In their latest episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast Jake Taylor, Tobias Carlisle, and Bill Brewster discuss:
- 2024 Will See A Black Swan Payoff Event
- Nikola vs. Tesla Robots: Real Deal or CGI Hype?
- Free Speech in the Age of Musk: Twitter’s Uncertain Future
- 2024 Prediction – Dow Jones Industrial Average
- 2024 Prediction – Total Return Of The S&P 500
- 2024 Prediction – 10 Year Treasury
- 2024 Prediction – Inflation
- 2024 Prediction – Bitcoin
- 2024 Prediction – Gold
- 2024 Prediction – Crude Oil
- Is 4 Years Adequate For Nikola founder Trevor Milton?
- Cybertruck Looks Better Up Close
- Bitcoin Up 156% Last 12 Months
- It’s Good To Be Austrian And A Value Investor
- A Look Back At Last Year’s Predictions For This Year
- 85% Of Economists Polled Last Year Thought We’d Be In A Recession Right Now
You can find out more about the VALUE: After Hours Podcast here – VALUE: After Hours Podcast. You can also listen to the podcast on your favorite podcast platforms here:
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Transcript
Tobias: This is Value: After Hours. I’m Tobias Carlisle. We got the crew back together. We got the band here. Billy’s in town. With Jake Taylor, Bill Brewster, what’s happening, fellas? Season’s greetings. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah.
Bill: Seasons greetings, indeed.
Jake: Merry Christmas, boys.
Bill: Shoutout to the listeners in Australia. 04:30 AM. We appreciate you.
Jake: Wow, that’s dedication.
Tobias: I’ll bet that we’ll see some people on. There’s usually a few. There’s a few stalwarts who come on.
Bill: Where are people right now? Let’s do the roll call.
Jake: You got to give them chance to file in there.
Bill: Oh, they should be here on time.
Jake: Those of you who can’t see Bill right now, he’s wearing a full Christmas suit at the moment.
Bill: Suited and booted.
Jake: It is quite impressive. He combed his hair like he showed up today.
Bill: I do have a golf shirt on though under all of this.
Jake: Don’t ruin the mystique. [laughs]
Bill: It’s fair. People don’t want to see what’s under that.
Jake: [laughs]
Tobias: We’re going to be eating a little bit of crow today, and then we’re going to immediately forget that and make some new predictions for next year.
Jake: Yeah. [laughs]
Bill: It’s the only way to do it.
Jake: Yeah.
Tobias: That’s the way to do it. What do you guys want to do? Do you want to do impression–? What happened this year? Before we get the report card, let’s just talk about our feelings. How do you feel you went this year?
Jake: How’s your personal vibe?
Tobias: Yeah, the vibe.
Bill: I’ve had better vibes in different years. [Jake laughs] But 2022 had worse vibes than 2023 for me.
Jake: Hmm, yeah. Everyone was super– [crosstalk]
Tobias: [crosstalk] down 25% at one point there. I guess we just– there’s a little relief rally towards the end of 2022 too.
Jake: Everyone was super bearish coming into 2023. That was the general feeling.
Bill: Yeah. Still don’t love going to the grocery store. But going to the gas pump is easier. So that’s nice.
Jake: I recorded a feeling about a year ago, and I went back and looked at it just for fun, and it was about the market, and I gave it a 1 out of 10 feeling, and I said that I was rather bearish and that I thought that, perhaps that final one-third leg where two-thirds of the pain shows up, has been the historical norm, was on deck. I could not have been more wrong about that. [laughs]
Tobias: I would have said that too.
Jake: Well, you did say that.
Tobias: That sounds exactly what I said.
Jake: [laughs]
Bill: Yeah. I think that in certain areas that one-third leg did come though.
Jake: Mm. That leg went up your rear end if you were a small cap [laughs] value.
Bill: Yeah. I don’t think small cap had a great year to speak of.
Tobias: Smalls got punished. Yeah. So I did this thing where I just went and looked at every rebalance that I’ve done, and basically the portfolio doesn’t actually move around that much. Just one thing that really stood out was the market cap. It came in so much. So my average market cap at the end of 2021 was $26 billion. Oh, sorry, my median, because I did it, median. I took the average and the average was such a big change that it could be swayed by one big stock like Meta or something like that. So I did the median. The median market cap is coming from $26 billion to $5 billion, which is like that’s a huge move. I don’t know what that means. Just maybe the smalls are cheap or the cheapness is in the smalls.
Jake: Did it go from $25 billion to $5 billion while you were owning it? [laughs]
Tobias: Well, it’s across rebalances.
Jake: I’m just Kidding. [laughs]
Tobias: The smalls got punished.
Bill: Yeah. I think October was the low for smalls. But maybe I’m off on that.
Jake: I saw one stat that was the unprofitable businesses were back to rallying again in this year. So we like to joke and call it a shitco rally, but that might actually been somewhat true.
Tobias: The shitco rally hit my shit. Hit my little shitty companies. So that’s true. NASDAQ 100 surges back to its all-time highs. Previously reached on November 22, 2021.
Jake: We’re back, baby.
Tobias: Techs rewriting the history books with a 53% year to date rally, matching 2009s full return. Strongest performance since the tech boom of 1999. That’s from Jason Raznick.
Bill: Yeah.
Jake: Wow. Small.
Tobias: Here’s another one. There’s something crazy went on in the markets last week. Like, Wednesday, Thursday, giant kind of moves up.
Bill: Yeah.
Tobias: I listened to Powell. I didn’t know that it was that dovish, but obviously I wasn’t listening as closely as I should have been. The S&P 500 ETF SPY saw the single biggest– Single day flow on record at $20.8 billion. And then the very next day it had a $10 billion flow, which was its second biggest flow ever the day before being the biggest flow. $35 billion?
Jake: Only top five Tesla’s flows for that day? [laughs]
Tobias: It’s crazy.
Jake: And is pretty wild. Does it feel like everyone’s all on the same side of the boat right now? [crosstalk] [laughs]
Bill: I don’t know
Jake: Bill, what do you think?
Bill: I don’t know. I don’t know how much of these flows is– I’d need to see as a percentage of total money or something like that. I don’t know how much is just short-term capital that leverages itself and presses into a bet. It’s the market saying like, “Okay, multiples should have been here. Now that the Fed sounds a little bit more dovish, multiples need to be pushed higher.” So I don’t know, this short-term stuff. I have no idea.
