasn’t a professional boxer something or I wouldn’t have any teeth left or anything else. It was accident, just totally accident. But I do think you know it when you see it and it doesn’t mean you can follow. I would tell the students, wrote the report, I mean, find out what you love doing it. You spend most of your life doing it and that why in the world would you want to be around for a lifetime working with people that you didn’t like, unless you had to, which sometimes happens, just work for whomever you admire the most.

Warren Buffet (00:53:03):

And I gave the talk at Stanford one time and somebody showed up at Tom Murphy’s office, I think, a couple of days later. I mean, that person was right. And of course it’s what I did when I got out of school. I wanted to work for Ben Graham. I mean, I didn’t care what I got paid, I just knew that’s what I wanted to do. Then I pestered him for three years and he finally hired me. Then I found somebody else that I’d even rather worked for than Ben, who happened to be myself. So I’ve been working for myself ever since, but I had about four bosses in my life. And I done the Lincoln Journal with, the name slips my mind of the moment, he was a wonderful boss. It was Cooper Smith and JC Penney’s here in Omaha. They all were wonderful people, but I still preferred working for myself.

Warren Buffet (00:53:51):

And of course, Charlie and I both worked for my grandfather and we didn’t find it that interesting at… I don’t remember. Why’d you ever decide to go to work at the store, Charlie? Charlie worked there in 1940. I worked-

Charlie Munger (00:54:04):

Well, I worked just for the experience of working. I didn’t need the money. My father gave me an ample allowance and I also had a private business, so I was kind of working as a lark in your grocery store.

Warren Buffet (00:54:16):

12 hours a day-

Charlie Munger (00:54:17):

Yes.

Warren Buffet (00:54:18):

… for a Lark.

Charlie Munger (00:54:19):

Yeah, as a Lark. Yes.

Warren Buffet (00:54:21):

Did you consider that a good investment of your time looking back on it?

Charlie Munger (00:54:25):

Well, I had never done it before and I wanted to have a little of that experience and I wasn’t going to do it very long.

Warren Buffet (00:54:32):

That sure as hell wasn’t the reason I worked.

Charlie Munger (00:54:33):

Well, but I gave that young lady the advice, figure out what you’re bad at and avoid all of it.

Warren Buffet (00:54:43):

Yeah.

Charlie Munger (00:54:44):

That’s the way Warren and I found our profession.

Warren Buffet (00:54:47):

Absolutely, we-

Charlie Munger (00:54:48):

We failed and everything else.

Warren Buffet (00:54:49):

We worked in everything till we found the ideal employers, ourselves, and that was something we really admired was-

Charlie Munger (00:54:59):

Warren said work for somebody you admire. The only one he knew was the one who was shaving-

Warren Buffet (00:55:03):

I think he still has a point.

Charlie Munger (00:55:04):

… because you and I where shaving.

Warren Buffet (00:55:08):

But it isn’t bad advice. It isn’t bad advice. I mean, who wants this… if they’ve got an option. Charlie went into the service in whatever year it was in the ’40s and he didn’t really have a choice of who he was going to work for. And as I remember, it didn’t really work out that well who he worked for. Charlie, did it?

Charlie Munger (00:55:27):

Well, if you stop to think about it, the two things that neither one of us has ever succeeded at, one, we’ve never succeeded anything that didn’t interest us. Right?

Warren Buffet (00:55:36):

Right.

Charlie Munger (00:55:37):

And we’ve never succeeded anything that was really hard where we didn’t have much aptitude for it.

Warren Buffet (00:55:43):

Yeah, and we’ve been doing whatever [crosstalk 00:55:44] for 60 years now. We have fun in our way and-

Charlie Munger (00:55:49):

I’m just amazed. You’d think if you’re smart, you could do things that don’t interest you well, but you can’t.

Clay Finck (00:55:55):

There was a quote that came to mind after listening to this clip and it was a Warren Buffet quote that goes, “Do what you love and work for whom you admire most and you’ve given yourself the best chance in life you can,” and that was a quote that went through my mind as I was considering joining TIP or not. I knew that I would probably enjoy doing this type of work, and I knew I would probably enjoy working with you, Robert. And that right there really helped me make this transition to a new career, a totally different type of work. I don’t regret the decision at all. And I’d encourage anyone that is listening that doesn’t like their job or line of work to try and find that job that doesn’t really feel like work at all and is something you enjoy to do, like really enjoy to do.

Clay Finck (00:56:36):

As far as I know, we only get one shot at life so you might as well choose a career that you’ll enjoy because we all spend a good portion of our lives at work. Do you have any thoughts on this before we close out the episode, Robert?

Robert Leonard (00:56:47):

Well, thank you Clay. I appreciate the kind words and I feel the same about working with you and I also felt the same way when I was considering joining TIP as well. Stig and Preston were both people that I admired so I figured it would be great to work with them. It also seems like now is as good a time as ever to plug that we are hiring at TIP. I am hiring and the team is hiring for a full-time newsletter writer. It’s a little bit of a secret, but I’ll give you guys a little hint. We are looking to release something. And when I say we, I mean, TIP, is looking to release something similar to Morning Brew every day, a daily financial newsletter. So if you’re interested in joining the team and writing that newsletter, please go to theinvestorspodcast.com/careers and you’ll find all the information on how to apply there.

Robert Leonard (00:57:36):

And the one thing I’ll add to this specific clip that we just listened to is that Munger said, “It’s interesting because if you think you’re smart, you can do things you’re not interested in and be good at them, but you can’t.” And when I heard that, I just kind of had to pause and think for a second, it kind of like hit me in the heart because I’ve actually been in that situation where a business opportunity, a side hustle, even maybe a career, has seemed like a really good financial opportunity, it seemed like I could make a lot of money if I did it. And I was like, “Okay, I kind of have this skill set and I probably could be good at, I could probably make some money at it, but I just don’t like it.”

Robert Leonard (00:58:08):

I mean, everything I’ve seen in my experience that has been true is if I work on something and I’m not super passionate about it, then it just doesn’t work out no matter how good you are and you essentially can’t be good enough to make the money out of it. So I just thought it was a really interesting concept and something to think about in your personal life. And there’s even a lot of talk in the startup space about how if you’re starting a startup that you’re not interested in or you don’t like building startups or passionate about startups, then you’re just going to get crushed by somebody who just absolutely loves what they’re doing, who lives and breaths it every day. So I think that this is a really interesting quote that can help you guide your life.

Robert Leonard (00:58:43):

And so to just wrap up this episode and wrap up things from me, I just want to say that is really important to learn from, and this has kind of have been my theme of my responses throughout this whole episode, is really learn from anybody. It doesn’t have to be Buffet or Munger, Ray Dalio, it could be any super investor or really anybody you look up to. They’re not going to give you a roadmap, a guide, or a step-by-step guide to everything that you should do to do exactly as they do. Rather, what you should do is learn from their principles. Take what Buffet has taught us and think about the principles that those are and think about how you might be able to tailor them slightly to your own life, and then read between the lines.

Robert Leonard (00:59:19):

You don’t want to follow anybody blindly. You’re at different points in your life. You have different risk tolerances. You have different circles of competency. Read between the lines, learn from the principles, apply them to your own life and you’ll benefit greatly. I think more that way than just following people blindly.

Clay Finck (00:59:35):

All right. Thank you everyone for listening and a big shout out to everyone that made the trip to Omaha to visit us at our TIP meetup. Again, I had a great time and look forward to seeing many of you next year. Thanks for listening.

Outro (00:59:48):

Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin. And every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.