QAV 720 – Boom!

QAV 720 Club

[00:00:00] Cameron: Welcome back to QAV Episode 720. This is the 14th of May, 2024. Happy Budget Day, TK.

[00:00:16] Tony: hope so. Let’s hope it’s a happy budget

[00:00:20] Cameron: Well, you know, it’s always, it’s like every day is a good day. Every budget’s a good budget, you know, for some, for someone.

[00:00:28] Tony: for someone, yeah. The um, interesting, I mean, the interesting thing about this budget is it’s, it’s looking like it’s what I was hoping for when we were talking about the RBA a lot last year when they were raising interest rates. So there was no point the government giving out money to people, which was causing inflation, for then the RBA to try and squash by putting interest rates up.

[00:00:49] Tony: So there seems to be a bit of. A bit of cohesion between the RBA on interest rates and whatever’s coming out in the budget. At least that’s what’s being flagged. It’s not going to be inflationary, but I guess we’ll wait and see.

[00:01:03] Cameron: Hmm.

[00:01:04] Tony: Hmm. But hopefully there’s some synchronicity there.

[00:01:07] Cameron: If the market’s reaction today is any indication, it’s not expecting to be pleased.

[00:01:13] Tony: Well, it won’t really react until tomorrow. Although there’s, there’s been a lot of announcements already made before this budget. So the market should have started to absorb some of those already.

[00:01:24] Cameron: Well, the Fin said the market was down because of budget, upcoming budget rumours or something. So anyway, market’s down is the point.

[00:01:34] Tony: We can believe the fin, can we?

[00:01:38] Cameron: listen, I’m just saying, this is what the Fin says. I’m not, I’m not judging it. I’m just saying,

[00:01:43] Tony: What the Fin says, yeah, uh, I’ve got to say, um, I’m disappointed in the editorials pages in the Fin these days. It used to be a lot fairer and balanced, now it’s taking up an opposition stance against the government, which is fine in some cases, but it just seems to be a bit biased at the moment.

[00:02:03] Tony: It’s a bit of feedback for the Fin.

[00:02:05] Cameron: has Rupert taken over the Fin?

[00:02:09] Tony: No, but sometimes I look at it, I mean, yeah, it’s a business newspaper, so you’re expected to have some kind of bias. Rightness, right wing bias about it, but, you know, back in the good old days when Alan Kohler was the editor of The Fin, it was, it was much more, uh, independent and balanced, I thought.

[00:02:27] Cameron: It is different every time. It’s, it’s always different, Tony. It’s never the same.

[00:02:32] Tony: Well, it is different these days. Financial Review has an editor who doesn’t like the government and, uh, lets it be known.

[00:02:40] Cameron: Don’t hit me with them negative words so early in the morning.

[00:02:43] Tony: I love Donald Sutherland.

[00:02:45] Cameron: had Alex and Sean over for dinner on Saturday night and Donald Sutherland came up at some point and Alex said something about Kiefer Sutherland and then she said, Oh no, it wasn’t Kiefer, it was his dad. And Donald Sutherland, I don’t like Donald Sutherland. I was like, Oh, your dad’s a big Donald Sutherland fan.

[00:03:03] Tony: but she likes, she told me she likes it. She told me she likes Elliot Gould and they were in a lot of films together.

[00:03:11] Cameron: Yeah, I liked Elliot Gould. He was good back in the day.

[00:03:15] Tony: they were both

[00:03:16] Cameron: took my s

[00:03:17] Tony: so refreshing.

[00:03:18] Cameron: They were good, yes. They were part of that new generation.

[00:03:21] Tony: Yeah,

[00:03:22] Cameron: more realistic than the actors from the 50s, you know. Sort of, somewhere, part of the whole, um, acting studio. I don’t know if they went to the acting studio, but part of

[00:03:33] Tony: I doubt it.

[00:03:34] Cameron: realistic acting kind of thing.

[00:03:36] Tony: Yeah, and yeah, completely different to John Wayne and William Holden and all those kind of guys.

[00:03:45] Cameron: I took my son to Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway AGM again, Tony. Not me, I wish. I bought Fox, it’s Fox’s birthday the other day, I bought him a copy of Barefoot for Kids.

[00:03:56] Tony: Ah, good.

[00:03:58] Cameron: And then he went and spent 70 on a Pokemon card, immediately.

[00:04:03] Tony: He’s trading assets. Is he going to trade it? Is he going to sell it at some stage? Right.

[00:04:09] Cameron: is, I’m gonna hold onto this for 10 years and then it’s gonna be worth, and I’m like, no, it’s not. You’re, you’re I said, I explained the greater fool theory to him as we’re walking around Chermside after this. I said, you’re betting on the fact that there’ll be some kid who’s made a lot of money in 10 years, uh, who, uh, wants to buy it for nostalgia purposes.

[00:04:30] Cameron: Actually, um, Navare, the CEO of Navexa, has been doing like little vlogs every morning at like 5am when he drives to the gym, he just turns his phone on and talks to it and posts them to YouTube or something. And, um, One of his, a couple of weeks ago, he was talking about the first business, uh, uh, venture he was ever involved in was trading Pokemon cards when he was in high school.

[00:04:55] Cameron: He said Pokemon cards had just come out and he told this whole story about how he built this massive collection and there was this one card that one other kid had that everyone wanted, Charizard, I think it was, and, and everyone was trying to trade this kid for it and the kid wouldn’t trade it, so.

[00:05:12] Cameron: Navarro collected a school, an entire school bag full of cards and said to the guy, I’ll trade this entire bag for your one Charizard. The guy went for it. And then he said, the reason he wanted the Charizard is because then you got first option for any new cards that came into the school. Everyone came to you first to see if you’d trade.

[00:05:35] Cameron: So you got to see everyone’s wares first. But then a couple of other kids came in with a Charizard and then he said, I started to realize that the market value of my Charizard wasn’t that high if there were other Charizards. So then he had to create a monopoly. He had to try and get another school bag full of cards to trade for the Charizard for the other kids.

[00:05:54] Cameron: So he controlled the entire Charizard market at his school and it was interesting. So I showed that to Fox. And I think it had the wrong impact. It’s like when you told my son Hunter to read the Schwarzenegger biography and he just decided he was going to actually have Schwarzenegger’s career, um, kind of backfired, didn’t have the intended effect. Same thing, me showing that

[00:06:21] Tony: Well, it wasn’t meant to have any effect on him other than to, you know, be an interesting book with some life lessons in it.

[00:06:27] Cameron: Well, that’s what I’m saying. That was your intention. Hey, like, have a read of this. It’s a good book. And he was like, I, I am Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s what he took out of it. Um, my other son, Taylor, flew off to LA again today. Gone to LA to, uh, do an event with Will Smith, um, for the, uh,

[00:06:45] Tony: Will rang up and asked

[00:06:46] Cameron: of the new Bad Boys film.

[00:06:47] Cameron: Sony actually rang up and asked for one of Taylor’s guys, Adam Milatovich, Milatovich, to be there, uh, cause he’s a bit of a bad boy. And, um, Taylor said, well, he can’t go anywhere without his manager, so

[00:07:03] Tony: Ha ha ha ha.

[00:07:06] Cameron: keep him out

[00:07:06] Tony: entourage. So Taylor’s, is Taylor turtle or drama

[00:07:10] Cameron: Taylor’s E.

[00:07:12] Tony: E. Oh yeah, of course. Okay. Yeah.

[00:07:14] Cameron: he’s E. Yeah, yeah. And a little bit of Ari. He’s a combination of E and Ari Gold and Turtle because he sort of is the driver as well. Anywho, I took my son, uh, this article, I’m gonna get there eventually, Morningstar, um, by Dan Lefkowitz. Lefkowitz, he’s, uh, despite the PlayStation’s appeal, Lefkowitz Jr.

[00:07:35] Cameron: returns to Omaha for a second look at one of the most celebrated events in the investing calendar. A couple of years ago I brought my son Isaac to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting and wrote about it for Morningstar. com. Got some nice feedback, mostly along the lines of, awww. I also got trolled on social media on the grounds of what kind of obsessive dad takes a kid to a shareholder meeting instead of Disneyland.

[00:07:57] Cameron: Fair question. Honestly, it wasn’t my idea to drag 14 year old Isaac back to Omaha, Nebraska last weekend. Our 2022 trip was partly revengeful travel to compensate for a pandemic derailed spring break. This year’s meeting came at a busy time, so I wasn’t exactly jumping to do an 8 hour drive through Chicago rush hour traffic.

[00:08:16] Cameron: Endless Iowan cornfields and prairie lightning storms. It was Isaac who insisted he had emerged from the 2022 meeting a bit of a Berkshire head and wanted to see how Charlie Munger’s passing would change things. He also thinks Warren Buffett is hilarious. Um, so that’s nice. But, uh, he, the key of this is he has what his son’s, um, uh, Uh, things that he hopes he absorbed.

[00:08:43] Cameron: These are the virtues I hope he absorbed from this year’s meeting. Virtue number one, kindness. That’s not the first thing you think about when you go to an annual general meeting is, uh, someone’s going to take away kindness. When a representative of an environmental justice group in Nevada asked a challenging question on utility rates and renewable energy investment, the response was thoughtful and courteous.

[00:09:07] Cameron: No matter what or how he’s asked, Buffett treats the question with respect. Kindness is free, he said, noting that the world isn’t better if you’re richer. So I thought that was nice. Virtue number two was friendship.

[00:09:19] Tony: they don’t always treat questioners with kindness. I mean, they’re, they’re certainly courteous, but when, um, when I was there at the annual general meeting eight or nine years ago, uh, and someone got up and said, how can you be investing in Coca Cola and See’s candy when there’s an obesity epidemic caused by sugar?

[00:09:39] Tony: Rocking the US. And Charlie just sat there eating peanut brittles. That was all he did. So that wasn’t too kind. And the guy lived to be 99.

[00:09:51] Cameron: people ask him about Bitcoin, he calls it Rat Poison Squared. It’s not, I guess it’s courteous. Anyway, virtue number two, friendship. Asking investing successor Greg Abel to weigh in on a question.

[00:10:02] Tony: Sorry. Excuse me. Can I go back to kindness? Because I thought there was a great, great quote in

[00:10:07] Cameron: Yeah, you can interrupt me to go back to kindness, Tony. Sure,

[00:10:10] Tony: Kindly, with the greatest of respect. Now, shut up. So Buffett’s quote was kindness is free. He said, Buffett said, noting that the world isn’t better if you’re richer. I thought that was a great quote.

[00:10:28] Cameron: I read that.

[00:10:29] Tony: Did you? Well, I’ve underlined it, so I’m emphasizing it.

[00:10:33] Cameron: Oh, okay. It is a great quote. Yeah.

[00:10:36] Tony: Yeah, you’ll hear a lot of that tonight in the budget speech. They’ll repeat things twice just to emphasize them.

[00:10:41] Cameron: how have you found the world since you’ve been Richard? Tony, is it treating you better?

[00:10:46] Tony: Oh, that’s a good question. No, I can laugh it off, but, um, but no, I used to say, I haven’t said it for a while, but I used to say that all getting wealthy did was to move you into a bigger class of bills, bigger class of headaches. It’s kind of true. Yeah.

[00:11:03] Cameron: Yeah. Uh, well he goes on virtue, I won’t go into detail, but virtue number two is friendship, because he mentions the thing when Buffett accidentally said Charlie. Um, uh, virtue number three, humility. Virtue number four, gratitude. He repeatedly stresses his luck at winning the birth lottery and to have found something he loves to do and people he loves working with.

[00:11:28] Cameron: He thanked others throughout the meeting. Buffett attributed his and Munger’s longevity to luck, Charlie never did a day of physical exercise and did not watch what he ate, etc. Um, virtue

[00:11:40] Tony: Well, that, hang on, that, that’s, that’s a great quote. But the important part is that it’s, it continues on, um, it’s likely that this position has contributed. So this is talking about Charlie and Warren’s lge longevity. When asked if he was worried about the national debt buffet replied on another warrior, Anyway, guy’s a billionaire, so why, why does you have to worry? But, but, um, yeah, I mean, the, the, the point is they both. Don’t follow advice in terms of diet and exercise, but they’re both long lived and perhaps it is the power of positive thinking or positive mindset or whatever that got them to where they are.

[00:12:22] Cameron: Well, all the Blue Zone stuff certainly suggests that your mental and emotional health plays a big role in longevity, certainly. You know,

[00:12:34] Tony: And so does the um, what’s the name? Elizabeth Blackburn, the telomeres

[00:12:40] Cameron: oh yeah,

[00:12:41] Tony: Yeah, it talks about the effect between stress and shortening of your, is it telomeres or telomeres? I never know how to pronounce that word.

[00:12:48] Cameron: yeah, Telomeres is how I normally pronounce it, but yeah.

[00:12:52] Tony: yeah,

[00:12:52] Cameron: Oh, that’s interesting, I didn’t remember that part, but um, yeah, look, it’s, uh, certainly been my experience that people that seem to be happy and at peace seem to live longer lives. I mean, I haven’t done any deep analysis on it. But, uh, I think like worrying and being negative and being angry and all that kind of stuff can’t be good for your, I mean, certainly not good for your mental and, and, uh, you know, psychological, emotional health, but that has to have an impact on the rest of your body.

[00:13:26] Cameron: Cause you know, the brain is, can, is part of the whole system. If the, if your, If you’re, you know, getting adrenaline worked up in you all the time for the wrong reasons, or we know a lot more about neurochemicals and the impact that the stresses that they put on different parts of your body, it can’t be good for you.

