The Smattering Podcast 66: August Mailbag

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[00:00:00] Jason Hall: Hey friends, welcome back to The Smattering, where we ask the hard questions about investing. I'm Jason Hall joined by Jeff Santoro, the voice of the people. Hey buddy.

[00:00:08] Jason Hall: Hey, how are you friend?

[00:00:10] Jeff Santoro: I'm good.

[00:00:11] Jason Hall: We, you and I both were away last weekend. We're going to be away this weekend. Together and away.

[00:00:18] Jeff Santoro: That's right.

[00:00:19] Jason Hall: But we, that means we forgot something. We forgot to tell people there was not going to be a newsletter this past weekend. We meant to, you know how it goes. We talked about it and then I think both of us thought the other person was going to do it and we didn't actually put it out.

[00:00:34] Jeff Santoro: So that's exactly what happened. What I'm, what I'm finding is that because you and I have both been taking some time off from work in August that we have not, not followed up on a couple things with each other. So yes, we decided to take a couple weeks off from the newsletter just to take something off our plate because we want our vacations to be true vacations, but we did forget to decide who would let our newsletter readers know that we were taking this time off.

[00:01:01] Jeff Santoro: So if anyone reads the newsletter and listens to the podcast, there won't be one this, there won't be a newsletter this weekend either. We'll still do the transcript for the podcast, but no separate newsletter. But right after that, we will get back into it.

[00:01:14] Jason Hall: It's kind of, I think we did what I like to call, I'm going to call it the the inverse Tyler.

[00:01:20] Jeff Santoro: The inverse Tyler.

[00:01:22] Jason Hall: I'm sure you want an explanation.

[00:01:23] Jeff Santoro: I do. And I think our listeners deserve one.

[00:01:25] Jason Hall: So this weekend I was up in Maine. Tyler Crowe, who I do a lot of videos with, and he's been on the podcast before, his, one of his kid's birthdays was recent. And we were, we went up there to do the birthday thing with him and spend some time with him.

[00:01:37] Jason Hall: They had a bunch of family together and his wife were talking about needing to order pizza for the, for the little birthday party. And they have two kids, so immediately they get distracted and one's taking care of one kid and one's taking care of the other kid and they both ordered pizza. From different places.

[00:01:53] Jason Hall: So there were 12 people and there were 10 large pizzas.

[00:01:58] Jeff Santoro: I love it.

[00:01:59] Jason Hall: Yeah. It was awesome. It was awesome. Hence the, the inverse, the inverse Tyler.

[00:02:03] Jeff Santoro: Do you have like, loads of leftover pizza in your fridge now?

[00:02:08] Jason Hall: We were at a campsite. So it was kind of fun after the little birthday party thing we walked around the campsite and gave away pizza. People loved us. Yeah, they did, they did.

[00:02:18] Jason Hall: Hey, let's make a podcast episode. People are here for a podcast episode. So this is a good one. This is one of our Q our, our mailbag episodes. It's been a while since we did one.

[00:02:26] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. We reached out, I think last week and asked for some questions. We got a couple on Twitter, which was great. And I actually reached out on, I don't know if any of our listeners are members are users of, or are aware of a website called Commonstock (←Jeff’s Commonstock), but it's like Twitter for investors in a way, like you can post-

[00:02:43] Jason Hall: Without all the other crap.

[00:02:44] Jeff Santoro: Right. You can post your portfolio. You can sync your portfolio with like your broker and. show people your trades- or not. And you can post messages and articles and things like that. So I've been using it a little bit the last couple of months, posting our episodes, podcast episodes. And I reached out there and I got three good questions from members of Commonstock.com. So, we'll read those as part of our mailbag today.

[00:03:07] Jason Hall: Yeah. Just a reminder too, you folks have done a great job of giving us great reviews. We want more of them. Keep those coming in your podcast app. Give us a star rating. Give us a review, give us feedback, keep it coming. It's helping more people like you find people like us.

[00:03:23] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. So someone on Apple podcasts hashed, or I'm sorry, $307Fool, who's someone we recognize from Twitter gave us a nice five star review and wrote up a little review of the podcast.

[00:03:34] Jeff Santoro: So thank you very much. And we're hoping to get more of those as time goes on.

[00:03:39] Jason Hall: Is that Matt Hard? I think that might be Matt Hard.

[00:03:40] Jeff Santoro: It is, yeah.

[00:03:41] Jason Hall: Wonderful. Matt, thank you. Appreciate that. All right, let's get let's get to the, let's get to the mailbag.

[00:03:48] Jeff Santoro: So let's take one of the ones we got from Commonstock first.

[00:03:51] Jeff Santoro: This is from Ben on Commonstock and he asked us, what stocks do you own and why? And that's one of the reasons he says he likes Commonstock. And he goes on to say, it's one thing to say you like ASML the business. It's another to show others 13% of your portfolio is ASML, right? So that's just an example he gave.

[00:04:12] Jeff Santoro: So between the two of us, Jason, we probably own 150, 170 stocks. So we're obviously not going to talk about every single stock that we own and how much it is, but we're each going to do something a little bit different. So I will talk to you, I'll quickly just list off the top 10 of my stocks based on their size in my portfolio. And then I'll talk about one or two and why I own them. And then maybe you can talk about some in your portfolio as well.

[00:04:40] Jeff Santoro: So as of today, and we're recording this on August 14th, my top 10 holdings are Datadog, Ryman Hospitality Properties, CrowdStrike. Airbnb, Live Oak Bank Shares, ASML, ironically enough, MercadoLibre, Kinsale Capital, The Trade Desk, and NVIDIA.

[00:05:03] Jeff Santoro: And what's interesting as I look at that list, most of those, almost all of them, are Have done well for me, but they're in my top 10 because they're also ones that I've added a lot to. I've yet. I've not been investing long enough to see a very wide delta between my cost basis and my current position size.

[00:05:24] Jeff Santoro: But I'm pretty sure all of these are winners for me. Most of them are winners against the market, which is nice to see. But that's my top 10 Datadog is by far my number one, and it's also the one I've made my biggest position. I, there was a couple months back about a year ago where I added to that pretty consistently while it was beat down.

[00:05:43] Jeff Santoro: And the other one I think of note here is Live Oak Bank Shares. Cause that's one of the banks that got residually pounded when all of the banking stuff happened back in March. And you and I talked a lot about banks back then. I know Live Oak is one that you're a big fan of too. I added to it pretty opportunistically back in March and then again recently.