Tobias: It could be rebalancing too. It could be just rebalancing. That’s probably the real answer. It’s not particularly outstanding as a proportion of total assets. It’s just that they’ve been– They’re offside because you’re balancing towards SPY. Well, you’d think you’d be rebalancing away after a year like that, but I don’t know.
Bill: Some of these stocks, this stuff’s crazy. We’re back to crazy.
Jake: I knew we could do it.
Bill: Yeah.
Jake: I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly.
Tobias: Yeah.
Jake: Also, we didn’t get to spend a lot of time ever in crazy cheap land either– [crosstalk]
Bill: Like, fucking a firm is a BNPL company. Okay. That used to be credit. Maybe it’s not. Maybe buy now, pay later is not credit. But $1.7 billion of revenue, it’s a $15 billion market cap. That’s crazy. Maybe it’ll work. I feel like we’re saying the same thing that we were saying a while back. In 2021, It was an $18 billion company. I guess you think long enough, and this was the drawdown, you are right. You got your long duration asset, you get your drawdown, you come back, everything’s great, it’ll grow to infinity. I don’t know.
Jake: That seems a little Farfetch to me.
Bill: Yeah.
Jake: I’m making a joke about it. I think didn’t Farfetch get taken under, somebody bought it, and I think the equity is going to zero?
Bill: Yeah. Smart people pitched Farfetch. Really smart, but alas.
Jake: What?
Tobias: Let me give a shoutout to the crew, fellas. Let me just do the rounds.
Jake: Okay.
Tobias: And then we can start getting our report card for the year.
Jake: Oh, boy.
Tobias: Toronto. Queenstown. Good ever Queenstown. No pants Vance, upright and early, or may be coming from the night before. Santa Domingo, what’s up? Miami. Yeah. Petah Tikva Israel. Brandon Mississippi. Norberg. Valparaiso. Wakanda. Winnipeg. Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. That’s a hard one. Toronto. Tallahassee. Bangalore. Pittsburg. Indianapolis. Nashville. Nafplio, Greece. Nice. It sounds nicest time to you. Melbourne, Florida. Not Melbourne, Victoria.
Bill: East Coast.
Tobias: Someone gave us a nice tip. Thanks.
Jake: Wow, Christmas tips.
Tobias: AnOmniscientCat.
Bill: Just the tip.
Jake: [laughs]
Tobias: Ontario. Oh, Germany. I think that’s all. Thanks, fellas. We appreciate you dialing in.
Jake: Indeed. So shall we–? [crosstalk]
===
85% Of Economists Polled Last Year Thought We’d Be In A Recession Right Now
Tobias: Just before you do, let me just say 85% of economists polled last year thought we’d be in a recession right now. Those poor fools. [Jake laughs] Imagine getting it that wrong.
Jake: Yeah, imagine.
Bill: Yeah. Well, so far we have escaped.
Jake: It turns out it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
Tobias: Indeed.
Bill: Sometimes I find it hard to even piece together the past.
Tobias: I don’t even know what’s going on now.
[laughter]Bill: That’s right,
Tobias: JT, you want to hit us with our– Go through what we said would happen. Embarrass us.
Jake: So as a little reminder, these are pulled from Jason Zweig of Wall Street Journal. He has a Bias Buster Quiz. I haven’t seen if he’s putting it out yet again for this year. I hope he usually does. So when he does, I’ll retweet it again. Actually, you can find this Bias Buster Quiz as a checklist inside of Journalytic. That’s where I recorded it. So just to go backwards and set the context, we did this approximately a year ago. And the idea was to put forward what you thought was going to be the– or what you thought were going to be the numbers for different kind of big asset class numbers, returns, things like that.
===
A Look Back At Last Year’s Predictions For This Year
And so without further preamble, our first one is the closing value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And for reference, it was at 33,020 when we took the poll. Toby came in with 36,000, so he had an up year. Congrats on that. Bill came in at 31,200, so he was a little bearish. I came in at 29,500, so I was the most bearish. The actual when I looked this morning was 37,465. So, Toby wins that one. He wasn’t too far off.
Tobias: [crosstalk] myself.
Bill: But really, we all win.
Tobias: I Constanza’d it.
Jake: Yeah, exactly. Toby, if you remember back through his numbers, you’ll see that they’re sort of nonsensical and that they don’t really imply much of a worldview because they’re all in open place. [laughs]
Bill: I don’t think mine do either to be fair.
Tobias: [laughs]
Jake: All right. Question number two. What will be the total return of the S&P 500 over the next year? We have Toby coming in at +9%, Bill -7%, and-
Bill: What a horrible prediction.
Jake: -and Jake at -15%. Actual, let’s call it plus 24%. Whomp-whomp.
Bill: Good for the S&P. Good for us.
Jake: Strong. We’re back, baby. So obviously, TC with another W there. What will be the yield on the 10-year US Treasury in one year? For reference, that was a 3.79% when we did that, which actually surprised me as low, doesn’t it, look, just a touch?
Tobias: That was where it was when we did it 3.75? Yeah. Interesting.
Jake: Yeah, seven-nine. But yeah.
Tobias: Seven-nine. That was up a little bit then from up quite a lot.
Jake: Yeah. We have Bill coming in with a 2.5%. All right. So he was back to ready to party. Toby coming in at 6%. That’s pretty heavy. And I came in at 4.5%. So I was up a little bit.
Tobias: Ooh.
Jake: Actual answer, 3.91%. So I’m taking that one.
Bill: I don’t know that I was ready to party with my interest rate prediction. If you have the market down and interest rates down, I was actually not partying in my head.
Jake: Okay. So you were at a Fed emergency panic rate cut 2.5.
Bill: Yeah. I wouldn’t call it an emergency panic. But yes, I thought we would be in a recession and cutting.
Jake: Got it. That’s—[crosstalk]
Tobias: This is that part of the golf school cut– [crosstalk]
Bill: But stupid thing is, if market is going to bounce before the recession is here. But anyway, whatever. Keep going.
Jake: All right. What will the annual rate of inflation be? For reference, it was 7.1% when we ticked a year ago. Bill coming in at 3.2%. Toby with a negative 1/10th of a percent. [Tobias laughs] I don’t understand that one.
Tobias: Deflation.
Jake: Yeah, it’s full deflation. He’s in the great depression. I said 6%. I thought maybe coming in some– Actual, if you believe the BLS-CPI numbers at 3.1%.
Tobias: Yeah, Billy’s got that one.