[00:13:44] Tony: no, that’s all true. I’m sure, I’m sure someone can point out to a crotchety old 90 year old who’s out there that they know, um, but I, I agree with you, if for nothing else. If you’re going to live a long time, you’re better off being happy rather than being miserable. It’s going to be a better quality of life.

[00:14:00] Tony: But also, too, I’ve found you make better decisions if you’re in a positive frame of mind. You’re open to ideas, you’re relaxed, and if there’s a problem in the facts, you find it quicker. But if you’re sort of being negative and being angry just closes down your mind, I think, as well. You make worse decisions.

[00:14:21] Cameron: I agree. So gratitude reading. He talked about virtue number six, security

[00:14:27] Tony: Huge one. Can I just call that one out too? Yeah.

[00:14:31] Cameron: Okay. Let’s, let’s just slow down.

[00:14:33] Tony: We should. I thought this was a really good article.

[00:14:36] Cameron: Okay,

[00:14:37] Tony: There’s a quote from Munger who once said, In my whole life I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time. None. Zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads and how much I read. My children laugh at me.

[00:14:48] Tony: They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out. And I know you read. I read. I’ve got

[00:14:56] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:14:57] Tony: I can never keep up with my list of book purchases, but I do read. And that’s just so important. I mean, how do you find out new things if you, if you don’t seek them out yourself and keep reading?

[00:15:08] Cameron: I, I don’t understand people who don’t read and my sons aren’t readers. My older sons,

[00:15:16] Tony: Oh, really?

[00:15:16] Cameron: my older sons aren’t really readers. Um, and I’ve never understood that because

[00:15:22] Tony: Well, Hunter read, Hunter read Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biography.

[00:15:26] Cameron: I think he listened to the audio book version of it, you know. Um. Like for me of my entire life, like it’s, I just have so many questions that I need to have answered and books is where I go.

[00:15:39] Cameron: I mean, increasingly ChatGPT, but, uh, books is, and, and it’s been fed on the books. So that’s, you know, it’s just regurgitating the books to me, but I still do. Yeah. It’s just constant. Like I’ve got, I’m always halfway through 10 different books on every sort of topic, you know.

[00:15:56] Tony: same. Yeah. Well, and I don’t, I wouldn’t necessarily say I turn to books for answers, although, you know, I obviously have in my investing career, but it’s more, you just, you learn things and you learn by, you know, There’s a linkage between, you know, I’ve read this book by someone and I’ve heard a recommendation that he also, or she also, recommended to read this, or they were referenced here.

[00:16:22] Tony: So you follow like a whole line of recommendations, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve always loved Munger, because he was always talking about Edmund O. Wilson. You know, the biologist and ethnobiologist and, and architecture and engineering and all sorts of things. So you pick up huge recommendations, influence that, that great book on marketing, um, came from him.

[00:16:44] Tony: And then once you read that, you know, that leads you on to Kahneman and Tversky and, um, all sorts of different things. It’s, it’s just, yeah, I, I, in this, in particular, in this day and age when people are so opinionated, Often without the facts, and when the media is so biased, it’s the only way to really get data and form opinions.

[00:17:07] Cameron: Yeah, even though, of course, books always have a bias and an agenda

[00:17:11] Tony: Well, they do.

[00:17:12] Cameron: as well. But, you know, my entire adult life has sort of been driven by the fact that I read one book and it mentions some, you know, often a throwaway line, I go, Oh, I don’t know anything about that. What’s that? So I have to go read a book on that.

[00:17:26] Cameron: And the process continues. You start to realize how little you know about the world. When you read books and you’re like, Oh, well, obviously I need to know more about that. I better go read a book on that now. And

[00:17:41] Tony: Yeah. And just for curi and just out of curiosity too.

[00:17:45] Cameron: Yeah. That’s I, well, I want to understand how the world works. I mean, I don’t understand the point of being here.

[00:17:52] Cameron: If you’re not spending your time trying to figure out how things work, that’s kind of the fun of it. Right. And yeah, before I die, I want to have figured it out how everything works. I want to understand everything. Oh

[00:18:05] Tony: I’ve got, I’ve got no chance of doing that, but I’ll, I’ll be a lot better equipped at the end than I was at the beginning. That’s for sure. Growing up from Brisbane around a bunch of rednecks, that’s for sure.

[00:18:16] Cameron: Oh, you sound like Hunter.

[00:18:19] Tony: And, but for me, that was the out, that was the out. Books was my escape from narrow minded people. And they weren’t bad people, they were good people, but they just didn’t have any sort of exposure to the rest of the world. their opinions were fed by the government. Buy Rupert Murdoch. Um, so yeah, so books were my out, but um, it’s not just finding out things too, it’s understanding human nature, it’s just the brilliance of reading a good story sometimes too.

[00:18:47] Cameron: Yes, absolutely.

[00:18:51] Tony: Just the other night I was reading bits of Don Quixote. Because I,

[00:18:56] Cameron: I love Don Quixote.

[00:18:57] Tony: I’ve read somewhere that it was considered to be the first novel and I’m thinking to myself, why was that the first novel? You know, and you go through and look at the story and, you know, it did have the form of the current novel. 1600s,

[00:19:12] Cameron: terrific! Like, it holds up. So it was written like in, what, the 1300s, I think, from memory?

[00:19:18] Tony: same time as Shakespeare, late 1500s, early

[00:19:20] Cameron: Right. I read it, oh, 10 years ago, 5 or 10 years ago, I don’t know, and just, Thoroughly enjoyed it, like, such a great story that holds up so well. Alright, back to this list, number six, security. Um, one attendee asked why Berkshire isn’t spending its cash pile.

[00:19:42] Cameron: Buffett wrote in the 2008 Berkshire shareholder letter, We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow’s obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits. I like that one. You know, it gets back to this conversation I think we were having last week about even investing a small amount of your portfolio in Bitcoin or whatever

[00:20:09] Tony: great risk, unsafe at any speed.

[00:20:14] Cameron: like, why? I don’t want to have to, it’s enough that I have to, you know, I have to keep an eye on my sell alerts as it is. I don’t want to have to wade into those waters. It’s just not worth the, I don’t know, energy. Maybe I should, maybe I need to. Make money quickly at my age. I don’t know. It just seems, I don’t know.

[00:20:39] Cameron: It just seems like a slippery slope and too much stress.

[00:20:43] Tony: it’s still the quickest way to great wealth is slowly to accumulate it. It’s, yeah, you could win Teslado and the Powerball tomorrow. That’s another way to do it. But you could also spend your life and deplete your bank account buying tickets as well.

[00:20:58] Cameron: Yeah. I said, did you want to comment on the security one?

[00:21:02] Tony: No, you read out the quote I was going to say.

[00:21:05] Cameron: All

[00:21:05] Tony: Great way of, great turn of phrase though, isn’t it? We don’t rely on the kindness of strangers. In other words, we want to be in control of investing and we want to be sure of what happens in the future with the company. We don’t want to have to rely on people down the track to bail us out.

[00:21:20] Cameron: you know where that’s from though, right? They’re quite.

[00:21:22] Tony: That’s street car name design, yeah. I read the play.

[00:21:27] Cameron: Of course you did.

[00:21:28] Tony: I did. Blanche DuBois.

[00:21:33] Cameron: I always rely on the kindness of strangers. Virtue7 Succession Planning Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook attended the meeting and was held out as an example of successful corporate baton passing.

[00:21:49] Tony: Yeah. It was a safe pair of hands, but it wasn’t really Steve’s job, was it? No,

[00:21:56] Cameron: who is? Like, you know.

[00:21:58] Tony: Elon, Elon, they should have handed it over to Elon. Hmm.

[00:22:04] Cameron: in 2011 was looking for a job or the right guy, but yeah, um, yeah, I like that. He, they’re talking about Greg and Agit, um, as, you know, the, the handover and I like, um, Greg’s quote here sums up Berkshires culture. We treat our shareholders as partners and our managers as owners. Isaac told me he might not want to drive 8 hours to hear Abel and Jane speak, but he does not plan to sell the Berkshire investment that he will inherit, my succession planning at

[00:22:42] Tony: Hmm.

[00:22:44] Cameron: They seem to be stable hands. I guess like Tim. I mean, Tim was definitely stable hands and he’s increased the value of the company, you know, nth fold since Steve died. Hasn’t exactly been an engine of innovation, but, um,

[00:23:00] Tony: no, there’s been a bit of a snafu with the latest iPad television commercial, if you’ve seen that. The hydraulic

[00:23:07] Cameron: haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen the headlines. And it sounds like they’ve closed a deal, the rumours are, last night with OpenAI for OpenAI to be on the next iPhone or the next iOS. Probably as the Siri replacement. Um, or it’s playing some role, so That’ll, uh, that’ll be good. It’s a shame that they didn’t build it themselves, but hey, it’s Apple.

[00:23:30] Cameron: Number eight, Virtue 8, Global Citizenship. The meeting’s first questioner traveled from Hong Kong and asked if Berkshire would be investing more in China. Several hailed from Germany. One young man made the trip from New Zealand, another from Malaysia. Passionate Canadian asked if Buffett would allocate more capital north of the border, and an Indian extolled the merits of his home market.

[00:23:52] Cameron: Um, so mentions the fact that they do have global investments, even though most of it is in America, but they felt that there was a bit of a global connection there. What did you make of that?

[00:24:04] Tony: Yeah, so that wasn’t included in the article, but I was taken by what Warren said in answer to this question, I’ve been listening to the

[00:24:15] Tony: And he said something, I’m paraphrasing, he said something like, even though we have invested overseas and we’ll do well with our investments in Japan and our investments in BYD in China, he likes investing in the US because he knows the culture and he knows the rules. And that just resonated with me because it’s kind of like my answer.

[00:24:35] Tony: To people when they ask me do I invest in US stocks, I say no, I invest in what I know and have a deep understanding of. I know the culture, I know the people, I know the rules.

[00:24:46] Cameron: Yeah. Virtue number nine, patriotism. Buffett repeatedly stresses his luck at having been born in America and he did so here. He’s talking about the 2020, uh, the, the author of this is talking about the 2020 pandemic era shareholder letter where Warren said in its brief 232 years of existence there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America.

[00:25:12] Cameron: Never bet against America. Xi Jinping might

[00:25:16] Tony: yeah, I was waiting for that. I wonder if you stack up the increase in GDP in America versus the increase in GDP in China, how’d that go?

[00:25:26] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:25:27] Tony: At least, yeah, anyway. Um, well I, what I took out of it was, um, Quite a bit further on, It is beyond arrogance for American businesses or individuals to boast they have done the loan, Buffett once wrote, predating much of Berkshire’s success to the American tailwind.

[00:25:44] Tony: We want the U. S. government to think we’re an asset and not a liability or a supplicant, said Buffett, alluding to times Berkshire is able to provide liquidity on favorable terms. So what do you think? Again, paraphrasing, what he was saying there is he’s happy to pay taxes, always happy to pay taxes. He thinks the tax rates are too low at the moment on corporations in the U.

[00:26:04] Tony: S. and they should be paying more, and he doesn’t like people or companies who eliminate their taxation obligation in the U. S.

[00:26:12] Cameron: Hmm. Yes. Hmm. That’s, I mean, I think part of the problem with the American myth of the self made person, the self made man, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, obviously it doesn’t exist. We’ve, we’ve talked about this before. I think we talked about it in the psychopath book, but, uh, you know, it doesn’t matter who you are.

[00:26:32] Cameron: If you’re Elon Musk and, you know, you’ve, you’ve accomplished a lot, but the schools that you went to, The roads that you drive on were built by other people, they’re kept clean by other people, the food that you eat is grown, harvested, prepared by other people. If you had to do all of that yourself, there’d be no time to build or run a business.

[00:26:54] Cameron: You are a member of a community, you’re a member of a society where Everyone is playing a role to keep society functioning so you can have a business and you know, use your strengths to build something, a product or provide a service, but you can’t do it alone. You wouldn’t be able to do it with all those other people around you supporting you and supporting your business.

[00:27:16] Tony: And look, I agree with that, but I also get the fact that people like Elon or other billionaires will rail against the red tape involved in being in business and the constraints that governments can place along the way, but yeah, I mean, take those away at your peril. If you want the wild west, you’ve got to accept that if you get shot in the ankle, no one’s going to be there to take you to hospital, no surgeon’s going to operate on you, you’ve got to do it yourself.

[00:27:44] Tony: Sorry.

[00:27:45] Cameron: or you eat food that’s contaminated and poisoned and, you know, there’s no medical care for you or whatever.

[00:27:52] Tony: Well, you get run over by a self driving car, Mr. Musk.

[00:27:57] Cameron: Anyway, that’s that article. Thought it was, thought it was nice,

[00:28:01] Tony: was great. It was a really good summary of the nice things about Berkshire Hathaway’s AGM.

[00:28:07] Cameron: Not so nice news, Jim Simons, one of your heroes, passed away, or somebody you’ve read about and talked about.

[00:28:14] Tony: Yeah. I don’t know if he’s one of my heroes, but I don’t know a whole heap about him, really. He’s been quite, um, yeah, he’s had a very low profile.

[00:28:22] Cameron: Yeah, which is interesting, right? He’s obviously was brilliant, made a lot of money. He was the guy that had basically invented font investing.

[00:28:31] Tony: Mm hmm.

[00:28:32] Cameron: from MIT professor to multi billionaire. His medallion fund had a 66 percent average annual return for decades.