[00:06:05] Jeff Santoro: So some of that's appreciation and also me adding to that position. What about you, Jason? Any, any stocks that you own and why that you want to highlight?

[00:06:14] Jason Hall: Yeah. So I'm going to do this differently just because that's me.

[00:06:17] Jason Hall: Live Oak Bank Shares so that's, that's, that's one on my list too. That's, it's my sixth largest. It's 3% of my cost basis. Excuse me. It's 3% of my portfolio. And on a cost basis, it's my fourth largest investment. So it's one that I have a lot of, a lot of conviction in.

[00:06:36] Jason Hall: And I wanted to focus on the cost basis for, for the stocks that I hold, because some of the largest positions, like the largest position in my portfolio is Mercado Libre, which come and knock on, I think 7% of my portfolio, but it's, I don't know, less than 2% cost basis.

[00:06:49] Jason Hall: It's just been such a very, very big winner, but that includes me having added to it at multiple times in recent. In recent years, 1. 7% of my cost basis, right? It's been a massive, massive winner.

[00:07:02] Jason Hall: Here's a couple of interesting ones that I wanted to share. My second largest stock by cost basis is Confluent. About 2. 3% of my cost basis. It's only 2% of my portfolio. It's hasn't been a great stock. Now I bought a fair amount at a pretty extreme valuation. But I've also added a lot when it was down. So I'm down about 14% now, but at one point I was down by like half on that particular stock.

[00:07:30] Jason Hall: I love what they're doing. The way that data management is changing the way companies are trying to make the most of the data that they have. Data streaming is just such a big thing. And these guys are really important. Kind of in the middle of that with open source platform that they created. The founders of Confluent created and helping companies actually make the most of Apache Kafka.

[00:07:53] Jason Hall: Another one, Boston Omaha, this is one of my larger holdings on cost basis. This is one of the worst performing stocks that I own this year. It's down a lot this year, it's down in my portfolio. I've added to it a couple of times. I'm in a kind of at a point now where I'm just watching and trying to learn as they continue to, to, to grow the business. To, to learn if, if their approach, , this slow growth, capital allocation, build up these kind of under the radar, but pretty good cash flowing businesses. If it's going to work out over the long term. I think it's going to, I really do.

[00:08:30] Jason Hall: And there's, there's one more I want to share that's by cost basis is a large holding that's hasn't done well. And that's EPR properties. I wanted to highlight that one because commercial real estate, right?

[00:08:39] Jason Hall: So EPR has a ton of exposure to movie theaters. We know that's a tough industry that's in decline. So they have a big, a lot of exposure, their cash flows there, a lot of their tenants. So, , that's a business that, okay I don't think they're at any like substantial risk of bankruptcy or anything like that, but like the whole dividend story could get undermined.

[00:09:01] Jason Hall: And there could be an opportunity to add even more if the stock continues to, to struggle. Not a good stock for income investors who have, have like, they want predictable income, , just because things could get kind of ugly if. If that movie theater revenue situation continues to deteriorate.

[00:09:18] Jason Hall: So there's just a few, just a few. I love the banks. You know that I love the banks, Live Oak. You talked about that. SoFi is one. Man, I just continue to love SoFi. I think people should be buying more.

[00:09:29] Jeff Santoro: I want to talk about EPR really quick before we move on, because. That's one that I own as well and haven't added to in a really long time. And, and I was not adding to it for the exact reason you talked about.

[00:09:40] Jeff Santoro: I think at the time I looked at it, we might've even done a video on it a long time ago. It was something like 50% of their portfolio was movie theaters. And that was-

[00:09:50] Jason Hall: Yeah, the forties, low to mid forties. It's a ton, it's a ton.

[00:09:52] Jeff Santoro: And what I, I have not dug in myself to, to really look at it. I've read a couple things about their most recent quarter. And, and one thing that stuck out to me was they, they settled the, and re-leased all of the Regal Cinema properties that they had under pretty favorable terms after Regal came out of its bankruptcy reorganization. So that's something I think could be a positive and something to keep an eye on.

[00:10:21] Jeff Santoro: And I, the other thing too, is over time, hopefully they'll diversify themselves away from movie theaters and pick up other properties that then make the percentage of movie theaters in their portfolio smaller and smaller. So-

[00:10:33] Jason Hall: Management, management has said that that's, that is a goal and that's in writing in their most recent earnings presentation.

[00:10:40] Jeff Santoro: So that's an interesting one to keep an eye on that hasn't made it up to my top 10 in terms of size yet, but it's one that I'm keeping an eye on in terms of, I might be time to think about adding a little more to it, at least for me. All right, good. I think we reviewed a couple stocks that we own and answered Ben's question pretty well.

[00:10:57] Jeff Santoro: Let's move on We let's do one of the Twitter ones. We'll go back and forth here. So Ken on Twitter sent us two questions So he sent one kind of to me, but also you and then the second one I think is is more more for you Jason. So I'll read-

[00:11:13] Jason Hall: No, if it's if the questions for you Jeff I, I need to read it to you.

[00:11:17] Jeff Santoro: You want to read it to me?

[00:11:19] Jason Hall: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:19] Jeff Santoro: Okay. Well, it says it's also to you, but go ahead. I'll let you read it.

[00:11:22] Jason Hall: It's not really to me. Ken's just being nice. Jeff. I'm doing my best Ken here. Jeff, with your day job, how did do you. How did do you. How did you, or do you make time to learn how to write and talk about stocks professionally? Assuming you learned anything at all.

[00:11:42] Jason Hall: That's probably the part that was for me.

[00:11:44] Jeff Santoro: No, that was a, and then we got the little winky emoji with it too. No, good question.

[00:11:49] Jason Hall: How do you, how do you do? How have you done that?

[00:11:52] Jeff Santoro: Well, he also said, I'm-

[00:11:53] Jason Hall: Not from texting me. We know it's not from texting me because-

[00:11:56] Jeff Santoro: No, no, no, no.

[00:11:57] Jason Hall: Well, he also did say though, he's sure that you were in the same spot before you moved into this full time. So maybe you can talk about how you did it on the side too. And he also asks for any specific tips on how to do it.

[00:12:14] Jeff Santoro: So I lucked out. Okay. And it feels weird saying this by having the pandemic. And what I mean by that is I happened to get obsessed with and interested in investing in stocks right at the time when I was handed an incredible amount of free time and the, being stuck in my house with nowhere to go.