Jake: BLS-
Bill: It’s fake news.
Jake: -obviously not been to the grocery store recently. And next up–
Bill: Fake news.
===
Bitcoin Up 156% Last 12 Months
Jake: But seriously though, if you did go through and look at your cart buying groceries, there’s no 3.1%. Come on, don’t tell me that. But I digress. What will be the price of bitcoin in one year? This is interesting. For reference, it was $16,679 on the date. And Bill, with a $25,000 call. Toby with $2,000 call. I said $14,000. Actual $42,590 bitcoin.
Bill: Wow, good for bitcoin. Good for the bitcoin people.
Jake: Yeah. So Bill gets the W there, although, barely, I would say.
Bill: That’s like winning on the prices right.
Jake: Yeah, exactly. You bet $1, basically. What will be the price of gold in one year? For reference, it was $1,839 per ounce. We have Bill coming in at $1,300. Not sure where he was.]
Bill: Not great, bob. Not great, bob.
Jake: Toby’s in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome at $3, 750. [laughs] And then I said $2,200.
Tobias: Oh, JT.
Jake: The actual, last I looked, was $2,057. So yeah, I’ll chalk that one up.
Tobias: Is that two each? Is that the running score, two each so far?
Jake: That’s correct, If you’ve been following along at home. Price of crude oil in one year. Interesting. Reference, it was $79.23 per barrel. Bill came in at $75. Toby said $200. Again, we’re Beyond Thunderdome.
Tobias: Motivated reasoning.
Jake: Yeah. I said $115.
Tobias: [crosstalk] got that one.
Jake: Well, I had inflation quite a bit higher, so I was thinking that oil might have been the reason. Also, I didn’t anticipate that the US would be like a huge producer of oil relative to the rest of the world. Actual, today is $37.40, last time I looked. So Bill, actually almost right on the dot. And final one.
Bill: $73.40.
Tobias: What was that oil? What did you say? 37?
Bill: No, it’s not 37. It was a misspeak.
Jake: Yes, 73.40?
Bill: Yeah, you said 37. You had a transposition error in your–
Jake: My bad. I had a dyslexia for a second.
Bill: Okay. You are carrying the program, Jake. You’re allowed to make a mistake.
[laughter]Jake: All right. Last item. What will be the best performing major financial asset over the next year? Bill came in with US small cap, junk debt. Toby, EM small value. I said energy. That was my $115 Oil obviously leaking into that. And the correct answer, ignoring bitcoin, if you will– [crosstalk]
Bill: Ignore bitcoin.
Jake: Well-
Bill: Can’t do it.
Jake: -you know what?
Bill: Might want to. Can’t do it.
Jake: Major financial asset.
Bill: Just saying. Anyway, what is it?
Jake: All right. Yeah, US tech, the Qs.
Bill: Mm. Good for the Qs.
Jake: Plus 33%.
Tobias: It’s good to see those guys win one. [crosstalk]
Jake: Yeah.
Bill: Good for the queues.
Jake: Yeah, a lot of struggles there, but they managed to really grind it out.
Tobias: Almost back to all-time highs. Wow. Back to all-time highs.
Jake: Plus 33% through November. That’s a little bit truncated, but it’s hard-to find sector information that’s totally year to date. I’m giving no one a score for that one. None of us were even in the ballpark. So final score, Toby-two, Jake- two, Billy Brewster-three.
Tobias: Congrats, Billy.
Jake: Congrats, Bill.
Bill: Monkeys throwing darts.
Jake: Well played.
Tobias: Let’s throw some more darts.
Bill: Let’s do it.
Jake: All right. I’m going to record them while we’re going here.
Bill: Excellent. This is just what I want, to be held accountable again.
Jake: [laughs] It’s going to get ugly.
Tobias: And you guys at home, you got to put your guesses into–
Jake: Okay.
Tobias: We’ll see if we can crowdsource the correct answer.
Jake: Mm. Do you think that there’s enough errors in each direction to cancel each other out?
Tobias: Well, we’re going to find out.
===
2024 Prediction – Dow Jones Industrial Average
Jake: We will find out. All right. I guess closing value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in one year’s time.
Tobias: What are we at now? $3,600?
Bill: Where are we at today?
Jake: Yeah, we’re–
Bill: $3,757 is what I have. No. Or, $37,500? [crosstalk]
Tobias: That’s where we are at now?
Jake: That’s right.
Tobias: Is that your prediction or is that where we are now?
Bill: No, that’s where we are today. I’m trying to help you out, Toby. Geez.
Jake: Yeah, $37, 500. Let’s call it for reference today.
Bill: All right. It looks like in election years, the average return [Jake laughs] is 11.3%. I’m going to go a little under that. So I’ll go right around– I’ll go $40,500.
Jake: All right. I like the reasoning. Toby?
Tobias: I’ll take $37,500.
Jake: Mm. Stands on that.
Bill: Unch?
Tobias: I’ll take unch.
Jake: Unch. [laughs] Ah Boy, I feel like I need to bet the under a little bit just for– Although I do agree with Bill’s– [crosstalk]
Bill: Both go $1 above, man. Do it. It’s okay. It’s a game show.
Tobias: Well, split Billy and I. Split Billy and I
Jake: I’m going to actually take whatever -5% is. I’ll calculate that later, all right?
Bill: I’ll note for the record that Jake is reluctantly doing this and going against what he wants to do.
Tobias: What you going to do? What do you want to?
Jake: No, no.
Bill: All right? Okay.
Jake: No. I like Bill’s reasoning that election years, you pull out all the stops. There’s going to be you jam, control P as much as you can, right? But maybe that doesn’t go anywhere. That’s my thesis.
Tobias: I want $1 under 5%.
Jake: [laughs] Sorry, you already locked in.
Tobias: Ahhh.
===
2024 Prediction – Total Return Of The S&P 500
Jake: Actually, unchanged is probably not a bad bet. What will be the total return of the S&P 500 over the next year? Almost the same question, largely.
Bill: What did I just say? I’ll go like 9.5%, and that feels high.
Jake: Yeah.
Tobias: I’ll take the under this time. I’ll take 5% under.
Jake: Okay. Uff.
Bill: I’m not comfortable with this, but I’ll go with it.
===
2024 Prediction – 10 Year Treasury
Jake: All right. Well, I’m going to hedge a little bit and I’ll take plus 2%. All right. 10-year Treasury. Reference today, 3.91%.