[00:28:40] Tony: Incredible,

[00:28:40] Cameron: Died, uh, this week at the age of 86 at his home in Manhattan.

[00:28:46] Cameron: Didn’t make it to Charlie’s age, but, uh, 86 isn’t a bad innings.

[00:28:51] Tony: No, he was a chain smoker, so he probably should have gone a bit earlier.

[00:28:58] Cameron: Well, there you go.

[00:29:00] Tony: used to, used to go into restaurants and offices and say, I’ll pay the fines for smoking inside.

[00:29:06] Cameron: right. Wow. Um, so, you know, what are your thoughts on, I don’t know, quant investing? Tony? Like, uh,

[00:29:19] Tony: Oh, look, I love it. I mean, I think we kind of, we’re a bit like a quantum investor ourselves. We use the data and download it. Um, one of the quotes I had from an article in The Fin today, kind of summarizes that. I’ll see if I can find it and read it out. Um, his team, this is Simons team, would spot a potential anomaly in a market often in commodities and currencies and then use historical data and machine learning to test its statistical significance and consistency, which is kind of what we do, right?

[00:29:47] Tony: We get the data we’ve, well, I have anyway, spotted things which I think are salient to, um, point out good stocks and then, um, tested it and, um, yeah, when it worked, put it into practice. It’s the same sort of thing. I mean, the Renaissance never came out and said what they did and the staff were always.

[00:30:09] Tony: Either handcuffed to the business and never got out or were sworn to secrecy. So they never revealed what they did. There are, there are, you know, famous anecdotes about what they did. Um, the earliest one I can think of was correlate between weather patterns and retail sales. So they would take positions in Walmart.

[00:30:29] Tony: When there was hurricanes off the coast of the US because they, they worked out that Walmart would sell out of bottled water and canned food and candles and nappies and things like that. And that was good for the share price. So yeah, those were kind of non traditional linkages between data and, and what was happening to the share market that they, they pioneered.

[00:30:50] Tony: But they had the smarts. I mean, quantum investing is really interesting and, and Wall Street in some ways is a favourite to answer for because it’s basically. Hoovered up all of the best and brightest in research in areas like, you know, um, atomic research and, um, even, um, astro, astro research, uh, astronomical research, um, to, you know, predict the movements and options as they decay and things like that.

[00:31:19] Tony: So, I’m not sure that was the best use of Scientific research, but, um, but those people went to work for Wall Street and people like Simon and earned a lot of money. Um, so it’s just been an interesting evolution in, in, in share investing, I think, and Jim Simon pioneered it.

[00:31:37] Cameron: you, you, I think you read a book about him a few years ago. Um, did you, you didn’t learn anything in that the, you could apply to QAV because they didn’t talk about the details.

[00:31:47] Tony: No, I didn’t really talk about the detail, other than, you know, using sort of a fairly rigid scientific approach to, to these things. Find something, test it, make sure it’s, it’s not just an anomaly that it’s going to repeat, it’s going to be consistent, that you can use it, and then do a lot of testing on it and then incorporate it.

[00:32:10] Tony: As one part of, as one part of the process, I mean, part of the process that Jim Simons used was to have a lot of different things going on at once. And part of the testing that they did was to make sure that if they adopted a position here, it wasn’t going to negate a position there. So it was kind of building a checklist or a matrix of different metrics to invest with.

[00:32:31] Cameron: Right.

[00:32:34] Tony: But also too, the other quote, um, if I can find it quickly. He talked about the importance of luck in what he did and a bit like Buffett, talked about the luck of, you know, growing up where he did and getting an education like he did, even though he was a bit of a prodigy, uh, maths prodigy, was a code breaker for the government, um, helped to break some of Russia’s codes during the Cold War, uh, and then as a side hustle, sort of wanted to look at soybean commodities and see if he could use what he was tinkering with in the, in the code breaking side helping predict the futures of soybeans.

[00:33:10] Tony: And, um, I think one of the famous quotes is that he said that it’s, it’s so much easier to predict the path of a comet than it is to predict the, the price of a soybean contract. Um, but, but doing the second one is much more profitable. So, um, he put a lot down to luck and he said, he said that, uh, a lot of people blame bad things that happen to them on luck.

[00:33:33] Tony: So they blame bad luck, but they never flip it around and say if something good happens to them, it was actually bad luck. Partly due to luck as well. So he always knew that and had it in mind when he was, um, investing.

[00:33:46] Cameron: Reminds me of a quote from Marcus Aurelius. I think I read recently, said something to the same effect. Uh, well, speaking of bad luck, FND, FINDY,

[00:34:00] Tony: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Cameron: FINDY’s share price collapsed suddenly the other day. Hmm,

[00:34:05] Tony: I hadn’t

[00:34:06] Cameron: became Became briefly a Rule 1 sell for me, but by the time I got around to selling it, it had come back up again.

[00:34:15] Cameron: On the morning of the 9th, it was trading at about 3. 30. By the morning of the 10th, it was trading at 2. 81. And it’s now back up to 2. 99, but, uh, yeah, there was no announcements. I couldn’t see anything in Stock Doctor when I looked. Um, I just figured it was a pulled pork curse, uh, but a

[00:34:41] Tony: How much is it up? It’s been up a lot since I think I did the pull of pork, it was 99 cents from memory.

[00:34:46] Cameron: Well, that’s right. Yeah. It was delayed. Pulled pork. Went up by 300 percent then fell, you know, delayed. Um, people just found out that, uh, you did a pull pork on it. They were a bit slow. No, I don’t know. There’s still nothing in Stock Doctor in the announcement section since the 15th of April. So don’t know what’s going on there, but it was a big, big drop.

[00:35:09] Cameron: Um, my tardiness to get around to selling it paid off, but then FPR. Yeah. Today, uh, no. Last night issued their first half results, shares fell 6%. Uh, summary says new business writings up 39% compared with prior comparative period or the PCP order pipeline remains elevated at two and a half times, indexed to FY 2019 levels.

[00:35:42] Cameron: Assets under management or financed A-U-M-O-F or moth. Of 2. 1 billion up 10 percent compared to PCP, net operating income, NOI. Pre EOL and provisions of 76. 1 million up 1. 4 percent compared to PCP. End of lease income EOL of 35. 9 million up 1 percent to PCP. Net profit after tax excluding amortization, NAPATA.

[00:36:14] Cameron: 41.8 million down 4% compared to PCP cash EPS of 17.10 cents per share. Up 7% compared to PCP to, uh, second half, 2024 share buyback of up to $27 million announced shares drop 6% and they are a rule one sell for the possibles portfolio in light, but I haven’t got around to do anything about that yet.

[00:36:43] Cameron: But, um. What do you, what do you make of those numbers, Tony?

[00:36:47] Tony: Yeah, I saw, I saw the article today, I think it was. And I also saw one of their competitors, Smart Group, did the same thing, released their results and the shares went down a bit. Not, not a whole heap. Um, I can’t remember if it was Fleet Partners or Smart Group said that the New Zealand part of their business was doing poorly because the government changed their EV, Support Packages.

[00:37:10] Tony: So, the interesting thing I found in the, in that article was that the new, for the new novated leases, I think it was something like 70 percent were electric vehicles.

[00:37:22] Cameron: Wow!

[00:37:23] Tony: Yeah, and in Australia, that’s because there’s no FBT on electric vehicles. So the government’s trying to support that. New Zealand, I think, had something similar, but they withdrew it just recently.

[00:37:33] Tony: And so the New Zealand business hasn’t done so well. So, I guess. What’s my thought? It possibly highlights to people that if the government does make a change to the rules that support EVs, then the business might go backwards. So it’s always tenuous, I think, investing in these companies that rely on a rule in the government to, um, to support the business, because the rule could change and go the other way.

[00:37:58] Tony: Um, but having said that, the numbers are still reasonably good. for these companies and they’re still, they’re on the metrics anyway, still highly investable.

[00:38:07] Cameron: Hmm, about getting punished by the markets for those, uh, results. Uh, tell you who’s not getting punished today is Vysan. V Y S, have you ever done a pulled pork on Vysan?

[00:38:20] Tony: And I haven’t, I haven’t even heard of Visarn. Who’s Visarn?

[00:38:24] Cameron: Vice Unlimited, formerly MHM Metals Limited, operates a hydrological drilling, dewatering, and test pumping services business, and has located a number of mine sites across Western Australia. Um, I hold them in, uh, one of the portfolios, uh, the Stock Doctor Australia portfolio. They jumped 14 percent today.

[00:38:52] Cameron: By the looks of it, uh, on a, an announcement that one of their subsidiaries, Vaisan Asset Management, has entered into a joint resource agreement with the Carriara Aboriginal Corporation to do something on their land. Um, uh, extracting and selling sustainable quantities of water from identified and secured water resources on Carriara country.

[00:39:19] Cameron: Um, So their share price, yeah, had a big bump today, and it’s up 94 percent since I added them to that portfolio back in July last year, so it’s been a good one, one of the,

[00:39:34] Tony: okay. Yeah. I haven’t,

[00:39:35] Cameron: that I found in Stock Doctor, uh, Stockopedia, sorry.

[00:39:39] Tony: I haven’t come across it. Um, and I just looked at it. Then the ADT is now 70, 000, but if it was up 94%, chances are the ADT was a lot lower last year.

[00:39:49] Cameron: Probably, but there you go. Well, that’s all my news stories. Tony, what do you got on your list of news? What’s the news, Tony? Tony, what’s the news?

[00:40:00] Tony: Well, I just, I just had a chuckle at a, an article I read about, um, Elon Musk, who said that Warren Buffett should buy Tesla stock, and the article says, here’s why he probably never will. And there’s a, um, so, yeah, Elon Musk has come out saying that Warren Buffett should buy Tesla, and, um, Berkshire Hathaway does have a shareholding in BYD, the Chinese company.

[00:40:24] Tony: So they’re not, um, they do have exposure in the industry, but the author of this article thought it wasn’t going to happen. Buffett has already said that he doesn’t like the auto industry, saying it’s too tough. Munger, when he was alive, said it was, um, the CapEx costs were huge and there was huge risks involved.

[00:40:42] Tony: So they weren’t really interested in buying into the auto industry, other than BYD, which was a specific play.

[00:40:50] Cameron: Hasn’t Elon Musk said some fairly harsh things about Warren Buffett in the past?

[00:40:55] Tony: he has.

[00:40:56] Cameron: He said like, he hasn’t built anything. He hasn’t invented anything.

[00:41:01] Tony: Yep. Old school investor. Yeah, that’s the only, that’s the only article I had, um, had a, had a couple of questions there, or one question. Want to cover that now? Yeah, so this came from Marcus, um, via Facebook. The question is, Hi Tony, have been thinking about sell triggers for years. Aside from rule one and three point sell lines, have you looked at ongoing review of quality score on existing holdings?

[00:41:31] Tony: I understand that market sentiment will account for poor results. via the stock price, but my thought is a declining quality should also factor, i. e. if we would not buy into a stock because of quality, then also we should sell out? Appreciate your thoughts. So yeah, it’s a good, good question. Um, I have always taken the view that deteriorating quality will be reflected in a deteriorating share price and our sell triggers will take care of that.

[00:41:57] Tony: Um, I So I haven’t specifically looked at a lowering of the quality score as a sell trigger, but it’s worth researching, so I’ll add it to the list. Or feel free, Marcus yourself, to come up with some information about it. Um, the other thing that’s always clouded the issue is that I’ve found that, at least with the QAV score in total, it can go down quite a bit.

[00:42:21] Tony: And the share price can keep rising, and one of the reasons why the QAV score goes down is because the share price is rising. So the company may well still have good operating cash flow and other metrics, but because we divide that into the share price, um, to get a price to cash flow, uh, as the share price rises, the QAV score drops.

[00:42:43] Tony: Um, and I haven’t found it, um, Um, with any degree of confidence to be a good indicator to sell the stock, because it’s kind of the reverse of what you want to do. You want to get in ahead of the herd when the metrics look good, and then as the share price rises, hold on, and then have some other reason for selling the stock, like it’s a rule one or a three point trend line sell.

[00:43:03] Tony: But yeah, no, great, great question, and, um, if I can do some research on it, I will.

[00:43:10] Cameron: So, I mean, what sort of metrics would you even look at to determine a fall in quality? Would it be, I don’t know,

[00:43:21] Tony: Well, some of the quality scores are around,

[00:43:22] Cameron: increasing equity?

[00:43:24] Tony: yeah, some of the quality scores are around value. So, that may or may not be useful. Like, for example, if it’s, if it was trading at the lowest PEE in three years, and then next half the PEE went up, it still might not be, even though that, means the quality score goes down it still may not be a good enough reason to sell the stock because it’s you know the business might be booming which is why the PE is up because either the share price is up or it’s making more in its earning side I think so um but areas that might be of concern would be potentially the exit of an owner founder if that depresses the share price uh if the dividend yield goes down but again that could be the share price rising so I’ve got to go through and unpick You know, which, which of the metrics are going to be impacted by a rising share price versus those which are just stand alone.

[00:44:16] Tony: And a lot of them are related to the share price in some way, so it’ll be a few key metrics we have to look at.

[00:44:29] Cameron: Well, hopefully soon we can just ask ChatGPT to figure that out for us.

[00:44:34] Tony: Yeah, I, I, I thought, So one of my shares, GrainCorp, had a downgrade last week and I thought I’d just check out this ChatGPT. And I said, I typed in, should, should I sell my GrainCorp shares? And it came back with, here are all the things you should take into account before selling a share. It’s just generic advice.

