Chit Chat Stocks - Jim Gillies Tells Us How To Win With Hidden Gem Investing (Multibagger Returns)

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

On this episode of Chit Chat Stocks, Brett speaks with Jim Gillies from Motley Fool Canada on how to invest in hidden gems in 2026. We discuss: (00:00) - Introduction (00:58) - Reviewing Nelnet: Operations, the Huddle stake, and its Berkshire-esque qualities (06:04) - Investing philosophy: Absolute vs. relative returns and Peter Lynch's portfolio accuracy principle (10:48) - The impact of gold mining stocks on the TSX index performance (14:47) - Analyzing Nelnet's dividend growth, cash-flowing assets, and conservative lending (18:23) - Reviewing RCI Hospitality: Examining a portfolio loser and navigating corporate fraud (24:27) - Reviewing International Petroleum: The Lundin family, share buybacks, and the Blackrod project (34:39) - Portfolio strategy: How to manage massive winners and establish allocation limits (40:02) - Checking in on winners: Re-evaluating Shopify's valuation and growth story (45:27) - Reviewing Winmark: Franchise cash flows and capital allocation through special dividends (51:10) - Reviewing TFS Financial: Boring mortgage lending and buying during bank panics (57:10) - Jim's current watchlist: Auxly Cannabis Group (XLY), accelerating free cash flow (01:02:31) - A bizarre microcap: Vitreous Glass (VCI), the "management avarice" thesis, and beating the S&P 500 (01:11:03) - Closing words, Dumbledore quotes, and where to follow Jim's work Hidden Gems Canada: https://www.fool.ca/premium/ ***************************************************** Subscribe to our newsletter and join our interactive chat community, Emerging Moats: emergingmoats.com  ********************************************************************* Chit Chat Stocks is presented by Interactive Brokers. Get professional pricing, global access, and premier technology with the best brokerage for investors today:  https://www.interactivebrokers.com/  Interactive Brokers is a member of SIPC.  ********************************************************************* Fiscal.ai is building the future of financial data. With custom charts, AI-generated research reports, and endless analytical tools, you can get up to speed on any stock around the globe. All for a reasonable price.  Use our LINK and get 15% off any premium plan: ⁠https://fiscal.ai/chitchat  ********************************************************************* Disclosure: Chit Chat Stocks hosts and guests are not financial advisors, and nothing they say on this show is formal advice or a recommendation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the past three years, interactive brokers individual clients average 24.3% annually beating the S&P 500. Lower costs and access to 170 plus global markets matter. Visit IBKR.com slash performance. Welcome to Chit Chat Stocks. On this show, host Ryan Henderson and Brett Schaefer analyze businesses and riff on the world of investing. As a quick reminder, Chichet Stocks is a CCM Media Group podcast. Anything discussed on Chit Chat Stocks. by Ryan, Brett, or any other podcast guest is not formal advice or recommendation.

Now, please enjoy this episode. Welcome into Chit Chat Stocks, a podcast to help you find your next great investment. My name is Brett Schaefer, and I am not joined by Ryan Henderson. Today, he is taking the week off. I think right now he might be sitting on a beach in Hawaii with his family. So, you know, no complaints there from Ryan. But he'll be back soon. But don't worry.

We have a recurring guest for us this week, longtime Motley Fool analyst and manager of the Hidden Gems Canada Service. Jim Gillies. Jim has come on the show for years, and we thought we looked back at some of the stocks. We have covered, give updates on them, what ones have worked, what ones didn't, why, and just generally a broader investing topic.

I will link to the service and Jim's Twitter account in the show notes so people can go check out more of his work. But Jim, welcome to the show. You're ready to talk about your first stock here, NellNet. We talked about that almost six years ago now, December 2020. We did. And thanks for the invite back, Brett. I will say if anyone, this will be the shameless plug portion of the show.

If anyone is interested in kicking the tires of Hidden Gems, Canada, feel free to send me a direct message either via Twitter or at jgillies at fool.com, and I will be happy to send you a new member pricing link. So I'm not allowed to say the word discount. So we'll call it new member pricing. Anyway, yeah, NellNet. Yeah, six years ago, I've owned it since. I like to call it, you know, a Nebraska-based conglomerate.

That's not the one you think it is, everyone. They are the, they're primarily known as a student lender. They do a lot of servicing for various government levels for student loans. They also own a big pile, multi-billion dollar pay. pile of student loans from a past administration. That pile is getting slower, slowly getting smaller. It's not near as large as it was last time we talked about it. They also have an education software for like managing educational institutions. They have significant investment, almost private equity-esque investment in all kinds of pools, you know, fiber to the home, solar. And as a student,

you know any student athletes in your world or you were a student athlete, perhaps. He says knowing one or two things about you and Ryan, you know, they own about a quarter of Huddle, H-U-D-L, which is video for highlights, video sharing, breakdown. And every time I've talked to someone who has had a student athlete in their house or in their world, and I mentioned they own Huddle. and that's the thing they get the most excited about. I'm like, they're making a lot of cash over here too, but all they want to talk about is huddle. So, you know, it's a, it's a very well-run company. It has echoes.

