Choose One Asset To Hold For The Next 246 Years

In their latest episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast, Brewster, Taylor, and Carlisle discuss Choose One Asset To Hold For The Next 246 Years. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

Bill: That’s right. Do you want to debate that thing that you sent around, the 250-year investment?

Jake: Yeah, we could do that. That’s interesting. Bloomstran put out a tweet where he had asked for, “What would you pick if you had to choose something to hold for 246 years?” I believe, which I think takes you back to 1776. I think that wasn’t an accident as to why he selected 246.

Bill: Correct. He’s thoughtful.

Jake: You have to hold it for 246 years from today, who’s your fighter? You had a bunch of the obvious choices like S&P 500, or the dollar, gold, the euro. What else was in there? Any Treasury. Kind of got to pick whatever you wanted, but what was going to be the best outcome for a really long-time horizon? What do you got for that, Bill?

Bill: I’m taking the S&P. I can be tucked into some all-world index. That’s fine. But I’m taking some index, and I think I’d take the S&P.

Jake: I think the index is a strong choice because of the malleability of it and the ability to rotate into whatever’s working at that time. So, that makes sense that it does seem like a good choice. I do wonder about the US part of it, and my argument is that if we went back and re-wound the clock 246 years and looked at, what would you have picked at that time in this same scenario? The United States was, basically, a war-torn emerging market and you would have– [crosstalk]

Tobias: Civil war.

Jake: Yeah. You would have definitely picked the British Empire to bet on at that point.

Bill: Aah, gangly teeth and a small island, no way.

Jake: Do they were the G’s at that point. They were worldwide.

Tobias: The Sun never sets.

Bill: Couldn’t even beat us and we didn’t even have a country, losers.

Jake: [laughs] If we fast forward to today, what are you betting on a similar British Empire that is the US today and is that a little bit of recency bias in your selection of the S&P?

Tobias: Yeah. VT is the answer, right?

Jake: Could be. Get the whole– Own all the world’s businesses, basically, whatever may happen.

Tobias: Everybody’s got that home country bias. Meb Faber would be saying, “We’re allocated to a home country.”

Bill: The thing is the S&P is multinational. So, I’m just not sure that your as home country biased as– I don’t know. I need to know how– [crosstalk]

Jake: So is the British Empire, who’s pretty multinational.

Bill: Yeah, but they’re a small little island.

Jake: [laughs] Okay.

Bill: I don’t know, man. I’d want to be in North America, and I’d want to have multinationals until– I guess, if we run out of all of our natural resource advantage, all right, this has to go away. Then maybe I’m wrong. By then, I’m probably dead and I figured my kids are probably dead.

Jake: Aah, there’s no copping out with the we’re all dead things. You got to think multi-generationally.

Bill: Well, that’s why I picked the index.

Tobias: [laughs] We’ve got a couple of good ones. AMC from Keith Harmon. Matt Hanson says GEO. [laughs]

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