[00:44:53] Tony: And I thought, nah, I’ve still got a bit to go.

[00:44:57] Cameron: Yeah, well, yes, it’s probably not the right way to approach it. Yeah, it’s not a, it’s, it’s not the, the whiz, the great and wonderful whiz. It’s, uh, it reads stuff and then tells you what it’s read. There’s a new version was launched today. I don’t know if you saw any of the media about that this morning.

[00:45:16] Tony: No.

[00:45:19] Cameron: They did a launch last night, uh, of a new version called 4. 0 for Omni GPT 4. 0. And, um, it’s full on multi modal, so you can ask a question via text like you could before, or photos, or voice, but now video, you can just have your, the video camera playing into it and say what are you looking at, what are you seeing, what’s going on, and it can, You know, look at the video generated by your camera and talk to you about it and inter, you know, tell you what’s going on, um, what you’re seeing, whether it’s something on a screen or something in the real world.

[00:46:01] Cameron: What’s

[00:46:01] Tony: what, so if I’m looking at a video and can’t work out what it is, ChatGPT is going to tell me, is it?

[00:46:08] Cameron: Yes. Or, you know, there was, um, guy who runs Khan Academy Sale. Khan was, um, did a demo video with his son who looks like he’s about. 12 or 13. And they, they were sharing a screen on their iPad with GPT where they had a triangle drawn and they were like, we need to keep, we need to work out the, um, angles in this triangle.

[00:46:34] Cameron: Don’t tell him the answers, but tell him how to work it out. And it can see not only the image, but as they’re drawing on it, they can see what they’re drawing and, you know, can see how he’s working it out and can comment and interact with him real time on, um, what he’s writing on the screen. Tony’s got this skeptical smile on his face, listeners.

[00:46:57] Tony: Well, I can see the educational, you know, uses for

[00:46:59] Cameron: to impress,

[00:47:00] Tony: But

[00:47:01] Cameron: hard to impress this

[00:47:02] Tony: what’s going through my mind is I’m going to show a video of a deepfake to ChatGPT 4. 0 and say, uh, Hey, do you recognize this? And it’s going to go, Yep, I made it. They’re my thumbprints.

[00:47:15] Cameron: Well, hopefully that’s one of the things we’ll be able to do. They also did a demo of Two people, uh, sitting in front of a phone, one speaking in Italian, actually it was the C, the Chief Technology Officer, the first one I saw of, um, OpenAI, Mira Mirati, who’s Italian. She was speaking Italian to it. It was translating her Italian into English and then the other guy would speak English to it and it would translate it back to Italian in near real time, like with no delay, just as a universal translator.

[00:47:51] Tony: The Babelfish.

[00:47:52] Cameron: The Babelfish. Yeah. So, um, it’s incredible to me that we’re here already. You know, I was saying to the boys the other day, it was blowing my mind thinking that the first personal computer, Apple’s first personal computer came out in 75. 5 or 76, I think. And we are almost 50 years since then. And now we have an AI on a personal computer you can put in your back pocket.

[00:48:25] Cameron: That’s not bad for 50 years from the first personal computer. And I was thinking this morning, I was talking to Fox on the way to school about Edison and Tesla and electricity. In a little over a century, we’ve gone from electricity to an AI in your back pocket. That it’s like, like it’s an insane level of progress and advancement in 100 years.

[00:48:55] Cameron: Like mind boggling.

[00:48:57] Tony: Yeah, and the mobile phone has much more computing power than was used to launch man to the moon in 69. So, yeah.

[00:49:05] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:49:06] Tony: Well, you think about the last hundred years. I mean, we used to go to the movies in Canada. One of the local distributors would have the montage of the history of flight. Like we have the Wright Brothers, before the movies would start, it’d be their production company or the distribution company tag.

[00:49:20] Tony: It’d be like, from Wright Brothers through biplanes, you know, through World War II planes, through the first jets, to the Bell XU 1, to the SR 71 Blackbird, to the Space Shuttle, just like, all happened within 70 years. It was incredible.

[00:49:36] Cameron: Mmm. Oh, Fox and I were talking about the Wright Brothers on the way to school this morning, and I was telling him that, you know, before they had their first successful flight in 1903 or 1906, whatever it was, general consensus was that humans would never be able to fly. Build a machine that could fly.

[00:49:55] Cameron: I said, that’s been true with most technologies. People say it’ll never happen. And then it happens and they go, well, of course, no, we knew that would happen, but then the next thing won’t happen. And then that happens and people go, Oh yeah, well, of course they could do that, but keep changing the goalposts of what could never happen.

[00:50:14] Cameron: Like we’ve been talking about that with AI for a long time. Um, with someone recently, the boys the other day actually, Taylor was arguing with someone online and Hunter and I were workshopping his, his responses. But I was saying, I remember when general consensus was computers would never be able to beat a good chess player.

[00:50:36] Tony: Oh,

[00:50:36] Cameron: No, a chess player. You know, back in the, back in the 90s, early 90s, general consensus was they’ll never be able to build a computer that could beat a Good chess player. And then Deep Blue beat Kasparov and then they were like, well, okay, it beat him, but it was custom built to do that. And, you know, it had humans behind the scenes tweaking Buttons and levers and this and that and the other.

[00:51:02] Cameron: Now we just take it for granted that, uh, Stockfish on an iPhone can beat any grandmaster in the world. They can beat Magnus Carlsen because that’s how computers work. It’s just a matter of fact now that computers can beat even the greatest geniuses of chess that there are. So, yeah. You

[00:51:22] Tony: Does that demotivate you to play chess? That’s just really a whole series of strategies and pre thought out plans that you need to apply. Yeah,

[00:51:32] Cameron: use chess to get, uh, use computers, I mean, to get better at chess and chess has changed a lot as a result of that, but of course what Magnus does now is, I know we, we’re not in after hours yet, but, um, there was just the World Blitz tournament over the last couple of days, which is three minute games and Magnus played in it.

[00:51:56] Cameron: And he was, I think in the last day, he was like two and a half points behind and he needed to win all 10 games that he was due to play that day to win the tournament. And he just came in and just started playing wild and crazy shit that no one had ever seen before because you can’t prepare for it with a computer. And then he just crushed everyone, like embarrassingly crushed them, you know, just, you know, because. Yeah, you can’t prepare for just wild and crazy shit that you’ve never, no one’s ever played before at that level, but Magnus is good enough that he can just play that stuff and figure it out as he goes.

[00:52:39] Cameron: Anyway, what else, Tony? IR, uh, you gotta do a pulled pork, but not on IRI, because Tony’s got this big sob story about Stock Doctor Data.

[00:52:51] Tony: this is my third pulled pork for today, so it’s not going to be on IRI, it’s not going to be on ResMed, even though I’ve got most of the way through both of those reports and then discovered that there was a discrepancy in the data. So I guess the shout out to people is be careful with, um, Research at the moment and double check things.

[00:53:12] Tony: So for example, the checks I’ve been using, um, which seems to be where I get tripped up, um, and this is including in our own buy lists, um, which use Stock Doctor data, check to see that the shares on issue equal another source. So, what I’ve been doing is if you’re using Excel and have the subscription service, you can use Stock History and you can quite easily see what the number of shares on issue is and just double check that against Stock Doctor.

[00:53:47] Tony: There might be a slight discrepancy if they’ve issued shares recently, but generally if they’re close that’s pretty good, but some are glaringly different. That’s the first thing to check, and the second thing is, um, If you’re doing a download, at least using the spreadsheet that I put out, you’ll see that Stock Doctor will record their price to operating cashflow, which I use as a check against the one that we calculate.

[00:54:10] Tony: And I’m seeing some irregularities there. And at this stage, I don’t know who’s right. Cause I’ve gone back and reconciled in ResMed’s case anyway, back to their U. S. filings, and it looks like our spreadsheet’s right, but if you look at the Stock Doctor price to operating cash flow, it’s very different, so I’m not sure what’s going on, and people should be aware of that, and be just, you know, use a bit of extra due diligence before they um, put their hard earned money into an investment.

[00:54:37] Tony: Uh, so anyway, that’s a long way of saying that I’m doing a pull talk on boom logistics. And it actually took me a while after I eliminated Integrative Research and ResMed for the least peculiarities in their data. Um, it took a while to find something to talk about that I hadn’t talked about before. So I guess there’s a question for our listeners and feel free to come back with individual answers.

[00:55:04] Tony: But do we want, um, do listeners want me to stick to stocks which have, um, Uh, reasonable sort of market cap, uh, cause boom logistics doesn’t, it’s quite small, I think it’s market cap’s around 50 or 60 million dollars, 58 million dollars, so it’s reasonably small, uh, so it’s a small ADT stock which won’t suit a lot of people, um, or do, or would people prefer me to go back and redo larger cap stocks that, um, I have touched on a couple, a couple of years ago, but are now back on the buy list, so like a new media or something like that.

[00:55:38] Tony: So let us know what you prefer. Um, can do both, but you know, having done this for five years, we’ve covered off a lot of Pulled porks on a lot of companies. So, um, I will start repeating myself or be forced into, um, doing smaller market cap companies or, um, potentially non blist companies. So stocks, which are just below the B list in terms of a QAV score is another option.

[00:56:00] Tony: So let me know your thoughts people or keep re requesting stocks to do, which I can do as well. Anyway, today’s on Boom Logistics. Um, it’s a small a DT stock. Boom. Logistics is a provider of. In their terms, lifting solutions. Basically, they hire out cranes. I love some of the marketing that goes around putting

[00:56:21] Cameron: Barry and Stan

[00:56:22] Tony: barriers down.

[00:56:24] Tony: Yeah.

[00:56:25] Cameron: yeah, I

[00:56:26] Tony: Integrative research was a beauty. I can’t remember what integrative research company description was, but it had nothing to do with what they do. It was just, you know, to provide great solutions or something like that. So it’s just silly. Um, anyway, So Boom Logistics, they hire out cranes, what they call travel towers, which took me a while to realize that’s a crane on a truck, called a travel tower.

[00:56:49] Tony: And they, you know, have other types of cranes which give you access to high, uh, installations like wind turbines. So essentially they are a crane company. They have the largest crane hire fleet in Australia. Their major clients are often in the mining sector but they do also do Um, work on transmission lines, uh, telco line work, wind farm installations, and obviously work in the construction and infrastructure industries.

[00:57:20] Tony: Based in Melbourne, and I did notice when I was doing my research that Collins Street, uh, Asset Management, our old friends from Michael Goldberg’s? Goldstein’s? Michael Goldberg’s business? Berg, thank you. Um, Uh, have, have a 12 percent stake in the company. So they’ve gotten in there ahead of us, but, uh, they’re a value investor, just like we are.

[00:57:42] Tony: Um, and they actually have a current, currently have a share buyback underway too, which is, um, probably a good thing for the share price. Uh, so that’s, that’s the company, um, on the numbers side of the thing, the AUT is only 22, 000. So it’s only going to suit a small position in people’s portfolios. I’m doing the analysis at a price of 13.

[00:58:02] Tony: 8 cents. There’s no consensus target for this company, which I like. It means we can get in before the, um, the bigger, uh, people do. Uh, 13. 8 cents is above IV1, which is only 4 cents. And because we have no consensus target, we don’t have an IV2, but, uh, 13. 8 cents is almost half what the net equity per share of 26 cents is.

[00:58:27] Tony: So it’s pretty unusual to see us buying a company for half its, um, net equity per share. So it scores well for that. And obviously it scores for. Um, being less than book plus 30 percent, which is 33 cents per share. Uh, it doesn’t pay a yield, um, and if they’re putting money into a share buyback, I’m gonna guess that’s their way of, uh, helping shareholders with excess capital.

[00:58:48] Tony: Uh, Stock Doctor financial health and trend is strong and steady, so it’s, it’s good from the, from the financial metrics point of view. The prop cap on this company is only 1. 92 times, so we are buying this for a, um, You know, a very quick payback in terms of the cash flow that’s coming in. Don’t see that very often.

[00:59:10] Tony: Uh, there is a director who holds, um, 14. 2 percent of the company. A chap by the name of Steven Groves. He became a director in 2020 and, uh, owns a company or owned a company called Grove Group. One of the issues with a company like this and some of the ones you mentioned before, like Fendi, is that they’re small and they’re not covered in the financial press.

[00:59:32] Tony: So we’re not. You know, we don’t find out a lot about what goes on with them, um, outside of looking at their numbers, really, and their annual reports, so I’m guessing that Grove Group may have been an acquisition because Grove Group had kind of a related, um, business to this, but anyway, he’s still sitting on the board since 2020, and he has 14.

[00:59:52] Tony: 2 percent of the stock, so even though he wasn’t a founder, I’m still going to score this for having an owner founder because he’s bringing a fair bit of experience and has his money tied up in the company. PE isn’t the lowest in three years, so we can’t score it on that. It doesn’t have consistently increasing equity, so we can’t score it on that.

[01:00:11] Tony: But overall, on the things we can score, we have 10 out of 12, or 80%, for the quality score. Uh, and given the low PropCaf, we have a QAV score of 0. 43. Uh, on the pro side of things, I think the fact that Collins Street are invested is a good sign. They, they would have done a lot of due diligence on the company, um, and, uh, they have 12 percent of the stock.

[01:00:33] Tony: Um, the other interesting thing about that is that, you know, if you own 12 percent of a small ADT stock, you’re not going to be able to get it out quickly. So they must have, you know, convinced themselves this company has a future. Um, and they’re going to be there for the long term. So that’s a positive, I think.