Bill: [crosstalk] 3.50%.
Tobias: That’s a tough one. As opposed to the other ones, which were easy.
Jake: Yeah, other one’s layups, obviously.
Tobias: Because I think that what I have learned is that I have no idea.
Jake: We prove that you are in and you are out. None of us know what you–
Tobias: I understand it for like about 15 minutes either side of the conversation, and then I forget it again, and I go back to thinking that I know what I’m doing. Yeah, I think I’m going to go 6% again.
Jake: Hmm. All right.
Tobias: I think that’s a terrible bet, but–
Jake: I’m going to go 5%.
Bill: All right. Well, yeah, okay. Then I don’t need to mess around with basis points.
===
2024 Prediction – Inflation
Jake: [laughs] Yeah, don’t worry about it. Annual rate of inflation, 3.1% reference.
Bill: I’m going unch.
Jake: Wait, so zero then, or 3,1%
Bill: No, no.
Jake: Or 3.1%.
Bill: Oh, yeah. 3.5%. I think we are at this level next year.
Tobias: I’m going to say the stimmy starts working in an election year. I’ll go same as the 10-year, 6%.
Jake: Oh, I’m going back with 5% again. So basically, zero real yield on the10-year.
Bill: Dude, there’s not a chance my predictions are right. I feel like as I’m saying these they’re pretty much consensus, but maybe not.
Jake: [laughs]
Tobias: We’re going to find out.
===
2024 Prediction – Bitcoin
Jake: We will find out. All right. Bitcoin, $42, 590 right now.
Bill: This one I got to think of. I didn’t prepare for bitcoin at all.
Jake: I know.
Tobias: I’ll say $42,500 or $4,250. I’ll say 10% of where it is.
Jake: Whoa. All right.
Bill: Such a hater.
Jake: I’m going back to $20,000.
Bill: How’s that hater rate feel? I don’t know, I kind of–
Jake: Bill if you’re rocking–
Bill: I’m going to go $50,000.
Jake: All right.
Tobias: I think 10 times– [crosstalk]
Bill: Wait, that’d be a 20% return. Okay, all right.
Jake: Toby, how are you going to have 6% rate of inflation and then bitcoin cutting? Isn’t it up store of value for inflation?
Tobias: I think it’s a tech stock.
Bill: Yeah, I’m going $45,000.
Tobias: I think it’s tech stock.
Jake: $45,000?
Bill: Yeah. I don’t want to go as high as $50,000. That would be, especially off this ramp. I think they get a little consolidation. You got maybe an ascending wedge or something. I forget what all these technical terms are, but–
===
2024 Prediction – Gold
Jake: All right. Price of gold. Reference $2,057 right now. I’m going to go first and I’m going to run back my $2,200 prediction.
Tobias: Yeah. I’ll say $2,500.
Bill: You said it’s what right now?
Tobias: I think it’s $2,200. It’s $2,050, something like that?
Jake: Yeah, $2,050 is where we’re at right now.
Bill: All right. So I go like– Is $2,150 too close to you, guys?
Tobias: No.
Bill: All right.
Jake: If you want to be that guy, that’s fine.
Bill: Sometimes I like to be touching.
===
2024 Prediction – Crude Oil
Jake: All right. Price of crude oil in one year. Reference, it’s at what, $79 right now. I’m going to say $90.
Bill: I’m going to say $78.
Tobias: Yeah. I’ll take the over– Crude oil, manage money shorts on oil. Now the highest level since the initial COVID lockdowns. Yeah, I am going to take $95. I’ll just take over JT.
Bill: I got $73.66 on my screen for crude, for the record. Maybe I’m wrong. Either way, I’m taking $78.
Jake: Oh, yeah, you’re right. Sorry, I was looking at last year’s reference. $73. Correct.
Bill: Yeah. I’m taking $78.
Jake: Okay. All right.
Bill: Higher than average, but not much.
Jake: Best performing major financial asset. Toby, we’ll put you down for Bitcoin.
[laughter]Tobias: Because I’ve had it at $4,150, so I’m fading myself?
Jake: Yeah.
Bill: I want to blend it. I want SMID value is what I want.
Tobias: Oh, please.
Jake: You could say that. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find the answer that supports that.
Bill: I’ll go mid. I’ll go mid, because I don’t know that I really want too small.
Tobias: There’s a mid-index.
Jake: Mid value.
Tobias: S&P 400, I think is mid.
Bill: I’ll go small. I’m going small value. That’s what I got to do it.
Tobias: S&P 600?
Jake: All right.
Tobias: S&P or Russell 2000?
Jake: We could use RZV as that one.
Tobias: RZV?
Jake: Yeah. That’s a good–
Bill: God, Chinese tech. That’s one that I don’t want to say, but I could bet on that too.
Jake: Not a terrible call, Billy. I like that one, actually.
Tobias: If you have no downside risk, that’s not a bad bet. If you’ve got to put actual money up against it, you got to think about it a little bit more.
Bill: You got to size it right.
Tobias: Yeah. Nothing here is financial advice.
Jake: Oh, boy.
Tobias: This show is for infotainment purposes only.
Jake: Yeah. Mostly tainment, less info.
[laughter]Tobias: Information may not be correct.
Jake: Yeah. Toby, what are we putting down for you?
Tobias: Yeah, I think it could be an inflationary year. I think it’s going to be like a commodity. I think gold or silver. Oh, sorry, gold or oil, rather.
Jake: Yeah.
Tobias: I think gold is a better bet. If it’s a recessionary year, then oil gets hit too. So I’ll say gold.
Jake: All right. I’m going to run energy back again. It’s been left for dead this year. All right. Any other predictions that you guys want to throw in there just for kind of one-off bets?
Tobias: Volatility, like, return of the VIX will be my—
Jake: Okay.
Tobias: VIX comes back. I think whatever happens in the election, the royalty election is going to be– [crosstalk]
Bill: How is the VIX this low with price action this year? It doesn’t make sense. [Jake laughs] There’s got to be a calculation problem.
Tobias: Well, it’s possible that it falls still.
Jake: It’s based on their expectation of future volatility. It’s like option prices, and that is forward looking.
Bill: Yeah. So, it’s not realized?
Jake: No.
Bill: I don’t know, something’s off about the VIX. Somebody explained this to me and I liked what I heard, so I just adopted it. Why verify?
Tobias: I think [crosstalk]
Jake: What did they say?
Bill: I don’t know, but it sounded smart.