[00:12:29] Jeff Santoro: So I was just able to read a lot. And the nice thing about something like investing is there's enough books, free articles, websites, that if you have a little bit of an obsessive personality, or you have a lot of free time, you can learn, learn pretty quick. And, and learn enough to start getting, getting going.

[00:12:54] Jeff Santoro: And then the second thing that really helped me was I got involved on the discussion boards at the Motley Fool when I joined as a member. And what was great about that was I could ask a lot of questions. I could ask, here's something I noticed, am I right about that? I could ask like questions about things that I I wouldn't call it analysis, but things that I was looking at and and picking patterns I was picking up on and things like that, but I could check with people who knew more to see if I was on the right track.

[00:13:24] Jeff Santoro: And then in terms of writing about it and doing the writing stuff that I do now, that was just a lot of dumb luck, right place, right time connecting with the right people. Connecting with Jason slowed me down, but I was able to get past that.

[00:13:39] Jason Hall: It's true. I can confirm.

[00:13:41] Jeff Santoro: But that's really what it was. And I mean, for me, it was right time in terms of having the time during the pandemic to sort of learn a lot and then just luck and an incredible amount of luck at meeting the right people and being around when the right opportunities opened up and then just continuing to learn and try to get better.

[00:13:59] Jeff Santoro: It's a fun activity in terms of being a lifelong learner, right? You're never going to have all the answers. You're just going to get better and better and learn more and more. So I don't know. The only tip I would have is to with everything is just to like, get involved with the things you're interested in and hope that the doors open for you.

[00:14:16] Jason Hall: Yeah. So I, I've talked about it before, but for anybody that fell asleep during that episode or just simply doesn't care, I'm going to tell it again. So you can go ahead and mute so you don't have to listen to me. But yeah, I started, I was, I was a member of the Motley Fool for three years, I'd say three years before I started doing any writing for The Fool.

[00:14:33] Jason Hall: And that's great, that was great training. Cause I was really engaged on the message boards, we're talking multiple hours a week. Took advantage of a lot of the, the kind of the learning materials there that move beyond, you know, just the idea of, of stocks being prices on a screen and, you have to get lucky and time your way into making money and you get out, and all of those bad habits a lot of people learn.

[00:14:54] Jason Hall: Like the whole business focused idea. And then I started reading financials and once you actually start reading the company's financials and take the time to learn about it from there, you're just, you're kind of, it's, it's, it's all incremental knowledge on top of the foundation, right? So it gets easier and easier as, as time goes by to build on that existing, knowledge.

[00:15:13] Jason Hall: So part of it for me too, like on the writing side, my career before writing for the Motley Fool I was in technical sales. So a big part of my job, I would spend hours a week in customer's environments, studying their business, where the products that I sold and services that I sold fit in. To like learn their pain points and their problems.

[00:15:38] Jason Hall: And then I would, the out, the output essentially was a sales document that I would write that was specific to that client. And I was writing dozens and dozens of these a year. So that's pretty good training to do writing like the articles that you see on places like the Motley Fool, right?

[00:15:56] Jason Hall: So, I was pretty fortunate in the same way, Jeff, you talk about the timing of being in the right place at the right time. I was already developing skillsets that, that the analysis and also the, the writing in my prior job. So that definitely that, I mean, that worked out great for me.

[00:16:10] Jason Hall: So, same, same tips as you. Do it, don't think- a lot of times people think they have to like find the perfect time to transition to the thing that they love away from the thing that maybe they don't love as much.

[00:16:21] Jason Hall: And you know, it's like the commercial with the cute little girl. Why not both?

[00:16:24] Jason Hall: You can do a little bit of both, right? I think you can. Whether you're getting paid or not is one thing, but eventually the opportunities, you know, if you, if you, if you demonstrate the ability and market yourself, well, eventually somebody is going to notice.

[00:16:38] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. And, I don't know, I'm, I'll just say one last thing and I don't want to get like too philosophical, but like, I'm one of those, like everything happens for a reason kind of people.

[00:16:46] Jeff Santoro: And you know, it's like, I was just, like I said, right place, right time. And all of the opportunities that have come, like, since that initial involvement have been not only just an out on offshoot of, like, being involved, but also other things, like other places in my life, like, kind of didn't work out like other opportunities that I was pursuing those doors closed, which allowed these doors to open.

[00:17:10] Jeff Santoro: So, you know. Dive in, do the thing you like, and then you got to be patient for, for if there is going to be some sort of like inevitable, like transition where that's what you do full time. I think you just have to kind of be patient for the right opportunity.

[00:17:25] Jason Hall: Yeah, I don't, I don't think I ever did anything so bad in my life that I deserved to suffer being a partner with you on something like this. I can't believe that everything happens for a reason.

[00:17:38] Jeff Santoro: I understand. I know. I know where you're coming from.

[00:17:42] Jason Hall: Awkward pause. Next question.

[00:17:45] Jeff Santoro: All right. Let's jump back to Commonstock. We got one from Joey on Commonstock. Joey writes, if you could interview an iconic investor dead or alive, who would you pick and what questions would you ask them?

[00:17:59] Jason Hall: So I just, the smart ass in me wants to say Charlie Munger dead. Because he's probably would still be more entertaining than 99% of the other investors out there that you could-

[00:18:11] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, for sure.

[00:18:12] Jason Hall: Yeah, this is, this is actually really, really hard. I've been thinking about this. You saw it before me, so maybe go first. I'm, I'm still trying to decide.

[00:18:21] Jeff Santoro: I mean, I don't know enough about the, so I'm going to give a really cop out answer and say either Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger, and it's simply because they're the only investors I feel like I've read enough about to get a sense of like who they are as just more than a name who did well in investing.

[00:18:41] Jeff Santoro: Like I've heard of other investors, but I don't know anything about them. I've not I haven't read any biographies of other investors, whereas I have about Warren Buffett.

[00:18:51] Jeff Santoro: I will give a different answer, though, if I was going to go in a different direction than those two sort of easy cop out answers, I might say Peter Lynch, who ran the Magellan Fund, still alive, ran the Magellan Fund at Vanguard very successfully, but also stopped. Like, was awesome for a period of time, and then just was like, you know, I'm just I'm done with this and left. And he's still alive. He could be, I'm sure he's still a great investor.