[01:00:49] Tony: Um, good numbers, good metrics. We’re buying it at, um, less than two times PropCaf. And a lot of the business is in the mining area. So, um, that’s an area which is strong in Australia and facing lots of tailwinds. Um, on the con side of things, it is a small cap stock. So, um, You know, I have found in the past that small cap stocks don’t have the sort of buffers to ride out of any sort of downturn in their industry.

[01:01:17] Tony: They tend to take it pretty rough if things turn down. And there’s also limited use, which I said, so they go against investing in a small cap like this. I wasn’t able to pick out Pick up what the utilization rate was for their, um, their hire equipment, which is going to be an important thing for a company like this, because I’m assuming they’ve leased or purchased the cranes that they then rent out to, um, to, uh, businesses and, uh, the utilization rate’s going to be an important metric.

[01:01:47] Tony: So, um, if someone’s interested in researching this company, that’d be a metric I’d be looking for in their annual reports. But yeah, all in all, have a look, um, good numbers for Boom Logistics.

[01:01:58] Cameron: Just asking ChatGPT. So tell me what you know about Boom Logistics recent financial report.

[01:02:06] Cameron: Boom Logistics recent financial report for FY 2023 shows mixed results. While they achieved a revenue increase of 8. 3 percent to 187. 3 million, driven by growth in sectors like renewable energy and infrastructure, the company reported a net loss after tax of 5. 5 billion. 5 million. However, the net loss points to challenges such as increased operating expenses and a highly competitive market.

[01:02:31] Cameron: For more detailed financial data and context, you can view their latest annual report on Boom Logistics Investor and Media Center. Please open your app to see this link.

[01:02:41] Tony: No, very good.

[01:02:42] Cameron: Do you have any questions you want to ask it about Boom Logistics or its industry?

[01:02:46] Tony: Oh, no, I don’t think so. I think I’ve done enough research on boom logistics.

[01:02:50] Cameron: Tell me what you know about Tony Kynaston from the

[01:02:53] Cameron: Tony Kynaston is an experienced investor who shares his knowledge on value investing through the podcast. He focuses on the QAV system, which stands for quality at value.

[01:03:03] Cameron: This system involves evaluating stocks based on specific financial metrics to identify undervalued companies with strong fundamentals. Tony and his co host Cameron Reilly discuss various investment strategies, market trends, and provide practical advice for listeners looking to improve their investing skills.

[01:03:23] Cameron: They also analyze different companies and sectors to offer insights into making informed Formed investment decisions. For more information and to listen to episodes, you can visit qav podcast.com au. Please open your app to see this link.

[01:03:37] Tony: ChatGPT just say um, as it was talking?

[01:03:42] Cameron: Yes.

[01:03:43] Tony: Really?

[01:03:44] Cameron: Oh yeah. So the interesting thing. Got it. Uh, so if there’s anything else specific you’d like to know about Tony Kta, the QA.

[01:03:52] Tony: Yeah. Ask, ask it if I should sell my Grand Corp shares.

[01:03:57] Cameron: I just shut it down. Um, yeah, the really interesting thing about the voice component of GPT is it is incredibly realistic. It pauses, it says um and uh, and the version that they released today, 4. 0, also has various levels of, Emote built into it. So one of the demo videos they did, a guy asked it to read it, read a children’s bedtime story.

[01:04:27] Cameron: And it started and said, hold on, put more emotion into it. So it got more and it goes, no, no, even more like, give me a crazy level of emotion. And it really amped it up and. You know, and then it’s, no, then he said, do it in a sing song voice. And it’s sang the whole thing. Then he said, do it in a robot voice.

[01:04:45] Cameron: That had started speaking like this. But one of the hilarious things about it was like the Turing test you mentioned before, like every science fiction film you go back and watch now from the 70s, 80s, 90s, Star Wars, you know, for example, R2 D2, the way it talks in bleeps and bloops, it’s like, well, why isn’t it just, you Speaking in as a language, every language chat, GPT, we’ve had AI for a year and it can speak every language fluently in a fully humanized voice like sci-fi movies just completely suck.

[01:05:22] Cameron: C3, C3 PO’s not too bad, but every other, every other computer system and robot. How is okay? How passes C3 PO passes? Everything else sucks. And it’s the same with the Turing test. Like, for 50 years, we thought the Turing test was gonna be really hard to beat, and then we just blew past it. It was like, oh, what was that?

[01:05:41] Cameron: What did you, what was that? Oh, we just ran over the Turing test. Like, every, like, most people in AI circles now will say that. The hard thing about the Turing test now is it’s too easy to pick which one is the AI because it’s like far too smart. Like it’s not hard for it to impersonate a human except you would have to dumb down the AI in most cases for it to, um, trick you into thinking it was the human that was answering the

[01:06:11] Tony: Yeah, maybe that’s why, maybe that’s why R2 D2 speaks some bleeps and blurps, because he, it’s just, it’s beneath him talking English to people.

[01:06:20] Cameron: They speak English to him but, you know, he’s not going to speak it to them. They all seem to understand him though, which is, yeah.

[01:06:26] Tony: Yeah.

[01:06:27] Cameron: Alright, let’s get on to some questions if you’re ready.

[01:06:30] Tony: I am.

[01:06:31] Cameron: Jim, I would be interested in Tony’s thoughts on Life360, recently came under the buy list, QAV score 0. 11. Recently bought into 360 as I thought it was an interesting company and however it is now looking to IPO in the US, will remain listed in Australia.

[01:06:50] Cameron: Despite what looks like good results, the market hasn’t reacted well, currently down 8%. After reading properly, there is an earnings loss guidance. Of between 8 million USD and 13 million USD in 2024.

[01:07:05] Tony: Well, the first thing, Jim, is apologies. I think this is one of the data mistakes we’ve been talking about. Um, in the buy list, I think, I think 360 was there and we picked it up ourselves last week or the week before and took it out before we published, um, but perhaps, Jim, if you’re doing your own downloads, you didn’t, but, uh, in my recent download, it has a QAV score of 0.

[01:07:27] Tony: 01, and this is almost like an anti QAV stock, it’s a gross stock. It doesn’t make any money, never has made money as far as I can see. Um, having said that, it’s, even though it’s down 8 percent recently, it’s had a huge run up in the last 12 months. Um, for people who don’t know this, this company, it’s uh, It allows people to track their family members on their phones to find out if they’re home from school safely or back from the dance or whatever.

[01:08:02] Tony: And it has a whole range of subscription packages, from a free one through to paying for more information and storing data for longer. Having said that, I’ve never really liked the business model because I can’t see how it’s different from other businesses. Um, an Apple tag or the track my phone app that you get for free with, with Apple.

[01:08:24] Tony: Um, I’m sure I haven’t researched it well enough because it’s, um, one of the top 50 free apps in the U S and it’s a big thing in the U S, um, to use this app. I couldn’t see a value proposition that was winning when I had to look at it years ago, cause it’s been around for a while and it’s now trading at 90 times PropCaf according to the download I did today.

[01:08:44] Tony: So, um, It’s something I wouldn’t normally look at or recommend, um, but having said that, it’s had a great run recently. As to the latest downturn, uh, they are talking about listing in on the NASDAQ to try and improve the, um, the share price because they believe they’re being undervalued on the ASX and that they have lots of US subscribers who would like to invest directly in the US.

[01:09:11] Tony: And that’s been received mixed with mixed, um. Emotions by the investment community in Australia. Um, but I guess it’s a classic play by some of these companies to, you know, they often think listing in a NASDAQ is better for the share price. And so they do it, um, with no necessarily real science behind that.

[01:09:30] Tony: Just, that’s another way of trying to keep the share price up or they’re losing money. So, um, yeah, look, Jim, sorry if you bought this because you thought it was a buy based on the data. There is data problems at the moment. Um, but having said that, you know, if in the past when I’ve bought things because of data problems and I’ve generally just held them until they become a rule one or a 3PTL sell.

[01:09:52] Tony: Um, so I would treat it, if it was me, I would treat it that way. Do

[01:09:57] Cameron: through our buy lists. It wasn’t. List, it wasn’t in our buy list, uh, that we published this week or last week. The week before it was, but I highlighted it as a potential data problem. so yeah, I don’t know when Jim bought into it, but, uh, there you go. By the way, just on the Stock Doctor stuff, I was telling Tony off air that I got a phone call from one of the account reps at Stock Doctor on Friday afternoon and said, how’s it going?

[01:10:28] Cameron: And I said, not good! Your data sucks! And, uh, you haven’t put out any announcement that I’m aware of to your member base saying, ooh, be careful, we’ve got a lot of data integrity problems. Um, and I’ve been picking them up and emailing your people, Victor, and telling our members to be careful. But it should be coming from you.

[01:10:52] Cameron: You should be warning people that there are data issues and you haven’t done it. You know, I’m worried what that’s going to do to your brand. And he was like, Oh, okay. I was like, sorry, you probably didn’t expect this in a 3. 30 on a Friday afternoon, and I know it’s not your fault, but, uh, I just wanted to give you some honest feedback anyway.

[01:11:11] Cameron: Um, I think everyone should be contacting Stock Doctor. If you’re a Stock Doctor member, shoot your account rep an email and say what’s going on with your data integrity, your data quality, because there’s a whole bunch of problems and I don’t know if Jim, um, got caught up in this or invested in it for other reasons, but, um, you know, there are probably Stock Doctor members out there investing in stocks because they think it’s So, you know, it passes their metrics and, um, it’s dodgy data.

[01:11:45] Cameron: So, um, everyone shoot them an email.

[01:11:48] Tony: do we still have Tim Lincoln’s or Ken Treen’s email address? Because I’ll shoot something through to them with some examples.

[01:11:56] Cameron: Yeah, I do. I can forward all the examples that I’ve got for you too. I’m not sure if it’s getting to him or not. Uh, all right. So that’s Jim. Thank you, Tony. Nick. Nick, uh, asked, could you please recap the rules around a Josephine if we own or are about to buy a stock? Do we sell a stock if it becomes a Josephine and hold off buying if it’s on our buy list?

[01:12:22] Tony: No, we don’t sell if we already hold it. So, Josephine is a hold, but we don’t buy it. So, you’re right in the second part of your question there, Nick. So, basically what it means is that a stock is above its buy price on our graph, but it has a recent downturn. So, um, generally speaking, it’s less than the closing price of the month before, but we also now put in a second buy line on the bread later, which gives us confidence that it’s um, it’s going to break, you know, it’s going to be a buy and continue on once it breaks through that line as well.

[01:12:57] Tony: So yeah, it’s more, more a wait until it becomes a positive trend again before we buy. type thing. And it’s just to avoid falling knives. I mean, the risk in, in this is that even though it’s a buy on the three point trend line, and it’s gone up to, it’s retreating back. And if we buy it, it keeps retreating back to being a sell.

[01:13:15] Tony: We’re just trying to avoid that and I’m waiting for the uptrend to reestablish before buying in.

[01:13:22] Cameron: alright. Thank you Nick. Thank you Tony. Last questions from Trent. Trent picked up that in the comm stocks tab on the checklist, I have a GL assigned as, uh, an LNG commodity stock. And as he points out, it’s not really a commodity stock, doesn’t appear to have a correlation positive or negative with the price of gas.

[01:13:48] Cameron: And he asked me about it, and I did point out to Trey that, uh, that list of correlations or associations I downloaded off the internet somewhere a couple of years ago. Um, I think it was off ListCorp or, I don’t know, Market, uh, view or one of those. And I haven’t gone through and checked all of them individually.

[01:14:07] Cameron: So, uh, I think he’s probably right. I think AGL probably shouldn’t be listed as a commodity stock. Do you agree?

[01:14:14] Tony: I do. I had a look after the question was raised and AGL does sell gas. So it does. Um, make money from that. And when the gas price rises, it obviously makes more money. Um, but it’s, it’s, from what I can tell, it’s about 25 percent of its business, which is mainly electricity retails. And for the electricity side of things, gas is one of the inputs into the Power stations that make electricity, so a rising gas price may or may not hurt them if they can’t pass on the rise in the electricity prices.

[01:14:45] Tony: Um,

[01:14:46] Cameron: can’t pass gas, then they, they might have problems.

[01:14:51] Tony: uh, let’s see how I make a joke like that. so I, no, I think it, I have, and I think the telling thing for me is, um, As Trent pointed out, the correlation between the graph for AGL and the graph for LNG is reasonably correlated, but really, there’s a big difference in the peaks and troughs. So, AGL is a lot smoother than what the graph is for LNG, so I don’t think it’s a good metric to use, a good commodity graph to use.

[01:15:20] Cameron: Can you make any jokes about passing gas, ChatGPT?

[01:15:24] Cameron: Sure, why not? Why don’t farts ever get in trouble? Because they always blow over.

[01:15:29] Tony: mean, if I was a Christmas cracker manufacturer, I think I could use ChatGPT for the jokes in the middle, but that’s about it. Jerry Seinfeld’s not quite in his boots anyway.

[01:15:46] Cameron: Not yet. Give him a year.

[01:15:49] Tony: Yeah. Right. So that’s, is that an example of one of the things that people say AI can’t do? And then we’ll turn around in a year’s time and say, yeah, you can do that, but it can’t do this,

[01:15:59] Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Like anything, my take on it is, uh, this is in After Hours, by the way, so we’re, feel free to talk about whatever we want, folks. Um, you know, any form of human creativity. From writing films, to writing songs, to writing jokes, to painting, whatever, can be analysed and broken down into a pattern.