Jake: [crosstalk]
Tobias: There was an article that said that, “Bulls covered call type strategies.” JT and I were talking about gone from $3 billion to $60 billion, something like that.
Bill: Dude, I don’t understand these strategies. I was pitched on a covered call strategy for yield, and it’s like, if I’m going to outperform the market selling calls, don’t I need to have an edge on selling the calls? And if I’m just constantly doing it, aren’t I bound to eventually just give up the upside for the comfort of getting some income today, which is like taxed at ordinary rates? It seems like a sucker’s trade to me. It seems like a great way to lose purchasing power and feel good while you’re getting relatively poorer.
Tobias: I think if there’s a lot of speculation in the market. Selling vol is a way to take advantage of that speculation. So I don’t know how the zero days to expiry option market affects. I don’t know, I just have no idea. I don’t know what I’m talking about, but it feels like, “Yes, I probably should stop there.”
Bill: No, keep going. Keep going. This is the tainment pod.
Tobias: I’ll just hang myself.
Bill: This is the tainment.
Jake: [laughs]
Tobias: Yeah. I feel like when there was a lot of speculation around, I think you can do reasonably well selling vol in that kind of market. But then that’s also a way to make a trade too, if you do that, then– [crosstalk] .
Bill: Yeah. Well, it’s also you want to sell it after people. I’m not going to name the person, but I was talking to somebody. They said like, “Put selling, you really do well after put selling gets hammered.” So it’s the people that sell, and then they get screwed, and then they don’t keep selling, those people really get screwed. But the people that can get back on the horse and sell puts the very next month, which makes sense, right after the catastrophe, insurance prices go up.
Tobias: I like put selling to get into long positions, but not really as a strategy. Not as a yield generating strategy. Just as a way to lower the cost basis. But then I think every time you do it, you’re probably better off just being long the equity anyway for tax reasons and so on.
Bill: It’s my sense too.
Tobias: It depends a little bit though. You do get some silly volatility in some of these names.
Bill: There was a time in 2008 where you could sell the options on GM and almost bring in the premium of the entire stock price. There’s clearly sometimes that you could do that. But I think on average, I’d probably just rather be long.
Tobias: Any name where that four is zero, you sometimes– I check those most best value put sales, best value option sales. There’s a few websites that track them just quantitatively. And every name in there is a name that would be either a doughnut or a potential double– And you’re getting a big premium, but you’re likely to get called on it or get it put to at zero.
Bill: Yeah.
===
2024 Will See A Black Swan Payoff Event
Jake: All right. I’ll make one throwaway, fun, bold prediction that’s probably not going to happen. But 2024 will be the year that a black swan type of payoff profile happens and pays off. So tail risk hedge. That’s what I’ll say. We’ll have a year in 2024.
Bill: To the upside, baby, the re-bubble.
Tobias: How long since tail risk has been paid? Did tail risk get paid in 2020? Did any of the tail funds get paid in 2020?
Jake: Yeah. You don’t remember these screwy articles of talking about–
Tobias: [unintelligible [00:32:43] Pharma?
Jake: Yeah. -making 4,000%-
Tobias: 3,500?
Jake: -in a day. [chuckles] I love how they do these calculations.
Tobias: The vol funds have got to get their press release up by lunchtime, because sometimes it fades in the afternoon.
===
Jake: Right. That’s the tough thing with those VIX call options being European. Unless you just get it right on the right day, you don’t get paid really.
Tobias: I’ve held them in size all the way to zero on three different occasions. I can’t do it anymore
Jake: In the money and then not able to cash the cheque?
Tobias: Well, I think you could. You could sell it. You can liquidate it.
Jake: But it never moved as much as–
Tobias: But I just always thought it was going to go–
Jake: More.
Tobias and Jake: Yeah.
Tobias: They move so much. Yeah, there’s a lot of volatility and volatility turns out.
Jake: Yeah. Bill, you want to throw one parlay back?
Bill: I don’t know what I have. I don’t know what I have.
Tobias: I thought that the Chinese tech stocks was a reasonably good. That’s an outside-
Jake: Let’s put that down, for you.
Tobias: -possibility?
Bill: Well, they’re just so beaten up. It’s like every day they just go lower and lower and lower.
Tobias: Yeah.
Bill: Baba’s cash is even remotely close to real, which– They’re buying shares and they’re returning it in a dividend. I don’t know, maybe that’s all just lies. But at some point, this thing gets too cheap. Says the guy who always said you can’t own it. This is the problem.
Tobias: [crosstalk]
Jake: It is a little bit of that Benjamin Graham thought experiment of imagine this box that theoretically has cash building up inside of it, and how much would you pay for that box? You’re not really sure if you can get the cash out ever necessarily. Maybe Baba now with some return on capital is a little bit of a different story. But for quite a while, there are a lot of these weren’t that story.
Bill: Yeah. But now they’re showing you they’re no longer that story. So, slightly different. Maybe.
===
Cybertruck Looks Better Up Close
Tobias: All right. I’ve got a question for you. What won’t change next year?
Bill: Our skepticism of whether Tesla can deliver.
Tobias: [laughs]
Bill: I went to look at the Cybertruck in New York. I will not go so far as to say that I like it, but I definitely don’t hate it, which I was surprised by.
Jake: Seeing it in person?
Bill: Yeah. I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was interesting looking.
Jake: In a good way, or when someone has a third eyeball?
Bill: No, it was not as ugly as I thought it would be. I don’t know that I’m going to say in a good way. I’m just going to say there’s something that intrigues me about the way that it looks. I don’t think people that are buying it are like– I don’t think it’s the Aztec. I think it looks a lot better in reality than it does in pictures. I don’t think you’ll see one in my driveway.
Tobias: Did you see the black one?
Bill: No, I just saw a silver one.
Tobias: The black one looks better than the silver one, I think. [crosstalk]
Bill: It’s weird the way the metal– It almost looks like it has curves in it, even though it’s flat. But not in like a shitty way. In an interesting way. So we’ll see.
Tobias: There’s lot of Rivians where I am. Rivians, all over the place.
Bill: Yeah. I would be more inclined to get– I just prefer the look of a Rivian to the Cybertruck.
Tobias: You’re going to get the one that’s got the hole where you can stick the body?
Jake: [laughs]
Bill: Obviously. How else are you going to kill people and get away with it?
Tobias: You chop them up first–
Jake: Well, you got a frunk for that too.