[00:19:18] Jeff Santoro: But I would love to talk to him about the work life balance thing. Like, is that why he stepped away? Did he feel like, you know, he, he did his thing and he wanted to go spend more time with his family. I don't know. That would be interesting to me. So those are pretty standard answers. I mean, I think everyone's in investing has heard of those, those people, but I don't know enough famous investors or enough about. investors to have a more creative answer.

[00:19:45] Jason Hall: Yeah, I think it would be really interesting to talk to like JP Morgan, for example, to find out what it was really like in the twenties and thirties before Wall Street was really regulated. And like, I think he's interesting because as much as he built enormous wealth and you know, he was kind of America's banker for a while, like he was part of a generation that absolutely saw a lot of what they did as being a duty to the country, you know.

[00:20:15] Jason Hall: They, they kind of saved the country's financial system multiple times. There's stories about him basically taking all of the bankers in New York and essentially locking them in his office until they reached an agreement.

[00:20:28] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. He would bail out the financial system like by himself, you know, kind of like the fed does now by raising interest rates and lowering interest rates and that kind of stuff. Like he just did it. It's crazy.

[00:20:40] Jason Hall: So here's an interesting idea that I had that I've been thinking about and you brought up Buffett and Munger again. And what I think would be really fun is to have a conversation with Charlie Munger five years after he and Buffett really started working together. They'd known each other years before that, but it was, you know, and they were, they were in their forties before they really started partnering together on things.

[00:21:12] Jason Hall: I think that would be fun. So talk to talking to Charlie Munger when he's 45, right, just to get his insights versus the Munger that we've heard over the past 20 years or so when he and Buffett have worked so closely together. And as much as anything, and I'm sure Munger's sick and tired of hearing people ask him about Warren Buffett, but I kind of want to ask him about Warren Buffett.

[00:21:39] Jeff Santoro: I like, I like that way of thinking of Munger, right? Like younger, younger Munger.

[00:21:45] Jason Hall: Younger Munger. That's a band name.

[00:21:46] Jeff Santoro: A band name. That's a good one. I like that. But here's the, here's what you said made me think of one other kind of interesting thing. I, you know, Benjamin Graham is , a much older investor wrote The Intelligent Investor. He was a big influence on Warren Buffett. I think it'd be fun to sit down with him, but like, be like, hey, I'm from the year 2023, here's, what's different about the world of investing now and just see what his thoughts are on it, because, there's a lot of stuff in the intelligent investor that's still very good, but there's a lot of it that's outdated just because that was such a long time ago in terms of the information that's available and the regulations that are here now.

[00:22:23] Jeff Santoro: So I think if I was going to talk to a, a great investor from a much older generation, or maybe you could even do this with JP Morgan, I guess, just talk through like, here's what it turned out to be a hundred years later or whatever, and just kind of see what they have to say. But I like your take on the Munger answer. That's good.

[00:22:41] Jeff Santoro: All right. Let's hop back to Twitter and Ken, who asked the question earlier about how we both got into doing what we're doing from our day jobs are, you know, for you, former day job. And for me, current day job.

[00:22:55] Jeff Santoro: But Ken wrote another question and this one he addressed just to you. So I'll read it and let you chime in here. Ken says, I've been building cash close to 7% as my portfolio has soared in 2023. I don't want to fall in love with the cash. I have a mental plan based on different factors in the market and individual stocks on my watch list. I'm looking for opportunities to spend it and being patient.

[00:23:20] Jeff Santoro: Besides having a deployment plan or idea, what else do you think can help me prevent falling in love with too much cash?

[00:23:27] Jason Hall: Yeah, I think as a starting point, because I've talked about this before, Jeff, where, you know, I try to be careful about sort of avoiding that same thing. And it's easy now, particularly when you can get, you know, 5% yields on treasuries. Right.

[00:23:44] Jason Hall: So, but for me, I think the, the easy part of it is you just have to internalize your goals and really think about what you're trying to accomplish. And if you're building wealth for 10, 20, 40 years from now, last I checked, 5% returns is not going to get you there. It's well below the market's average long term returns particularly the, the, the stock market, right? You're looking at, you know, closer to 10% average over the long term. And even like a 60/40 portfolio or 60% stocks, 40% bonds, you're still just coming up short.

[00:24:21] Jason Hall: So I think that that's, that's an important kind of a starting point there. I think we also, one of the things that I do is I've, I've learned, man, I've learned in 15 years that I really suck at calling the market, right? Getting the timing thing. I perpetually expect a recession. You can ask me anytime and I will tell you, yeah, there's probably going to be a recession in the next year, right? That's the way my brain is wired.

[00:24:47] Jason Hall: But I don't invest that way because there's what my brain expects and then there's what the math says. And the math says yeah, we get recessions every 10 or 15 years and you know, we get market downturns of 20 or more about once every decade, but never exactly every decade.

[00:25:03] Jason Hall: So you have to invest according to probabilities and your long term goals. And we know that cash historically is a great way to lose wealth over the longterm. So I think, I think to me, that's, I kind of start there and then, you know, you build your framework, your investing framework around that.

[00:25:23] Jason Hall: And then you, and then you can build a plan on top of that and you start setting some guidelines to help you figure out like whatever, what's the, what's an amount of cash that you think is reasonable that is not going to harm your returns over the long term, but also gives you cash that you can use for whatever you're planning to use cash for right.

[00:25:43] Jason Hall: You have to think about what are you going to do with it. What are you going to do with all that cash? Are you just going to turn into gold coins and go Scrooge McDuck and swim in it or are you, are you going to buy stocks with it when the market down goes down or are you using it for near term things that you're going to be buying in the real world, right? Or some, some mix of all of those things, minus the Scrooge McDuck part, because that doesn't actually work.

[00:26:04] Jason Hall: I mean, you have to think about that, right? You have to build a plan based on the reality. And the reality is that cash doesn't really help you build wealth over the longterm. It's, it's how you use that cash as a tool to buy other assets. That's, that's where cash is, is powerful.

[00:26:21] Jeff Santoro: And I think the other, the only thing I would add is you have to know the kind of investor you are and try to predict, or maybe, from 2020 or, from March of 2020, what you're actually going to feel when the market tanks.

[00:26:38] Jeff Santoro: So one of the reasons I stay full, almost fully invested is what you talked about at the beginning of your answer. I don't want to be in the position of trying to market time. So the reason I don't want a ton of cash in my brokerage account, just waiting is there could be a two week span coming up in the next month or two where the market drops 10%. I would, I know for a fact at some point in those two weeks or at the end of those two weeks, I would be like, this is it now's time, now's the time to deploy that cash.