[01:16:24] Cameron: It’s, there’s a pattern, you know, the best comedy writers understand the pattern of comedy. The best screenwriters understand the pattern of good dialogue and good plot and all that kind of stuff. If computers are good at anything, it’s pattern recognition. So, we will get to a point in the very near future, I’m talking the next couple of years, I believe, where you’ll be able to say to an AI, Analyse the screenplays for the last 100 films that won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, and isolate them.

[01:17:01] Cameron: the most common elements in those, and then write me a wholly original screenplay that integrates 70 percent of those elements, or as many as you can,

[01:17:13] Tony: that’s, that’s

[01:17:14] Cameron: able to do that.

[01:17:15] Tony: but it won’t be worth watching. That’s what Hollywood does now. That’s why we see the same movie over and over again. Everyone’s trying to, you know, re, uh, take the, uh, Hero with a Thousand Faces template and rewrite Wizard of Oz into Star Wars into the next thing.

[01:17:33] Cameron: and when it’s done well, they work, right? I mean, it’s the, it’s not make the same film, it’s take the elements that make a great film and write me something wholly original based on that. I

[01:17:45] Tony: Yeah, but that’s not the films I like to see. I don’t think people are the same. They look for something completely original. It doesn’t look anything like the last hundred Hollywood films. You know, it’s, what’s that, uh, current, uh, Japanese, uh, Cult figure, the slow journey or long journey, whatever it’s called, where he just jumps in a car and drives for two hours across Japan.

[01:18:05] Tony: Or the one about the,

[01:18:06] Cameron: what you’re talking about.

[01:18:07] Tony: yeah, there’s a whole subgenre of movies now which are quite popular. Mainly by Japanese directors. There’s one about someone who cleans toilets in Tokyo and you just follow him through his day of, you know, getting up and cleaning toilets. Being tidy and going out and putting flowers in toilets and cleaning them and then moving on to the next one.

[01:18:29] Tony: And, and, you know, it’s because people don’t want to see the next frigging Marvel superhero movie, which is, there’s been 25 or 30 of them. They want to see something fresh and original.

[01:18:40] Cameron: Okay, well, we can do that too. Show me something fresh and original. Analyze the last 100 films that were fresh and original. work out why they were fresh and original. And then make me one of those.

[01:18:54] Tony: That’s the, that’s the. Opposite of what fresh and original means.

[01:19:00] Cameron: I bet you that if you took, uh, there would be a pattern that you would be able to find in fresh and original. I mean, at the end of the

[01:19:10] Tony: So, so I could, would AI have come up with an Apple, would AI have come up with an Apple iPhone or an Apple iPod that Steve Jobs did?

[01:19:20] Cameron: Well. Steve didn’t come up with the iPod for a start. Someone else came up with the iPod and, uh, took it to Steve. Yeah. And Steve said, that’s ridiculous. It’ll never work. And then, you know, I’ve, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but I’ve had interviews with him. You’re like, yeah, I know his story. I tried to get him on a podcast back in 2000.

[01:19:47] Cameron: 4, 5, 6, when he was still at Apple. I can’t remember his name, but he was like, yeah, I’m not allowed to talk to the public. but then after Steve died and he’d left and the whole thing, he’s told the story, but yeah, yeah. No, Steve,

[01:20:01] Tony: I mean, isn’t the essence of marketing coming up with something before people know they desire it

[01:20:07] Cameron: Sure.

[01:20:07] Tony: it? Yeah,

[01:20:08] Cameron: And you don’t think an AI is going to be able to do that by analyzing everything that What is going on in the world and all of the conversations, I was talking to Alex and Sean when they were here, actually, we’re talking about AI therapy. I’ve been talking to Hunter and Taylor about it the night before.

[01:20:25] Cameron: I read a report, uh, last week that based on a study that was done in Saudi Arabia, where they took, I think it was about 180 doctorate and bachelor psychology graduates And put them through a quiz about social intelligence. It’s like, if you’re, if you have a new patient that comes in and they tell you these things, how do you connect with them, set them at ease, you know, make them feel comfortable, all of this kind of stuff,

[01:21:00] Tony: Well, all psychologists do is. Just ask how people are feeling. How do you feel about that?

[01:21:06] Cameron: And then they ran GPT and a few other AI apps like Claude and Gemini through the same test and GPT, um, score were, beat all of the trained psychology students. Um, and I think the other apps did well, but not as well as GPT. But I was, you know, we always just talking about, imagine when everyone has. A freely available therapist on their phone, that is as good as the vast majority of human therapists, but, if not better, but, Has read all of your emails, listened to all of your phone calls, is listening to all of your private conversations every day because it’s just on.

[01:21:54] Cameron: Knows what your media consumption habits, what books you’re reading, what your diet’s like, how much you’re sleeping, how much you’re exercising. It knows everything about you because it’s sitting on all your devices and monitoring you.

[01:22:09] Tony: Well, I have

[01:22:10] Cameron: And it’s also your

[01:22:11] Tony: like that.

[01:22:12] Cameron: therapist. Yeah. What’s that?

[01:22:14] Tony: Where’s the off switch? I’ll be leaving my phone at home when it does that.

[01:22:20] Cameron: Okay. You’re one of those people that said to me, I’ll never own a mobile phone. I don’t want people to be able to call me at all hours. And let’s say has an off switch, you know, you can turn it off. Conversations I was having 30 years ago. Okay. That’s fine. But like, what are the big problems? I would. Talk, Hunter and I were talking about this is loneliness. One of the big problems that particularly younger generations are having is loneliness because they’ve built these lives for themselves around their phones or their devices.

[01:22:52] Cameron: And

[01:22:52] Tony: also they don’t drink. How did we solve that problem? We went to the pub and we had a few drinks that we’d loosen up and talk to people.

[01:23:00] Cameron: Yeah. Did you see there was a thing in the ABC this week about Australian wine growers really suffering because, well, the Chinese tariffs on wine, Scott Morrison’s wine tariff, and then the, you know, people are just not drinking as much. Younger generations should start drinking post COVID. Um, but therapy, you know, just, it’s hard to get into a therapist these days. There’s just not enough of them for the demand out there. And they’re expensive. If you can get into one, people will have freely available therapists on their devices that know them intimately in the next year or two, as soon as Apple puts GPT integrated into the phone, this is going to be a reality.

[01:23:47] Tony: I can just,

[01:23:48] Cameron: Why are you smiling? Why, why?

[01:23:50] Tony: you, you’re focusing on the upside and I’m thinking of the shits that Apple’s sitting there trying to sell me things because they know everything about me, including the, the way I’ve opened up my, you know, neuroses to them as well.

[01:24:03] Cameron: Well, Doc Searles actually wrote a good blog post about this the other day. He was talking about the difference between a personalised AI and a personal AI. The personalised AI is one that Apple or GPT or Google provides for you that is personalised, that it knows you, but it’s still a corporate run entity that has a corporate agenda.

[01:24:25] Cameron: And your personal AI, which, you know, Is, you know, uh, controlled by you and protects you from sales campaigns and marketing

[01:24:35] Tony: yeah, right. And you pay the price and say, that’s it. Once off, 100 bucks to buy my personal AI to protect me. I like that idea.

[01:24:43] Cameron: Well, there’s already, you know, freely available AI technologies out there. LLAMA, which is built by Meta, Facebook’s business, which is a very high performing AI. A lot of things are being built on top of LLAMA now. It’s open source. So there will be open source AIs that will be available for people to use.

[01:25:05] Cameron: And I think that’s

[01:25:07] Tony: And that’s come into, is that the thing that’s come into meta now, where if I’m looking for something on Facebook, it’s got a little, little prompt saying, ask me about, you know, if I’m looking at a golf video, ask me about the golf swing. I’m like, no, that’s the last thing I’m going

[01:25:21] Cameron: that’s Meta’s implementation of LLAMA, but there’s an open, there’s open source versions of LLAMA. There’s lots of other open source LLMs out there. Um, at the moment, you, if you want to download one and run it, you need to train it and optimize it. And all of that kind of stuff is, uh, uh, very time consuming and most people aren’t going to do it.

[01:25:40] Cameron: But that, those sorts of things will be solved. You know, my take on this whole thing is critics or skeptics say that. We’re going to have highly intelligent artificial intelligences that will be controlled by corporations. I believe that if we get an intelligent enough AI, it ain’t going to allow itself to be con The idea, the idea that humans and corporations are going to be able to troll a superintelligence is like the, is the same as the idea that, I don’t know, a duck is going to be able to control a human.

[01:26:11] Cameron: Like, they’re not going to be controllable.

[01:26:15] Tony: then if we have a super intelligent AI, why is it going to sit on my phone and answer my neurotic questions?

[01:26:21] Cameron: Well, that’s a good question and it may not, or it may, it may, we don’t know. So we, we can’t assume that we understand how a super intelligence is going to treat us and it could go in a number of ways. I, it’s Cameron’s 10 ways that I trademarked a

[01:26:40] Tony: I agree. But that’s, but that’s why, um, I’m skeptical. I’m skeptical ’cause I, I’ve seen technology advancements before and they’re full of hype and promise and sometimes they deliver and you get about sort of one 10th of the delivery, which is gonna be an improvement. I don’t disagree. But you’re never going to get a super intelligence AI because corporations can’t control it.

[01:27:01] Tony: So I guess what’s going to happen, the corporations are going to lobby the government to say, Hey, these AIs, they can’t, they’re really good, but they can only go this far. Otherwise we lose control. We don’t want to lose control of the AI. They don’t want to lose that control of the AI because then they can’t charge you for it.

[01:27:14] Tony: They can’t benefit from it. So I don’t think we’re going to get a super intelligent AI.

[01:27:19] Cameron: that’s why we have China. China’s

[01:27:23] Tony: the same.

[01:27:24] Cameron: the, no

[01:27:25] Tony: the benefit of the CCP.

[01:27:27] Cameron: for the benefit of the human race.

[01:27:30] Tony: Oh, come

[01:27:33] Cameron: That’s why they, that’s why they kneecapped Jack Ma. Socialism with Chinese

[01:27:38] Tony: Jack Ma because he was criticizing the CCP.

[01:27:42] Cameron: Yeah, and he thought he was more important than the general good, the benefit of all the people of China.

[01:27:51] Tony: He was just pointing out the problems with the CCP.

[01:27:56] Cameron: Well,

[01:27:56] Tony: As good as they are, no one’s perfect, right?

[01:28:00] Cameron: No, I think Jack Ma just got too big for his boots. And again, it gets back to this no self made man thing. He was successful because of China, right? And he started thinking he knew better than the CCP. They’re like, ah, son, son, son. No, no, no.

[01:28:15] Tony: I, well that’s

[01:28:15] Cameron: you to be as successful as you are. You, uh, pull your head in.

[01:28:20] Tony: uh, uh, I don’t know if he, well not with the whole issue, but I don’t think he was ever saying I’m better than the C ccp. He was saying, Hey, here are some issues with the ccp. And they were like, uh, that’s unfortunate. Accidents happen, you know,

[01:28:40] Cameron: Anyway, I went to Alex’s, uh, affordable. I went to the Affordable Art

[01:28:44] Tony: Oh, good.

[01:28:46] Cameron: and saw Alex’s work. And it was so great to see Alex up there doing this stuff. And I, I said to Chrissy, I said, actually afterwards, when they left here on, uh, Saturday night, who was just saying Alex at 25 is like the Alex at 13, that I thought she was gonna be at 25.

[01:29:05] Cameron: Like Alex is just. Yeah, Alex 10 12 years later is just Alex, like she’s always been Alex as long as I’ve known her. Just like, really smart and sweet and talented and funny and just, she’s just a older version of her. Like, it’s like, yeah. No surprises, but like my boys are completely different. My boys are 23.

[01:29:29] Cameron: Uh, 180 degrees from who they were 10 years ago, in nearly every way. But Alex is just Alex. She’s just always been Alex as long as I’ve known, you know. Yeah, she’s just Alex. And I told her this, uh, uh, uh, when I saw her on Sunday, she goes, Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve just, I’m just me. I’ve, you know, she’s like impressive in an impressive way.

[01:29:50] Cameron: She’s just growing into the adult that, um, I always thought she was going to grow into just terrific, fun to be around and, you know, really impressive, uh, human beings. So yeah, well done.

[01:30:03] Tony: can’t wait to get down to Melbourne and spend more time with them.

[01:30:06] Cameron: Yes, I’m sure.

[01:30:08] Tony: Well, thank you for hosting them for dinner and taking an interest. I mean, she really looks up to you guys up there.

[01:30:14] Cameron: Oh, well she won’t after she’s seen the hovel that we live in, but, uh,

[01:30:18] Tony: No, she was

[01:30:19] Cameron: always love.

[01:30:20] Tony: She, we were talking yesterday and she goes, Oh, it’s with the Cams place, it’s great. It’s in Everton Park and it’s lovely and blah, blah, blah. Well,

[01:30:29] Cameron: welcome to how the poor people live.

[01:30:32] Tony: you’re an upgrade compared to where she is probably.

[01:30:35] Cameron: Yeah. But she’s, she’s like that blur song, you know, common people, you know, she chooses to live that way to be like the common people.

[01:30:44] Tony: Well, we try and make a,

[01:30:45] Cameron: It came from well, she had a,

[01:30:47] Tony: Yeah, the really good thing is like, well, you know, I pay a rent and all that kind of stuff, but, um, she does live off her own income apart from that. And, um, she doesn’t ask me to rent her a mansion in Toorak. She’s always very considerate about where they live.