Bill: Yeah. It’s going to be interesting, man. I don’t know, I was staring at the robot too. They’re on some interesting things.
Jake: Where did you see all this stuff at? Is there like a–?
Bill: I was in New York. I walked down to the meatpacking district, checked it out.
Jake: They have like a Tesla showroom for all that stuff?
Bill: Yeah. That’s cool.
===
Tobias: Dimitrios Koutsoumpos says, “AI will expand further. Some apps will start blowing people’s minds.” [crosstalk]
Bill: Well, it’s got a long way to go, because right now, it’s all hype. But I don’t disagree, and I hope that’s right.
Jake: I hope so too for all of our sakes, because we need major productivity gains per capita to absorb and soak up all this extra money printing that we’ve been doing.
Bill: Gains.
Jake: Productivity per capita heals most sins or solves most sins.
Bill: Yeah.
Tobias: Very tough. Very cloudy kind of picture, I think. This is probably why you should just not pay attention to macro and just keep on buying cheap stocks and worry about it.
Jake: I want this last half hour back of my life then.
[laughter]Tobias: It’s a good exercise.
Bill: The thing is the lot of stuff that I’ve been watching has left my perception of the cheap zone and is now in that, not expensive range, but not cheap range. Just like “Ehh.”
Tobias: I feel like small and mid has got cheap. I feel like small and mid has got cheap this year.
Bill: A lot of what I watch ripped. But I watch a decent amount of SMID industrials and whatnot. They had a pretty good month last month.
Tobias: Yeah. There was like two days.
Bill: Yeah. That’s already happened.
Jake: Sorry, if you missed it. Yeah. [laughs] I was going to time in–
Bill: Yeah. Slow the quick.
Tobias: That move last week was amazing, like back-to-back giant days.
Bill: Yeah, those felt fun. I even wrote something. I journalisticd about it.
Jake: What’d you say? You were impressed with your own gains?
Bill: No. I said, “Don’t be an idiot and succumb to FOMO.” Something along those lines.
Jake: Don’t chase.
Tobias: It’s been terrible advice though for more than a decade now. Like, you have been paid to chase, buy every dip. I guess that’s always been the way.
Jake: Yeah, I suppose so.
Tobias: If you’re at all-time highs, then you should have bought every dip.
Bill: I ended my note with, “The urge to check stocks is back, the bull market feels right here. Be careful.”
Tobias: Yeah. That’s good observation.
Jake: Yeah. Checking stock prices again regularly, then you know everyone’s getting a little–
Bill: Yeah, never good. Got to sell.
Tobias: I use Journalytic too. When I rebalance, I go through and I just put my own outperform, underperform market beside each little pick in there. I’ve noticed that when the preceding quarter was down a lot, I’m very bearish. When the preceding quarter was up a lot, I’m a lot more optimistic. It’s terrible.
Bill: That’s natural.
Jake: It’s real. That’s just the human OS.
Tobias: Yeah. It’s my portfolio, this one.
Bill: It makes stuff like financial media a little bit disheartening when you realize how procyclical it is and what the incentives are for clicks and shit. It’s like “Argh.” Everything that’s wrong is wrong and not changing.
Jake: No.
Bill: Except for here. But this isn’t financial media, it’s just tainment.
Tobias: They have to follow what is hot. And so then that amplifies it and magnifies it. The feedback loop lets everybody know what’s hot.
Jake: Putting the taint in tainment.
Bill: Yeah, that’s right.
Tobias: It’s been amazing to watch that. I feel like there’s been this rolling bubble across lots of different stuff. I just want that rolling bubble to come into small and micro.
Jake: When’s the bubble coming for you? [laughs]
Tobias: When is the bubble coming for small and micro value?
Jake: One bubble for daddy, one time.
Tobias: One time.
Jake: [laughs]
Bill: I don’t know. I do not know, but I think around that billion mark probably does pretty okay, if it’s reasonably valued here. Well, I don’t know.
Jake: It doesn’t seem like the rest of the world’s participating in this exuberance.
Bill: No, it does not.
Jake: Europe’s getting a little beat up. Obviously, the China tech has been fillet.
Bill: We do have a much more dynamic economy and a lot more tools in the toolbox. Hopefully, we don’t risk those tools. But I think we have those tools. So, I get it. But Mexico, smart ways to play Mexico is on my radar. I was looking at Walmex yesterday, [unintelligible [00:42:16]
Jake: What is that? Is that the Walmart of Mexico?
Bill: It’s like a Walmart Mexico. Latin America. Yeah.
Jake: Yeah.
===
It’s Good To Be Austrian And A Value Investor
Tobias: I got a question here. I noticed this a little bit too. Clifford McKeon says, “Hey what do you guys think about Fed Reserve Governor Williams saying days after Powell hinting to rate cuts next year, reversing that and saying they aren’t really talking about rate cuts?” I saw Goolsbee said something similar yesterday too. Well, they come out and they say, “He was surprised by how the market reacted to the–”
The thing is it’s hard to understand is the rates have been raised a number of times, and really the most dovish thing they’ve done is not raise. That was the thing that sent markets off into absolute stratosphere. And so then all the Fed governors had to come and tamp it down a bit, get the cold spoon out.
Jake: I don’t know, if it even matters what they’re doing when you’re running 10% budget deficits. That’s hugely stimulative. Who gives a shit what the Fed’s doing if the Treasury, US government is just printing money at it for an item?
Tobias: Is it limitless? The Austrians and anybody who pretends to be sensible convoluted word.
Jake: Sane. [laughs]
Tobias: Sane.
Tobias: But it just seems like we’ve been doing it forever. Like, why would we stop now?
Bill: It’s good to be an Austrian and also be a value investor, because I feel like it hedges you. Because I do think this stimulus helps value stocks on average.
Tobias: More than the higher—[crosstalk]
Jake: Really?
Bill: Then gross. Yeah, they do.
Jake: I don’t know, I have to think there’s—It shows up in VC-
Bill: There are a lot them has capital.
Jake: -world.
Bill: Oh, I don’t know.
Tobias: You think it goes into steel, because they are using it in infrastructure, so it goes into steel and tool that kind of– [crosstalk]
Bill: Yeah. I think you get a lot more push in the low valuation stocks than. I think ZERP maybe helps VC more than Stimulus helps VC. My resting hypothesis bound to be wrong
===
Is 4 Years Adequate For Nikola founder Trevor Milton?
Tobias: Here’s another one. “Trevor Milton got four years.” How do you guys feel about that? How much money has he got? Is it worth it?