[00:27:13] Jeff Santoro: And then I'm either going to be right or wrong. It's either going to go back up from there or it's going to continue down and maybe it ends up bottoming at 20% or 30%. And now I spent all my cash back when it was only down 10%.

[00:27:25] Jeff Santoro: So I feel like what I like about your cash strategy, Jason, is you have a definitive plan. And I know you, you view it more as a framework than a rule that sort of triggers, like, here's when I spend how much of the cash I have, we don't have to go through the whole thing, but essentially-

[00:27:43] Jason Hall: I actually I'm going to, I think.

[00:27:45] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, why don't you explain it in case anyone missed it. But I think that's what you need if you're going to be a cash holder for the purposes of opportunistic buys.

[00:27:53] Jason Hall: So over the past 10 years or so, I've kind of refined my cash guidelines as such. Number one, I've historically have kept my cash at around 5% of my portfolio or less. And again, I'm specifically saying portfolio. This has nothing to do with real world money. So emergency fund. Savings for expenses in the next one to three years, right? That's separate money.

[00:28:15] Jason Hall: This is only in as a percentage of my invested portfolio. I'm starting to move that up though, because interest rates have come up and I'm not as young as I used to be. So I have kind of expanded that. And I'm right now I'm about 8% and I'm pretty comfortable being at about 8%.

[00:28:28] Jason Hall: And here's my plan of what I'm going to do with that cash. Number one, I'm getting that 5% yield. So the cost the, the opportunity cost is much lower now of holding cash, right? So that's, that's helpful, but here's what I do.

[00:28:40] Jason Hall: If the market falls 10% from a recent high, I will take roughly half of my cash. I will find stocks that I own that have fallen far more than that 10% that I think are opportunistic buys and I will buy them. Or if I have stocks on my watch list that I don't own that have fallen more, I will buy them. Those high beta stocks that tend to go go down more when the market goes down, they tend to perform really, really well as long as the business executes when the market goes back to going up.

[00:29:12] Jason Hall: If we get a 20% drop, I'm gonna spend half of every everything I have left. If we start getting to like 25% plus drop, Imma, Imma spend all my cash, right? I'm going to reinvest, right?

[00:29:25] Jason Hall: And of course I'm continuing to deposit new money contributions into retirement accounts, all that kind of stuff too. So I'm continuing to follow my normal investing process along the way.

[00:29:35] Jason Hall: The reason for me, Jeff, that this works is you talked about the market might fall and then it might keep falling. Or it might not fall anymore. The idea is that it gives me like some frameworks to continue to deploy money and have some discipline, even with the reality that I'm not going to get it perfect. I'm not going to catch the bottom, but I am going to create value for myself.

[00:29:55] Jason Hall: And whether I'm right or wrong in the short term, I don't care. I can look like an idiot for six months or a year. If I own great businesses, cause over, you know, over the next six years I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end up looking, looking, looking good.

[00:30:12] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. I, I think bottom line is the difference between how you and I handle cash has a lot to do with the differences we, we have as an, as investors generally. Like I don't think I could ever use your strategy and I don't know that you could use mine.

[00:30:28] Jason Hall: Mine is right and yours is wrong.

[00:30:29] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. No, I agree with you.

[00:30:30] Jason Hall: Yours is, yours is right and mine is wrong.

[00:30:34] Jeff Santoro: There you go. So, but that's, that's the bottom line.

[00:30:37] Jeff Santoro: So I think the, I don't know, my answer to Ken is, you know, if you're going to be a cash holder, have a plan, something similar to what you're doing so that you don't have to be the one making the market timing decisions. You may not make them correctly.

[00:30:51] Jeff Santoro: All right, let's hop back to another Commonstock question we got. This is a little bit related to one we already answered, but maybe we'll take it in a little bit of a different direction or answer it a little bit more succinctly.

[00:31:03] Jeff Santoro: So Doug asks us, you guys also work at the Motley Fool, correct? Would you be open to sharing what that's like? One, do they mind that you also have your own stock related newsletter and podcast ?Two, do most writers work full time for the Motley Fool? Or is it a side gig? And three, is the Motley Fool a good company to work for?

[00:31:26] Jeff Santoro: So I'm happy to dive in on those, but why don't you answer any one of those first with the caveat that we're not full time employees, either of us. I mean, I'm sorry. I am not full time. You are, but not as a, as a employee of the Motley Fool. You're a contractor. So maybe that's a place to start.

[00:31:43] Jason Hall: So, yeah, so we're both contractors with the Motley Fool. And again, we don't speak for the Motley Fool ever in any professional capacity, ever, ever. We're speaking for ourselves and our observations and experiences with The Fool.

[00:31:56] Jason Hall: The, the way The Fool is generally structured is most full time full employees like the analysts, the advisors that work for the newsletters, the, the, back-end people that run the tech, you know, that kind of thing, their customer service people, those are full, those are full time, the in house editorial people that do the editing and like the bureau chiefs and that kind of thing and people that are involved with like the day to day strategy, right? The operation of the business in the day and the strategy of the business.

[00:32:23] Jason Hall: The, as far as I know all of the, the writers, the Fool.com writers for the the, the public, the articles you can find on Fool.com and that go out to Yahoo Finance and other various and sundry places are written by contractors.

[00:32:37] Jason Hall: And generally contractors are long term contractors for the most part have been around for a while. A lot of them, Jeff, like you and me both, started out as members. A few of them started out as analysts and at some point for various reasons, transitioned to, to writing full time as contractors.

[00:32:52] Jason Hall: So that's just kind of a little bit of like the, the inside baseball about how it's, how it's structured.

[00:32:59] Jason Hall: Do they mind that you also have your own stock related newsletter and podcast? I hope not. We've had a lot of their analysts come on our podcast and I've talked to- David Gardner actually congratulated me for our one year anniversary of our podcast. So David Gardner, one of the co-founders of the Motley Fool. So I think, I think we're viewed as friends of The Fool, Jeff, I think because of what we're doing, because we're not selling a newsletter recommending stocks, right? We're not competing with The Fool and I think we're just kind of viewed as maybe another great value, another thing that helps people that might also be members of the Motley Fool.

[00:33:39] Jason Hall: So, yeah, what do you think?