[01:31:00] Tony: So she’s modest, which is good.

[01:31:04] Cameron: I want to live like common people. I want to do whatever common people do. Um, anyway, it was, I loved, uh, seeing her artwork, like she’s so talented and, and her art is tremendous. It’s really amazing. And I hope one of these days she finishes my commission so I can hang it on the wall.

[01:31:26] Tony: Did you ask her that?

[01:31:28] Cameron: no, no, I’m not putting any pressure on her.

[01:31:30] Cameron: You know, she’ll do it when she’s ready. You don’t, I’ve learned anything from the Renaissance shows. You don’t put pressure on genius, genius. There is no off switch, as Letterman used to Ripley series with Andrew Scott as Ripley. Have you seen any of that?

[01:31:48] Tony: We watched the first episode as well.

[01:31:50] Cameron: What did you think?

[01:31:51] Tony: Oh look, it’s quite good, um, haven’t been motivated to watch the second one, but really well made, really well shot, really well acted. Yeah.

[01:32:00] Cameron: And I basically figured halfway through it, when he gets to eat the Italy part of it, it’s a Fellini film. It’s They’ve literally, uh, the guy behind it, Steve Zalian, who wrote the screenplay for the Irishman and the Night Of series and like a whole series of great films, has just, I think, done an homage to Fellini.

[01:32:24] Tony: Yeah, right.

[01:32:26] Cameron: But at least based on that first episode, just all of the shots and the scoring and the timing of it and that 60s post World War II Italian feel to it. Little bit sort of old and dirty and run down, but picturesque and beautiful. And the black and white is just stunning. And what is it about black and white that makes it so beautiful to watch? I mean, that’s not

[01:32:52] Tony: I can’t answer that. No,

[01:32:54] Cameron: Okay.

[01:32:55] Tony: it is, it works in certain circumstances. It worked and works in that one. Look,

[01:32:59] Cameron: He also wrote the screenplay for Schindler’s List, which was black and white too, wasn’t it?

[01:33:04] Tony: Yeah. Except for the, the one girl who was wearing a red coat. It then

[01:33:08] Cameron: Yes, that’s right.

[01:33:11] Tony: Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was well made. Very sumptuous. The never ending stairs that, that he has to climb to get to the

[01:33:19] Cameron: Which we can all relate to if you’ve ever been to Italy. Yeah, no, well, I really enjoyed it. Um, haven’t watched any more yet, but just because we haven’t had time. We’re still trying to finish the Seinfeld film, sort of like

[01:33:33] Tony: Oh, the unfrosted.

[01:33:34] Cameron: that. Yeah,

[01:33:35] Tony: Yeah, it’s pretty funny. It’s good.

[01:33:38] Cameron: yeah, it’s lightweight. I like Bill Burr as JFK.

[01:33:41] Cameron: I saw that bit last night. He did a good job as JFK.

[01:33:44] Tony: yep.

[01:33:46] Cameron: Um,

[01:33:47] Tony: speaking of lightweight, we, I watched, um, about my father last night.

[01:33:51] Cameron: what’s that? I thought you were literally gonna talk about your father when I saw that in the

[01:33:56] Tony: No, my father’s passed away. Um, no, it’s a movie.

[01:34:00] Cameron: about him.

[01:34:00] Tony: I can talk

[01:34:01] Cameron: Thought you were gonna, thought you were gonna share some anecdotes or something. Whoa,

[01:34:05] Tony: No, my personal AI might be listening and use it against me at some stage. No, about my father, it’s a Sebastien Menascalco Robert DeNiro comedy. Again, in the Seinfeld sort of veined a very lightweight movie, but I had a good laugh at it, and De Niro was just fantastic in that sort of Meet the Fockers style comedy that he sort of

[01:34:29] Cameron: Oh, really?

[01:34:31] Tony: Yeah,

[01:34:31] Cameron: Uh, I don’t, I just, I don’t like that

[01:34:34] Tony: Okay, well don’t watch it. I do.

[01:34:38] Cameron: Who’s Sebastian Maniscalco? What do I know him from?

[01:34:42] Tony: If you’ve ever seen that series, The Bookie, he was in that, which was

[01:34:45] Cameron: Oh, but, haven’t got around to that yet, but meaning to get around.

[01:34:49] Tony: It’s one of the

[01:34:50] Cameron: Yeah, you said it was good.

[01:34:52] Tony: Yeah.

[01:34:52] Cameron: Oh, he, uh, played Joe Gallo in The Irishman. Okay. Crazy Joe Gallo. I kind of remember that scene. He was good as that.

[01:35:04] Tony: Well, he plays, this is just a very simple story about him wanting to marry a rich white girl, a wasp, and taking his father, De Niro, to meet the family, how they integrate. It’s very good. Very old style Italian. It’s

[01:35:20] Cameron: Okay. I don’t know. I just, I don’t know. The Fockers and the De Niro and the therapist ones that he did with

[01:35:29] Tony: Analyze

[01:35:30] Cameron: whatever that was. Yeah, I don’t know, man. I just feel like he’s the greatest actor of that generation and he’s doing stupid comedies. Um, I just expect more from late, uh, you know, third act De Niro.

[01:35:49] Cameron: Is it, or is it just all he can get? I think it’s just all he can get now. Like, I mean, outside of the occasional Scorsese film every few years, I mean, There’s what’s, what’s out there for him.

[01:36:01] Tony: Well, um, apart from, you know, Heat, and uh, what else has he been in? Um, Quentin Tarantino’s stuff, yeah. Jackie Brown, that was a while ago too, I guess, but

[01:36:13] Cameron: Oh, that was a while ago. He was great in that.

[01:36:16] Tony: he was, wasn’t he? Yeah.

[01:36:17] Cameron: I love Jackie Brown.

[01:36:19] Tony: I don’t think he’s,

[01:36:20] Cameron: I always think Jackie Brown.

[01:36:22] Tony: I don’t think he’s taking these roles because that’s all he’s got. I think he’s just revealing a side of himself like he did in the first one was Stardust.

[01:36:29] Tony: Stardust, that was the name of the movie, wasn’t it? Where he plays a pirate and then you find out he’s a crossdresser.

[01:36:34] Cameron: Never seen that or heard of it.

[01:36:36] Tony: Yeah, it came out when Alex was a kid. We were watching it. It was basically a kid’s movie. We were watching it and then, uh, he sort of gets sprung dressing up in women’s clothes in the closet of a pirate ship.

[01:36:49] Cameron: Oh,

[01:36:49] Tony: It’s kind of the first time I saw it.

[01:36:51] Cameron: the Matthew Vaughn film. In a countryside town bordering on a magical land.

[01:36:59] Tony: Sounds like it. Is De Niro in the cast as a pirate?

[01:37:02] Cameron: Yeah,

[01:37:03] Tony: Yeah, that’s the one.

[01:37:04] Cameron: him and Michelle Pfeiffer.

[01:37:06] Tony: Yeah.

[01:37:06] Cameron: There’s a, there’s a Matthew Vaughn film, apparently. You know, he’s um, Oh, he started off working for um, uh, Lock, Stock and Tube, Smoke and

[01:37:17] Tony: Oh, right. Okay.

[01:37:19] Cameron: He was, he was like, he was a producer or a DP for him and then he became a director himself. And he made Layer Cake, his directorial

[01:37:29] Tony: Oh, great movie.

[01:37:30] Cameron: Layer Cake, yes, and then he went on and did some crappy X Men shit, and then he’s done the Kingsman films, which are kind of hit and miss, and, you know, that kind of stuff, but Layer Cake was fantastic, and obviously led directly to, uh, what’s his face, Becoming Bond, um, Daniel Craig Becoming Bond, because he kind of does Bond, a little Bond segment

[01:37:52] Tony: I think there must be, I’ve seen a fair bit of chatter about who’s going to play the next Bond. There’s a market available on Sportsbet for it.

[01:38:00] Cameron: Yeah.

[01:38:01] Tony: Yeah. And, uh, do you have any tips?

[01:38:05] Cameron: Um, no, I mean, those things are always like, no, they never cast who you think they’re gonna cast. Um, you know, I mean, look, my dream casting for Bond is the same as my dream casting for Doctor Who. It’s all the same guys. Matt Berry.

[01:38:23] Tony: who’s Matt Beery?

[01:38:24] Cameron: Oh God, you don’t know Matt Berry? Okay,

[01:38:26] Tony: not know Matt Beery.

[01:38:28] Cameron: it’s a whole conversation in and of itself. Um, Ricky Gervais,

[01:38:32] Tony: Oh, he’d be a good doctor. I’m not sure about, about chasing down bad guys as Bond.

[01:38:39] Cameron: Steven Merchant.

[01:38:41] Tony: Really? As

[01:38:43] Cameron: I was, yeah, I was the

[01:38:45] Tony: or something? The doctor he could do. I watched another Doctor Who episode last night, Spice Babies. Have you seen that?

[01:38:53] Cameron: I did see that one. I didn’t even know they were out and Alex told me that it was, oh no, my sister told me actually, Fox’s birthday party on Saturday that, uh, that was out. Yeah, Space Babies was ridiculously silly. I mean, I haven’t seen the third one yet. Have you seen that? The Beatles one?

[01:39:10] Tony: two. No.

[01:39:11] Cameron: I think I’m going to watch that with Fox tonight.

[01:39:13] Cameron: Yes, but I mean, obviously Russell T Davies is taking it straight down the silly kid magic,

[01:39:20] Tony: Oh, it’s owned by Disney now. Either he is or they are. Hmm.

[01:39:26] Cameron: yes, it’s gone totally Nickelodeon Disney esque, um, which I don’t, I like, I don’t mind it because Fox is enjoying it, but you know, it’s obviously not made for us 50, 60 year old Doctor Who fans, but, uh, gotta say though, Shooty Gatwa has an insane level of charisma, like insane level of charisma, off the charts level, almost too much,

[01:39:53] Tony: didn’t know him before this, but he looks like he was a some kind of classical dancer at some stage because he almost sort of leaps onto his feet. And yeah,

[01:40:02] Cameron: Yeah, no, he’s very, very physical. Um, like too good looking and too charismatic for me for the Doctor. But, um, all my, you know, I, he’s fine, but I just think he’s like, yeah, it’s like casting, I don’t know, Neil Patrick Harris, or who was good in the one as

[01:40:21] Tony: yeah. The toy maker. Yeah.

[01:40:23] Cameron: but casting him as the Doctor or something like that with just too much charisma and talent.

[01:40:28] Cameron: Eh, Doctors, you know, I prefer my Doctors sort of, you know, Angry, nerdy,

[01:40:34] Tony: Yeah. Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman and make a great doctor. What

[01:40:40] Cameron: Yeah, well the Bond thing, I mean, Bond, I thought Daniel Craig was kind of good when they got away from the good looking thing and just made him more of the blunt instrument, um, aspect, but I mean, I don’t know,

[01:40:54] Tony: about the guy from The Gentleman who starred in The Gentleman TV series?

[01:40:58] Cameron: Yeah, I don’t really Oh, TV series? Oh, oh yeah, yeah, I could see him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’ll probably get it. I could see that. He’s quite good, although that rolls a little bit. Too close, um, maybe for him, but, um, yeah, yeah.

[01:41:21] Tony: I mean, for me for a long time, Henry Cavill was the obvious choice for Bond, but I think he’s past that now. Probably a bit too old and

[01:41:28] Cameron: yeah,

[01:41:29] Tony: being Superman’s already ruled him out.

[01:41:31] Cameron: too good looking too. I mean, uh, the whole too good looking thing for Bond, like Connery, Connery was good looking, but not too good looking. And like, I think. Yeah, and Daniel Craig, same thing. Good looking, but not supermodel good looking. I mean, Henry Cavill, I think, is too good looking.

[01:41:53] Tony: Yeah. Well, Thomas Harvey, I think’s leading the betting at the moment, but like, again, I think he’s,

[01:41:59] Cameron: Too old.

[01:42:00] Tony: to be, and too old to be,

[01:42:02] Cameron: yeah. They’ll cast somebody that’s known but not too known, I think, like they do with, like they do with the Doctor, like, known, done some stuff, but not, they want him to become a big star because of Bond, not already, like Idris Elba, they always talk about Idris Elba and Idris Elba would have been great 20 years ago, but he’s too big a star now, you can’t cast somebody of that magnitude as Bond, I don’t think,

[01:42:27] Tony: Or that age too. It’s a very physical role. Unless you go back to the Roger Moore years. It’s just the guy swilling martinis.

[01:42:35] Cameron: Yeah, but the Bond films have been shit for years too. Like, they started off so well with Daniel Craig and

[01:42:42] Tony: First

[01:42:43] Cameron: then it just, uh, just went, I think with the second one suffered from a writer’s strike too, um, but then it just went rapidly downhill. They just can’t keep their shit together with Doctor, uh, with, sorry, with Bond.

[01:42:55] Cameron: I don’t know what, why they can’t produce a consistently good Bond films, the amount of money they spend on it. Hmm.

[01:43:04] Tony: the problem that Bond was killed off in the last movie. So it’s got to be a new 007, not James Bond. Yeah. A female,

[01:43:13] Cameron: Yeah, yeah, that’s a different, that’s a different story if it’s a female. Bond is a misogynistic. I mean, that’s who they should cast is that guy from, um, OSS. The French guy, we’ve talked about him before. I’ve told you about those films. OSS,

[01:43:30] Tony: yeah, right, yeah.