Bill: Well, it depends, if you get raped. [Jake laughs] I don’t mean to say it that way, but it’s true. If I’m at a so, so prison for four years– [crosstalk]
Jake: Country club.
Bill: Yeah.
Tobias: Let me reframe. I was being a little bit flippant in the way that I presented that, but let me reframe to what it actually meant. “Is four years enough of a deterrent, if you walk away with,” whatever he’s walked away with. I don’t know if he’s made any sales or he’s had a discourage at all.
Bill: I think it depends on where you’re going. I think if you’re going to a Country Club-ish prison, which according to the authority on this is Office Space, the movie, that doesn’t exist.
Jake: [chuckles] Federal [unintelligible 00:45:13] [laughs]
Bill: Yeah. So, if you end up in the bad kind of prison, no, I probably don’t think it’s worth it. Then again, depends where you came from and what you really want. If you walk away with a billion dollars, that’s real money.
Jake: He really seemed like he came out. He didn’t seem too traumatized.
Bill: Who?
Jake: Shkreli.
Bill: Yeah, Shkreli. That’s right. Yeah. I’m not trying to go to prison.
Jake: He had time to take shots at TC. [laughs]
Bill: Did he?
Jake: Oh, yeah.
Tobias: [unintelligible 00:45:43] reviewed the book.
[laughter]Bill: Did he? Really?
Tobias and Jake: Yeah.
Bill: Wow.
Jake: Who’s this Tobias Carlisle character and whoever he is–? [laughs]
Bill: Interesting.
Jake: That’s how when we knew TC had arrived.
Bill: I thought he arrived before that. Yeah, I don’t know. The line between fraud and success seems pretty thin at times. That was clearly a fraud.
Tobias: A lot of the entrepreneurs are– That fake it till you make it.
Jake: Yeah, optimistic. [crosstalk]
Tobias: That’s expected. That you’re supposed to pretend like you’re a little bit bigger. Like, there’s plenty of stories about people hiring temps to come into the office to make it look more busy when VC always show up.
===
Bill: Look, even the people that– I take a little bit offense to the listener that commented that says that we’re really close minded about Tesla. I think I will agree that we are somewhat close minded about the stock. I don’t agree that we’re close minded about what might be possible for Elon to pull off. I do think even the people that really like Tesla should be able to acknowledge that Elon says things at times that I think border the line of puffery and straight up line. I don’t think that that’s a particularly controversial thing to say. But if the results end up there, it’s not fraud. I don’t know the line, sometimes. It’s bizarre.
Jake: No, it is. What’s the real difference between rolling a truck down a hill and having tiles on the roof that are not real?
Bill: Yeah, I think one comes to more fruition than the other.
Tobias: [crosstalk] It is probably given enough time they are going to make the deal.
Bill: I think it’s the result I really want to do.
Tobias: That truck was going to work given enough time. They were going to come up with a working truck. Enough money enough to– [crosstalk]
Jake: Yeah. Probably Elizabeth Holmes would have also come up with something, eventually.
Tobias: I think there’s like a physics problem for her. I think there’s some like, “You need more blood.” I don’t think that was ever going to get there.
Bill: Yeah. I don’t know.
Jake: You rolled the test tubes down the hill, Toby. This is like, it’s basic gravity.
Tobias: I think the problem that she had very early on– I read one of the stories. I think I read one of the books where it said, “She presented to Herold, one of her lecturers, one of her professors.” And the professor was just like, “No, this is bullshit. It doesn’t work. It’s impossible.” That was always going to be impossible.
Jake: That’s what they told the Wright brothers too.
Tobias: Yeah. That’s fair. Something heavier than air can’t fly. That’s true. Never say never.
Bill: Here’s my question for the Tesla folks, and you guys can play along. Is there a company that has any more keyman risk than that company?
Tobias: Tesla?
Bill: Yeah.
Tobias: Because there’s a lot of speculative value in Tesla, there’s a lot of speculative bloat or whatever.
Bill: Yeah, I wouldn’t even frame it that way. I would say a lot of future growth you have to believe in. I don’t think that there are that many managers that can deliver that kind of growth. What he has delivered is an N of one thus far. But to the extent that recruiting engineers that are dedicated to the best research in the atomic world, for lack of a better term, because it seems like a lot of people go to digital, how much of that is dependent upon him being there and motivating the organization.
I don’t know. That DealBook interview, I don’t care at all about the fuck the advertiser’s thing. I don’t think that’s the story. The tell it to earth stuff was weird to me. I don’t know, man, he’s talked about doing ketamine before. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s fine.
Tobias: Ketamine sponsors the freeways out here.
Bill: What?
Tobias: Ketamine sponsors the freeways out here.
Bill: Well, I would be concerned about that.
Tobias: You drive down the road, there’s ads– We pick up the trash along the stretch of sponsored by ketamine treatment centers.
Jake: Really?
Tobias: It’s mainstream. Yeah.
Jake: I didn’t know that.
Bill: I guess the alternative is people will probably say, “Well, what’s that different than a prescription drug?” I don’t know the answer. I’m just saying.
Tobias: Because it’s a prescription.
Bill: Okay. Well, there you go.
Tobias: It’s hard to tell how real that Tesla robot is. Because clearly, when they announced it, it was a person in a suit. And then they showed that’s pretty–
Bill: I didn’t watch.
Tobias: [crosstalk]
Jake: You didn’t see the guy’s belly button poking out and–? [laughs]
Bill: The robot in the New York store, it looks cool. I did not watch it do things. I don’t know. Tesla Q would probably tell you it’s not real at all. The Tesla bulls will tell you that it’s completely real. It’s probably somewhere in between.
Jake: That’s the whole point though. It’s like, [crosstalk] the things that are in between, it’s hard to say, like. where do you tip into nefarious?
Bill: I don’t know.
===
Nikola vs. Tesla Robots: Real Deal or CGI Hype?
Tobias: This is just to compare Nikola’s experience with Tesla. So they produce this robot that’s a person in a suit. And then the next thing you see is it’s this pretty rudimentary robot that’s no more advanced than anything. It’s nothing like the Honda robot or anything like that, not that far down the track. Then the next one that I saw, it was one robot handing another robot a gun, and it was shooting up the Tesla Cybertruck. Was that real or was that CGI? This the thing. I don’t know how much of this stuff is real and how much of CGI. Like, now they look pretty advanced, that’s extraordinary rate of growth in a year. If that’s real, then that’s amazing. If it’s not, then what are we doing here?