[00:33:42] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, to answer that one about if they mind us doing this, we were very purposeful, and still are, to try to do something different or at least mostly different than what the Motley Fool does as far as it's like money making business, right? They sell subscriptions to stock picking services and there's a lot of educational and mindset resources that come along with that but if we're being honest you're gonna sign up for a Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers or one of their other services because you want stock picks and analysts write ups of stocks.

[00:34:12] Jeff Santoro: If you've been around for any period of time, I wouldn't call anything we do deep analysis. We, we, we talk a lot about, the big questions about investing, even on the YouTube channel where we do talk about stocks specifically. It's You know, quick hits, short videos. So, and those are affiliate videos, right? So we do have that relationship to where we're sponsored by them to make those short form videos.

[00:34:37] Jeff Santoro: But yeah, you won't see us, putting out any stock picking stuff anytime soon I don't think.

[00:34:43] Jeff Santoro: As far as the question about do most writers work full time or is it a side gig, I know just from being interested in this as someone who does it as a side gig, the vast majority of the people who are writing and are contractors are doing it as their full time job like Jason does. There's a handful of us, maybe I can count Less than 10 that I know of ,I mean, there probably are more who do this in addition to like a full time day job. Which makes sense because it's hard. It's hard to find the time to do that. I think you have to have the kind of lifestyle and day job that affords you the time to do that.

[00:35:16] Jeff Santoro: And then the third one is the Motley Fool, a good company to work for. I mean, from I, don't want to speak for Jason. From my perspective as a contractor who does part time work, I've been very happy. I have no, no complaints. I mean, there's always some complaints, right? Anytime you're working for anyone, but I-

[00:35:30] Jason Hall: If there's not, you're, you're lying.

[00:35:32] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. I've, I've really enjoyed the time I've spent. And I don't know if you want to wrap things up by answering that part, Jason.

[00:35:37] Jason Hall: I mean, I've been doing it for more than a decade and I'm very excited that we're going to see some of our friends and colleagues who work full time, in and around the headquarters, hopefully over this this coming weekend. So yeah, there's a lot of great relationships with some wonderful, wonderful people.

[00:35:54] Jason Hall: One thing I want to add that I think it's important part of this too, is we talk about a lot and this is more philosophical. This is my, my philosophy, philosophical moment here, Jeff is I still feel pretty strongly that it's, it's relatively it's, it's purpose driven, I think for the most part. And if you're, if you- Something, Jeff, you and I both talk about is we feel like our podcast, we, we help, we help people do a better job at something that's important for themselves and their family, right? And that, and that's creating wealth and investing well and navigating an industry that frankly the, the vested interests want it to be stressful. They want it to be confusing because they want their pound of flesh and in those fees by you coming to them and helping people kind of decouple themselves from that I think is really important.

[00:36:47] Jason Hall: And yeah, the Motley Fool sells paid subscriptions. But at its core, I think it's really teaching people how to invest and also getting those, those stock picks. You know, it's both of those things and that is really important work to me. So that's a big thought part of, for me, like, is The Fool a good company to work for? And as a contractor, I can't speak for employees. I would, I would say yes, I would say yes.

[00:37:17] Jeff Santoro: I would agree. I, it took me a while to join as a member. I was skeptical at first.

[00:37:23] Jason Hall: Oh yeah. No, you, he was sending me DMs on Twitter asking me if it was a cult.

[00:37:27] Jeff Santoro: And then, but then once I joined and I saw all of the great educational and mindset materials and that it was a very like buy and hold and don't trade in and out sort of philosophy.

[00:37:38] Jason Hall: Narrator: “He drank the Kool Aid.”

[00:37:41] Jeff Santoro: Well, no, but honest to God, that resonated with me and it's one of the reasons I wanted to get involved as more than just a member, right? So I went from skeptical to joining to, wow, this is more than I was expecting. I'd like to be involved. And I think that, again, to your point, that speaks to how we both feel about the company.

[00:37:59] Jason Hall: I want to add one thing. I want to add one thing beyond this that I think is important. I think that there are, because this is kind of falling a little bit into a Motley Fool love fest. And the bottom line is that there are other stock picking services out there and other newsletters out there and something that's changed in the past five years is Substack, Beehiiv, all of these other platforms for people that are doing their own thing. There's a lot of great resources out there. Yeah, really, really are.

[00:38:26] Jason Hall: I just think it's really important. I'm going to rant about this on our, on our next Rough Cut, which you may have heard before you actually hear this podcast, depending on whether or not I can talk Jeff into agreeing to record it with me.

[00:38:38] Jason Hall: There's a lot of empty shells out there posing as experts just so they can get you on their free newsletter just so that they can collect their, their, their ad take from their 20,000 or 30,000 newsletters subscriptions that go out. There's a lot of people you're paying that you can pay money to for their newsletter that you have no idea if they know if they know what the hell they're doing. There's no way to vet their history. There's no backtrack tracking to look at their returns over the long term.

[00:39:07] Jason Hall: So just be careful out there, people. There's a bunch of garbage, but there's also some really, really good stuff out there.

[00:39:14] Jeff Santoro: All right. We got one more mailbag question and then we'll take a quick break and then we're going to come back and do a little follow up conversation on something we talked about in previous, in a previous episode.

[00:39:23] Jeff Santoro: So I'm also from Twitter. We got this question from Colin. And Jason I think this is a good one for you to answer just based on having a lot more experience investing than I have, but I'll certainly chime in at the end. So I'll read it to you.

[00:39:37] Jeff Santoro: The market or let's call it the S&P 500 is not cheap today compared to historic averages. Will it ever be historically cheap again? Part of me thinks not, with more people on average investing, less businesses in the world to invest in, small pool of businesses due to mergers and acquisitions, more dollars chasing fewer businesses plus ETFs and index funds spreading money over hundreds or thousands of businesses with little money down needed.

[00:40:03] Jeff Santoro: It feels like the days of the total market being a price to earnings of 15 or less will only be during black swan events and only for brief periods. Should we get more accustomed or be more comfortable buying businesses with higher average multiples than the great investors were able to put money to work at in the past?

[00:40:24] Jason Hall: Yeah, this is a, this is a good, a good question. And this is one, frankly, Jeff, I've been, I've been struggling to answer this question myself for most of the past year now, really thinking about the market and valuation.

[00:40:36] Jason Hall: So a couple of things I think are important when you think about that, that price earnings, multiple, businesses are more profitable broadly now than they were back in the days where the lower P E ratio, right? So you're paying a little bit, you know, higher multiple, just again, think about the operating margins that an Apple gets and Microsoft and these mega cap companies that, that are the most profitable companies. So that's part of that P E that you're paying.