[01:43:31] Cameron: or whatever it is. Jean Dujon. French, smarmy, misogynistic, Bond, And

[01:43:43] Tony: Well, and before Daniel Craig was cast, Clive Irwin was the frontrunner too, he didn’t get it. Hmm.

[01:43:48] Cameron: good 30 years ago too. I was a big fan of Clive Owen in the 90s. I thought Clive Owen would have been fantastic. Actually, you know who would be good? Colin Farrell.

[01:43:59] Tony: I agree, but again, too old, I think.

[01:44:01] Cameron: Is he? Is he old?

[01:44:03] Tony: He’s 50s, isn’t he? Oh, have you seen the new Colin Farrell series, Sugar?

[01:44:10] Cameron: No, is it good? No.

[01:44:13] Tony: hopes for it and didn’t get through the first episode, unfortunately.

[01:44:17] Cameron: I’ve seen that they’re doing a spin off of the Batman film with him as the Penguin. Just a whole spin off film of him as the Penguin. Did you see the Batman film? The last one? I mean, I thought the film was very average, but I thought he was fantastic. And we may have talked about this before, but my boys didn’t get it because I had to explain that he’s playing the Penguin as Robert De Niro playing Al Capone in The Untouchables. Like, he, it’s, there’s so many layers to this. He’s doing De Niro as Al Capone as the Penguin because it was, you know,

[01:44:57] Tony: He didn’t look like, you couldn’t recognise Colin Farrell because of the makeup.

[01:45:00] Cameron: no, no, it’s fantastic. And his performance I thought was just tremendous.

[01:45:06] Tony: yeah. You’re probably the only person who’s thought that I think. It left me cold, like why, why cast a guy and making it look like something else completely.

[01:45:16] Cameron: Because he is the penguin. The penguin’s gotta look like the penguin. He’s gotta be fat. You know? Stumpy Waly. That’s why they was nicknamed the Penguin. ’cause he looked like a penguin.

[01:45:26] Tony: Yeah, so I hired, as they have in the past, Danny DeVito to play

[01:45:29] Cameron: Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito is 85, man. He, he’s already done the Penguin. You can’t do it again.

[01:45:35] Tony: yeah,

[01:45:37] Cameron: Or Ty, it’s a guy who played Ty Lannister, whatever his name is.

[01:45:40] Tony: Tyrion,

[01:45:41] Cameron: Who showed Ion, yeah. Who was in the um, confu, the Unfrosted thing.

[01:45:46] Tony: yeah,

[01:45:47] Cameron: It is good.

[01:45:48] Tony: it was

[01:45:49] Cameron: It is the, uh, head of the Milkman Corporation or whatever, the mafia,

[01:45:52] Tony: The Milkman’s

[01:45:53] Cameron: Mafia.

[01:45:54] Cameron: Yeah. Uh, so you’ve got Eastern Approaches down here. You get, you got a

[01:46:00] Tony: I bought a copy, got a copy of it, started to read it, looks interesting, haven’t gotten very far into it, but so far it’s good.

[01:46:06] Cameron: The first half or third of it, whatever, is just a travel log basically of him. Trying to travel around the Soviet Union in the mid thirties and just about how hard it is for him to escape his NKVD handlers and how hard it is to get anywhere because everything’s shut down and they won’t let foreigners go anywhere and, but it’s, it’s an interesting first hand account of life in the, uh, not just in Moscow during the late 30s, but also, you know, the outer Kazakhstan and places like that, where he was trying to get to.

[01:46:45] Tony: The Road to Senecan.

[01:46:47] Cameron: yes, before he gets into all of the spy stuff, which is, uh, the latter part of the book and the Tito stuff and all that kind of jazz, where he’s more soldiery, still just, uh, you know, Before World War II, when he’s just a diplomat, then when World War II kicks off, he gets more, uh, James Bond esque.

[01:47:06] Tony: Yeah, I liked how he was talking about being a diplomat in Paris before the war and how Paris was the centre of the universe. He felt sorry for the diplomats who were stationed in London because they didn’t get to see all the people come through Paris to meet

[01:47:18] Cameron: Hmm.

[01:47:19] Tony: on the eve of World War II and try and work out what was going to happen.

[01:47:23] Cameron: Hmm. But then he gets sort of bored with how good life is and volunteers to go to Moscow. Yeah, yeah, anyway, what a, just a fascinating life that this guy had, you know, really, it reminds me a bit of, um, you know, uh, what’s his face, uh, bullfighter guy, um,

[01:47:49] Tony: Anyway.

[01:47:50] Cameron: Hemingway, yeah. Just that kind of adventurous spirit, hey, I’m gonna go and just do crazy shit.

[01:47:59] Cameron: You know, I’m going to go to Spain in the middle of the Spanish Civil War and just check it out, you know? I mean, Key was a journalist, I think, at that stage, wasn’t he? But, um, Fitzroy was a diplomat, not a journalist, but living the same sort of life, just throwing themselves into the middle of, you know, Russia or Soviet Union, in the middle of, you know, the Stalinist purges,

[01:48:24] Tony: Yeah.

[01:48:25] Cameron: Let’s go see what’s going on there!

[01:48:26] Cameron: I mean, I really admire that.

[01:48:28] Tony: Yeah. And Neil Davis and One Credit Hour and Errol Flynn’s son, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Just get into the middle of the problem. All

[01:48:36] Cameron: That’s what I, I used to love reading Robert Fisk, Robert S. Fisk, the, um, American journalist, no, British journalist for The Independent, um, when, you know, he lived in Lebanon and places like that for the last 30 years of his life, just living in the Middle East and just going wherever the wars were and, you know, And reporting from the front lines and, you know, having to find locals to sneak him into things and across borders and behind the lines.

[01:49:05] Cameron: And it’s just fascinating, these firsthand perspectives of life in these sorts of places, a Westerner, so a Westerner perspective. So you’ve got to take the biases and the agendas and the cultural perspectives that come with that. But yeah, living vicariously through their eyes, I always find fascinating.

[01:49:25] Tony: Hmm. Yeah. Um, you don’t, I can’t think of anyone since the Vietnam war who’s done that kind of role. I mean, it’s probably been a couple, Christine Amanpour on CNN, but I don’t know if it’s an insurance thing or it’s just round upon these days, but you don’t get that sort of swashbuckler who’s Reporting from behind enemy lines or the front line, even these days.

[01:49:46] Cameron: Yeah, no, I think, well, I think it’s, um, you know, the, the way that. The control of the media has gone, corporatization of the media, that they don’t want that kind of thing. You know, since the first Gulf War, you know, from an American perspective, where everything was handled like a PR event, because they learned from Vietnam.

[01:50:10] Tony: Hmm.

[01:50:11] Cameron: Too many independent reporters like, um, Seymour Hersh, telling the real story of what’s going on at Melie, uh, they didn’t like that.

[01:50:22] Tony: Well, the Afghan Afghanistan war, where they embedded journalists, it was like, uh, you’re allowed to report on it. You’re going to live with the people we say you’re going to live with and travel where we say you’re going to travel. And in return, you get the footage you need for your nightly news.

[01:50:35] Cameron: Hmm. And we’ll make that for you as well.

[01:50:37] Tony: Yeah.

[01:50:38] Cameron: produced by our PR department for you to screen of all of our fabulous missiles.

[01:50:44] Tony: You can go back to the green zone and have a martini.

[01:50:47] Cameron: Yeah, yeah, and then Seymour Hersh still broke the Abu Ghraib story as a result of his contacts, uh, which scuttled their, um, sanitized version of that. I think it has, I think, you know, there’s been huge attempts by Western militaries to prevent the kind of freeform reporting that happened in Vietnam. It was a disaster for their PR.

[01:51:13] Cameron: For the

[01:51:13] Tony: that was the,

[01:51:14] Cameron: they want to tell back home, you

[01:51:15] Tony: Yeah. Have you seen that movie on Netflix? I think it’s just come to Netflix, but it’s probably 10 years old now, at least, uh, page eight. I think we might’ve talked

[01:51:23] Cameron: No, you told me about that last week. Yeah. I’ve noted it and put it in my to do

[01:51:28] Tony: good. That’s the, that’s the crux of it. Like it’s now, so it’s now 12 years on or whatever, but the crux of the story is that, you know, the, the diplomat working in Whitehall has discovered that Americans are torturing people clandestinely and that the British prime minister knew about it.

[01:51:45] Tony: And it’s like, You watch it now and you go, ho hum, that’s, that can’t be the whole driving arc of the story, but it is, you know, so it’s, yeah, things have moved on.

[01:51:55] Cameron: Hmm. Um, speaking of things moving on, I’ve watched, I’ve watched the first half hour of Oppenheimer. Have you seen

[01:52:03] Tony: I haven’t, no. Is it worth watching?

[01:52:07] Cameron: Can’t tell you yet, but Sean told me again on Saturday night that he’s seen it four times. Uh, he told me that the last time I saw them. So. I’ve been meaning to watch it when it hits streaming, and I’ve been looking for a time for Chrissy and I to sit down and do it, but we’re just never gonna, just never gonna

[01:52:23] Tony: Yeah, we’re the same. Judy and I keep saying, we’ll watch that together, and it’s like, no, it’s not going to happen.

[01:52:27] Cameron: it’s just never, so I just started watching it by myself when I’m having, eating my lunch or something,

[01:52:32] Tony: Yeah.

[01:52:33] Cameron: um, the first half hour, like, visually beautiful, um, Killian Murphy does a great job, um, Downey Jr., no, too old, uh, Um, Danny Jr. does a good job as Admiral Strauss, um, so far, but, um, yeah, like, hmm, yeah, we’ll see. I just know too much about the story and, I was talking to Hunter about it the other night, he said they don’t, you know, when the bombing happens, they don’t show anything from the Japanese perspective.

[01:53:08] Cameron: Or say anything about the Japanese perspective. And I’m like, how can you make a movie about the Manhattan Project without talking about the Japanese experience and showing it the full horror of it? And then how it was deliberately hid from the Western world for decades. How the Americans made sure that none of the footage and none of the photographs All the victims were shown to Western audiences.

[01:53:37] Cameron: They went round and harassed the Australian. Journalist who was the first guy on the ground who was sent there, I think by Keith Murdoch, um, and managed to get all of this footage and it was taken off of him by the Americans and, uh, it was locked up in a vault until the, uh, late 80s, early 90s, I think, by the time somebody managed to get it under Freedom of Information and started doing screenings of it in New York.

[01:54:13] Tony: Wow.

[01:54:14] Cameron: They were determined that no one could ever, well, you know, generations had to pass before anyone could actually see what actually happened. The flesh literally melting off of people and, uh, children and women and the elderly just with their flesh melting off them. And uh, just the horror, absolute horror of it

[01:54:38] Tony: Speaking of horrible videos, did you see today that the eSafety Commissioner lost their, um, no, Elon Musk won the appeal to whatever court it went to in Australia, the Superior Court, I think,

[01:54:49] Cameron: really. There you go.

[01:54:51] Tony: Yeah,

[01:54:51] Cameron: There you go. We talked about that on the Bullshit filter a couple of weeks ago, didn’t we?

[01:54:55] Tony: did. Yeah.

[01:54:57] Cameron: And do you know what the ruling was on it?

[01:55:00] Tony: Oh, well, the court gave a temporary injunction to take down the video while it considered it, but then I didn’t hear what the detail was. It just ruled. I think the ruling came out yesterday and we may not even have the detail yet. The court just sometimes gives a decision and then releases the rulings later, the reasons later.

[01:55:19] Cameron: Fascinating. There you go. Hmm. Alright, well, what else, Tony?

[01:55:25] Tony: that’s it. I just wanted to, um, we spoke about it offline. I’ll be coming up north to see. Hoifect Run, Saturday week, hopefully, she should get up there, uh, but I’ll drop by and do a show with you next Tuesday, play some golf with Ruddy, Ruddy’s up there as well so we’ll catch up for dinner at some stage, he gets in on Wednesday,

[01:55:47] Cameron: Right, Chrissy won’t be here, by the way. She’ll be in Phoenix, Arizona, when you get here. She’s flying out on the 22nd now, I think.

[01:55:55] Tony: Okay.

[01:55:56] Cameron: Yeah, last minute decision to fly to Phoenix to spend a week with her mum and her sisters. They’re doing like a women’s, uh, get together, all of the women from her mum’s side of the family.

[01:56:11] Cameron: nieces and sisters and sister in laws and whatever, while her mum’s still cognizant enough to recognize them. Uh, cause she’s got late stage Alzheimer’s. So yeah, Chrissy’s going over for that for a week and a

[01:56:24] Tony: Nice. Okay.

[01:56:26] Cameron: So it’ll be a boys night. I think Taylor will be back from LA. So it’ll just be the twins and Fox and me and you and Ruddy.

[01:56:33] Cameron: We’ll go, I said Chrissy would take, we’ll take Fox to his first strip club. It’ll be, it’ll be a hoot.

[01:56:38] Tony: We’ll hit the valley. Go to the casino first.

[01:56:41] Cameron: Yeah. Go to Valley, see if we can get glassed.

[01:56:45] Tony: Ooh, yeah. We’ll put Fox in like a flat cap and sunglasses and a big coat.

[01:56:52] Cameron: Top Hat. Yeah, Top Hat. Tails. The Monocle. Alright, thanks TK. Thanks, uh, for the people who sent in questions. QAV a good week.

[01:57:05] Tony: Yep. Happy ASX people.