Bill: I think it might be real. I also think it may not be as real as people think.
Jake: There’s a big difference though between programming a robot to follow a set of instructions, and then it having more autonomy to decide, “Hand me the gun now and aim here.” Those are–
===
Bill: I was talking to somebody about the Cybertruck, and he said that the shame of the Cybertruck is that the way that it looks has taken away from the engineering feat that it actually is. I don’t know exactly what it is. I’m not competent to talk about that.
Tobias: The pulling power or something like that.
Bill: Well, the turning radius is super tight and they went with, I don’t know, whatever, bigger cape. I don’t know exactly what they did. But he was telling me, and I do trust that he knows what he’s talking about because he covers autos. I just think it’s going to be interesting to see what that company can pull off. I think it is not impossible that they pull off what the bulls may think that they pull off. I don’t know why people care.
Jake: Well, you have to give the best price.
Bill: Yeah, that’s right. But it’s clearly not something that the three of us are going to own. It’s not our type of–
Tobias: Maybe at a good price.
Bill: Yeah, at $2 a share.
Tobias: There’s a price. It’s not–
Bill: I kid, folks. I kid.
Tobias: Now, it’s more like $30, something like that.
Bill: Samson out here sending me death threats.
Tobias: I think he’s on– [crosstalk] [laughs] He’ll let us know after the fact.
Jake: Samson’s been very good about not being gloaty about it.
Bill: Yeah. And a guy like that, I think– From how long has he owned that thing?
Tobias: At least since we’ve been doing this show. [laughs]
Jake: Yeah.
Bill: So I hope he wins. I root for people like that. He’s got this vision, and I hope he’s right. It just doesn’t have to be for me. Different strokes for different folks. It’s fine.
Jake: Billy, did you go to, what, were you in New York for MOI?
Bill: Yeah.
Jake: How was it?
Bill: It was good, man. Peter Keefe was interviewed, and I got to talk to him a bit. He’s a cool dude. And Phil Ordway interviewed Mauboussin. That was a fun interview. Phil is a great person to do that.
Jake: Yeah. He’s really funny. His dry sense of humor always cracks me up. [laughs]
Bill: He’s an incredible teacher in his own right. Will Thompson highlighted a mining family that I tweeted out, but I can’t remember right now. They’re pretty cool family. And then Elliot Turner interviewed Mario Cibelli. They talked about small cap. So it was a good day, and had a great time seeing folks. It’s a busy three days. I stayed at a Holiday Inn express. I would not recommend that.
Jake: Uh-oh. There’s goes our sponsorship.
Bill: Oh, well.
Tobias: Yeah, I think I stayed at a holiday in Omaha for a shareholder meeting a few years ago, and there were all of these signs up about human trafficking in there.
Bill: I didn’t have any of those, so I had that going for me. But the reviews were clean and modern. I was like, “All right. Sweet.” I got there, and it was neither clean nor modern.
Tobias: [laughs]
Bill: So I wrote a less stellar review. Not a horrible one though, but not stellar.
===
Free Speech in the Age of Musk: Twitter’s Uncertain Future
Tobias: How about Twitter? Musk has bitten off a lot with Tesla boring company and so on. Is Twitter going to make it? I see that advertising is done a lot.
Bill: Yeah. I don’t know why you would ever want to own a social media platform. It is the single best way to get hated. It’s insane to me. I know people will be like, “Oh, for free speech. Okay.”
Jake: History is pretty replete with successful businessmen buying newspapers, different mouthpieces to help control the narrative. It’s been a time honored tradition, actually. So I’m not–
Tobias: Do you control Twitter? I guess you do. I guess there is some control there.
Jake: You can nudge policies, right?
Tobias: Yeah, that’s true.
Bill: If Twitter files, I would argue that there’s a ton of control there. Now it is out of the government and he– [crosstalk]
Tobias: Beyond owning it. He already had the biggest Twitter account on there, him and Kim Kardashian. He had that for free. Like, you don’t have to lose money in it.
Bill: Yeah. I suppose he has a principled stand on what he thinks about free speech.
Jake: I can respect that.
Bill: Yeah. I wouldn’t want to be an LP.
Jake: No. Yeah. Larry Ellison, is he’s in for a billion in there, I think.
Bill: that’s what I saw. Yeah. You can afford to lose it. That’s a nice life. That’s pretty wild.
Jake: Yeah.
===
Tobias: I’m very grateful for everybody tuning in this year. Grateful to chat to you, guys, repeatedly. Kept us all sane. Kept me sane. It’s been a pretty wacky few years.
Jake: It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to chat every week with you, guys, and then have some people listen in on occasion.
Bill: Yeah. Well, thank you, guys, for allowing me to come back. I know I was Brad at times. Sorry about that. [Jake laughs] But you know–
Tobias: As long as you come wearing that suit every time.
Bill: That I will not promise. That I will not promise. Probably through February though.
Jake: You got to get your money’s worth out of it.
Bill: Yeah. But I don’t know, man. Hopefully, this Christmas, people spend time thinking about what matters. And where ever you are, Jewish, hopefully you did it over Hanukkah and celebrate with us. The more the merrier.
Jake: Yeah. I hope everyone has a peaceful and safe as much as they can holiday season. World feels a touch more wobbly than it did, especially probably pre-pandemic. But I hope–
Bill: Dude, there’s such sorrow out there. So sad. So to be here, feel very fortunate.
Jake: Indeed.
Tobias: Here’s to a big value resurgence pretty–
Jake: [laughs] Here’s to closing that value gap.[laughs]
Tobias: You’re talking about the value– [crosstalk]
Bill: It’s been closing. It has been closing. Since what 2021? It’s been–
Tobias: Yeah, I think late 2020. It’s been getting [crosstalk] better.
Jake: It blew back out a little bit though, didn’t it, TC?
Tobias: Yeah, it did.
Jake: Yeah. You can’t have nice stakes– [crosstalk]
Bill: I don’t understand some of these valuations. I do not get it. I felt like we just learned a lesson in 2021, but apparently, we’re going back to learning it again.
Tobias: We’ll find out.
Bill: And the lesson, by the way, is hop on the growth train. But I will not be doing that. So expect to hear years of underperformance out of me.
Tobias: All right. Thanks, amigas. We’ll see you in the New Year.
Bill: Take care. Shoutout to the nine.
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