[00:41:08] Jeff Santoro: Well and compare it to what were the biggest companies back in the back in the day, which were like industrial-

[00:41:14] Jason Hall: Earnings yields were much lower. Right?

[00:41:16] Jeff Santoro: Right. Right.

[00:41:17] Jason Hall: So that's so that's really, really important. So that's that's a part of it Right? So that comes into play. I also think that the other side of of the coin, so that's the argument to kind of support higher multiples.

[00:41:32] Jason Hall: But the other side of the coin is that we're still coming through this period of ultra cheap money. And the market still hasn't decided what bonds are going to do. Look at the, the 10 year versus like the 30 day treasury and it's still inverted, right? You can still get better yields on short term money than long term fixed income. And that's because the market has it in its head that the feds going to start cutting rates.

[00:42:00] Jason Hall: So the market also has it in its head that we're not going to get a recession. Guess what? You don't get a recession, you don't get lower interest rates. The feds not going to say, Oh, everything's fine. We're just going to cut rates. No, the feds going to say, Oh, everything's fine. We're not going to cut rates. That's not how those two things work, right?

[00:42:20] Jason Hall: So the, the bond market certainly thinks rates are going to come down. The equity market certainly thinks a recession is not going to happen, right? So here we are, right here, here we are. One of, one of them is wrong, right? One of them is absolutely wrong. Because they're diametrically opposed.

[00:42:40] Jason Hall: I think we're going to get a recession at some point. Mainly because you always do. Like, I just don't know when it's going to be. And you're going to get, if you get a recession, the rates come down, right? They either come down after it happens, or as soon as the Fed figures out, well, here comes, we've got to do something to respond. And they're generally reactionary.

[00:42:58] Jason Hall: All of those things mean multiples are going to come down because stock prices are going to come down. But then you can say, well, earnings are going to come down. So maybe the multiple stays high because earnings come down and stocks come down too. So it's, it's, it's a tough, unanswerable question.

[00:43:14] Jason Hall: And, and I, I mean, I hate to say I don't know after all of that stuff that I said, but it's, it's not, it's not simple.

[00:43:23] Jason Hall: I will say this, and I think Jeff, maybe this is the more important answer to the question. Is that you can still find value, right? You can still find things to buy that can help you generate your goals, right? Help you reach your goals.

[00:43:40] Jason Hall: For example, I don't have it right in front of me, but Brookfield Renewable, Brookfield Infrastructure. I know those are ones that Colin loves so I'm going to use those in examples. You're getting close to like the four and a half to 5% yields, which is close to what you're going to get from cash. And I'm pretty sure if you hold those for five or 10 years, they're going to grow the payouts. . So if bond yields get cut, you win because your dividend yield on your cash goes up and you look at their history of growing the businesses and growing the cash flows, they're going to become more valuable. So either way, you're going to, you're going to outperform. I think it's, it's a stock pickers market. I think that's the best description. This is not a, to me, this is not a ETF buyers market. This is a stock pickers market.

[00:44:25] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. I, I don't obviously don't know the answer either, and I don't know enough about historical valuations to really speak to it, but your last thing is kind of where I was going in my head as you were talking, which is like, does it matter or who cares? And I don't mean that to be flippant and dismiss the question because I think it's a good one.

[00:44:45] Jeff Santoro: But to me, you know what? One thing that someone said once that really stuck with me is, you know, valuation. And I think it was being said in reference to a specific company, but I think this is true for the overall market is more art than science. And, you know, this question is specifically about the market being at a P/E of 15, right? Or the S&P 500 just to be a little bit more specific. But as you pointed out, What? 50% of the S&P 500 is like seven companies who all are tech companies that are going to have pretty high profits.

[00:45:16] Jason Hall: So it's not that much, but it's, it's a, it is a, it's a lot of massive, it is a massive amount coming from a handful of companies.

[00:45:22] Jeff Santoro: Right. And the other thing too, is, , that's not the only multiple that you can look at to determine how fairly or unfairly an individual company is valued, you know, you can look at cash. You know, price to free cash flow or price to operating cash flow to get a sense of where something's valued, either historically or or compared to where you think it's going to be able to go in the future. And to do that, you have to have a little bit of more of an understanding of how to do like a DCF or something like that.

[00:45:49] Jeff Santoro: And then the last thing I'll say is, back when the market was down in 2022, there were some companies that you forget because right now there are super high flyers that were really pretty beat down even on a price to earnings ratio. And it was a short period of time, relatively, if you look at the whole history of the market, but you know, I do think that there, like you said, there's going to be values with individual stocks and you just have to sort of, I don't know. I would worry less about the overall picture and worry more about finding the diamonds in the rough, so to speak.

[00:46:22] Jason Hall: Yeah, I know people are sick and tired of hearing me talk about it, but this is the recent example. Banks in March, you know, that was an opportunity, right?

[00:46:30] Jason Hall: There's always going to be some out of favor sector that has good economics and good long term prospects. You just, you just have to kind of wait and find it right. And as much as Nvidia right now is priced through the ceiling, sometime over the past year, the stock was down more than half, right? I mean, there's the, you will get, you just have to be patient. It's hard to be patient, but you have to be disciplined.

[00:46:53] Jeff Santoro: All right, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about what we did or did not do in over the past week or two, as many stocks fell after earnings.

[00:47:04] Jason Hall: Mini follow up to our earnings mind earning season mindset episode.

[00:47:07] Jason Hall: Hey everybody. We are indeed back for the second part of our show. And this is going to be a quick one. So last week's episode, Jeff earning season, earnings season mindset, and we got a little flack from some of our friends on Twitter about it. But I think the episode delivered talking about how, especially for newer investors, but not even newer investors, just, just a lot of kind of retail individual investors that this is just part of what they do.

[00:47:36] Jason Hall: That's never really know how to deal with the volatility, and should you do something before earnings? Do you act right after or whatever? So just kind of help people get through that. And one of the things you talked about was you had several stocks that absolutely got smashed after earnings down 20% or more.

[00:47:54] Jason Hall: And my question for you, Jeff. What have you done? What'd you do?

[00:48:00] Jeff Santoro: Well, to use a construct we often use in the second part of our show, I did not do a thing. I did not, I did buy a stock last week. I honestly don't remember what it was at the moment, because I've had a really busy week. But I can tell you it was not one of the ones that I wrote about and spoke about having dropped 20 or 25%.

[00:48:23] Jeff Santoro: And the reason was for a couple things. I was very busy and didn't have a chance to really look at results myself. So I read some headlines. I, I read some articles written by people who I know are good, you know, analysts or think about stocks in a way that I think is smart, but I didn't do the work myself.

[00:48:45] Jeff Santoro: So that was reason number one that I didn't feel comfortable pulling the trigger on a buy of one of those companies that fell 20% plus because I feel like if I did it would have been entirely based on a stock drop headlines and vibes. And I'm as I get more comfortable as an investor. I'm trying to do less vibe investing.

[00:49:05] Jeff Santoro: But the second reason is I've spoken before about having a little bit of a framework. To decide what I buy each week. So essentially, I look for stocks that are trading for a weighted valuation that is below what I paid for them. But also are not overvalued anyway. So for example, if I bought something at 60 times sales in 2021, and now it's 50 times sales, just because it's, you know, cheaper on that valuation metric doesn't mean I'm going to go buy it necessarily.

[00:49:42] Jeff Santoro: So those are the two kind of things I'm looking for. And none of the stocks that fell 20% over the last couple of weeks because of earnings sort of fit that criteria. And I don't follow it to a tee. It's just a starting point framework for me. I've talked a lot about learning over the last couple of years that sometimes the best thing to do is to not do a thing.

[00:50:07] Jeff Santoro: So the fact that under my normal process, these would not have been in consideration and the fact that I was really busy and didn't have a chance to dive into the results in a way that I wanted to, everything was pointing at slow your roll. There's no reason to do anything right now. You buy stocks every week. You can buy them next week or the week after that or the week after that.

[00:50:31] Jeff Santoro: And the reality is these 20% drops are not probably not going to come back immediately. You know, I bet you I could buy any one of those companies in the next month, maybe even two or three months, and they won't be back up to where they were before they fell. Not, you know, they could, but it's less likely than not.

[00:50:53] Jeff Santoro: So those were kind of the top three reasons why I didn't do anything with those. And that was entirely, I was a little bit proud of myself. I'm going to pat myself on the back here, because I don't know that I would have reacted that way a year ago or two years ago. I might have just seen down 25%. Buy. And I might've been right. Like maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all these stocks come back in the next couple of weeks and I missed my opportunity to get a sale.

[00:51:20] Jeff Santoro: But I plan on owning them all for many, many, many years. So, you know, over 20 or 30 years. Even a 20% drop here and there isn't really gonna make too much of a difference. So those are the main reasons.

[00:51:33] Jeff Santoro: Did you do anything differently the last couple weeks? Have you bought anything recently?

[00:51:36] Jason Hall: So those four stocks, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was Fortinet, DigitalOcean, Lemonade, and Upstart.

[00:51:48] Jeff Santoro: I didn't throw Upstart in the mix because I think that came the next week, but it did go down.

[00:51:53] Jason Hall: But what was the, I thought you had, was it just three that you had?

[00:51:56] Jeff Santoro: It was those three, and then, Redfin is also another one that I own that dropped for me, but I didn't, I didn't necessarily mention that one.

[00:52:03] Jason Hall: So I'm back, I'm backtesting it right now, like in real time people. So this is- by backtesting just, I'm, I'm looking at a chart. That's all.

[00:52:11] Jeff Santoro: Sounds so much cooler when you call it backtesting.

[00:52:14] Jason Hall: Doesn't it? Doesn't it? So, so all of those stocks, the day of earnings fell. Around twenty five percent.

[00:52:22] Jeff Santoro: Somewhere. Yeah, twenty to twenty five percent.

[00:52:25] Jason Hall: So, since then, in the past two to three weeks, depending on when the company reported, Fortinet's still down twenty four percent. DigitalOcean's down twenty seven. Redfin's down thirty two. Lemonade's down thirty five. Upstart is now down 52%. It's fallen again. I took another, I think you had a downgrade or something that that happened.

[00:52:53] Jeff Santoro: So that's the other thing I didn't even calculate in like my reason for not buying, but just because the stock drops 25% after earnings doesn't mean it can't drop another 10% the next week.

[00:53:04] Jason Hall: Velocity is never gonna be your competitive advantage as an individual investor. You're never gonna be able to trade your way into into or out of anything fast enough to make a difference.

[00:53:18] Jeff Santoro: Here's one more thing that I think is relevant here. I've said this to you a bunch of times over the past, over the course of this year, 2023. And we've talked about it every time we've done a monthly or quarterly review of the Smatterfolio, which is our year long stock picking contest for fun.

[00:53:36] Jeff Santoro: It's the way that things went up this year I never would have guessed it in December. I think I'm probably on record somewhere on the podcast saying I expected this year to be like an even ish year. Like maybe the market ends up three or down 3%, something like that. And who knows, we might still get there.

[00:53:54] Jeff Santoro: That's another reason why these enormous drops didn't signal to me like huge buying opportunity because they, they, all those socks you just mentioned were up 50, 60, 70, 80% leading up to those drops.

[00:54:09] Jason Hall: You ready? You ready? Here they are. Even with those big declines. Every single one of them is up at least 10%.

[00:54:18] Jason Hall: Lemonade's up 9. 8%. The two biggest decliners, Redfin and Upstart, are still up 140 and 160% year to date.

[00:54:32] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, and part of what I wanted to do when I said I didn't dive in yet and do my own diligence on them, is I wanted to see, even with those falls, what I think about their valuation.

[00:54:45] Jason Hall: You got to zoom out. You have to zoom out. That is so absolutely so absolutely important.

[00:54:51] Jason Hall: Well, Jeff, you you passed, you passed the test.

[00:54:54] Jeff Santoro: Nailed it.

[00:54:55] Jason Hall: You're growing up. So proud. Hashtag proud. All right, Jeff, I think we're done, right? I think we did it.

[00:55:02] Jeff Santoro: I think we did it.

[00:55:05] Jason Hall: Okay. Friends, as always, just a reminder. We love to give our answers to these hard investing questions. We love to answer your questions when we do our mailbags. But you've still got to figure out your answer to these hard investing questions. Take our answers, realize how stupid they are, and then come up with the ones that make the most sense for you. You can do it. I believe in you. All right, Jeff. I'll see you next time, buddy.

[00:55:26] Jeff Santoro: See you next time.