It's in Lincoln, Nebraska, so it's not Omaha. It's down the road from Uncle Warren and his crew. And I have, I mean, I'm going to come across as a. radical as both slightly misanthropic in this show and also a perennial optimist. So we'll see if we can square that circle. I actually think NellNet the last couple years has not gotten the respect it deserves from the market. They put up consistently good, strong results. And they're kind of hovering around one, two, one, one, one, three times book value.

Part of that's self-inflicted. They're about 50% insider-owned. I think they don't have, they've struggled with getting their story out. I think there are times when they could have been a lot more aggressive with capital returns. I mean, share buybacks here, but I understand maybe why they don't do that as aggressively as I'd like them to. Again, see the 50% ownership insiders there.

But on the whole, I've been quite happy with NellNet ever since I first recommended them in 2020. I did a follow up in 2021. And this is within Hidden Gems Canada. And then we talked about it here, as you said, in one of my earlier appearances. NellNet for me is kind of in that same Berkshire-esque spot that every time I see their earnings report, and they can be challenging earnings reports to go through. I will say that.

It's a bit of a financial morass to go through sometimes. but every time I, every time they release a quarterly report, I don't remember them releasing a bad one. Again, perennial optimist, apparently. And every time I was like, yeah, I'm not sure I own enough of this one. Yeah, it's a fair point. Yeah, a lot of directions, we could go there. Full disclosure, I think some listeners will know I followed this company for a long time.

I do own the stock as well. I mean, we could talk about when the huddle IP is supposed to be here. Three years ago. Yeah, we'll keep waiting patiently. I'm looking at the stock chart, total returns or the last, say, five years. It's generally tracked the market. Now, it's been a little bit drawdown recently, so it's trailing the S&P 500. I think the way I look at it is something like NellNet is not going to be attached to the AI boom or what have you,

even though sometimes in their annual letter they talk about using that, blah, blah, blah. is the fact that it tracks the market in this kind of three-year ultra-bullish AI tech, whatever, you know, theme? And it's something that will hopefully outperform in a down cycle. Is that kind of how you look at it? Or generally, you don't care, like, about tracking anything? I was going to say, can I say something controversial, but you've anticipated what I'm going to say, I suspect? I don't care about individual stocks beating the market. Okay.

You can't eat relative returns. I like saying that. I care about absolute returns, so total return, dividends included. I care about accuracy. I think that comparing your portfolio to an appropriate benchmark is a good idea. But not day to day and not individual. I, you know, I, I, I can tell you that, I won't, I won't go into numbers that can't be verified or audited or whatever, and I'm not going to let you audit. I can tell you that on a

portfolio basis, I have outperformed the market for almost three decades and, uh, that insight and $2 will buy coffee down the street, um, you know, but it's, but what I care about is what I like to call accuracy. And accuracy is very, it's a very, very, very, very, very difficult concept, right? It is, did the stock go up after you bought it? Like, if you were forced to shut down your portfolio today, or if I was forced to say, if the Motley Fool decided to close Hidden Jems Canada

and we liquidated all of the recommendations, how many would be in a positive position versus when it was recommended or negative? Okay. And the idea is, Accuracy. Peter Lynch, I believe it was one up on Wall Street. Might have been beating the street, but I think it was one up on Wall Street, said, you are a rock star if you are right six times out of 10 in this industry.

Okay. And you understand why, right? Because the math for investing is, of course, as we all know, it's asymmical. There's asymmetry. I can't speak today. It's Friday afternoon, folks. I'm sorry. But there's an asymmetry to investing.

A stock can only lose 100%. And a spoiler, most of them do not, in fact, go down 100%. Right? Even the disasters go down 80, 90, 95%. And you can tax loss harvest. There's advantage. And you can tax loss harvest. Yeah.

But a stock, of course, can go up in theory infinitely. I've never seen one go up infinitely as well. But, you know, five bagger, 10 bagger, 20 bagger, 100 bagger, right? And so there's an asymmetry to investor returns. And so if you, to take Lynch's point, if you are a rock star at 60%, if I then were to tell you that Hidden Gems Canada under my leadership, there was two years before I took over the service that I was not involved with the service. But since I took it over in 2020, if I told you my accuracy is 67%,

and I'm aiming for 70, I hope that should give you, it's like, well, okay, did Jim, did Jim just call himself a rock star? No, I can't sing that well. But I am saying that the principle that Lynch said can get you a claim and more importantly, can get you investing success. That's what I'm aiming for and that's what I want to go for. I don't care if an individual stock beats or loses to the market. I care if the body of work over a reasonable time frame, which has got to be a minimum three years, I would think three to five years is better. does the body of work over a reasonable time frame, does that underperform or lag at the market on a portfolio basis?

And even then, Brett, I'm going to go one step further to say this construct I've just given you might also be wrong and should be thrown out during certain circumstances. You've already alluded to the AI boom largely driving the U.S. returns. Okay. In Canada, Canada's, the Toronto Stock Exchange, our main, our S&P 500, if you will, the TSX Composite Index, our most followed index, maybe the TSX60, but that's large gaps, almost exclusively. But the TSX Composite Index, S&P, TSX Composite Index. Last year, that went up 32%. Had a better year than the S&P. 32%. Okay. Canada's a rock.

star. Why? Well, mid-December last year, I went through, I downloaded the all, all, all, all, every single component of the TSX composite index. It was two hundred and twelve or something like that at the time. It's not a fixed number. You know, they go in and out. And I grabbed what was their return to date. So about 11.5 months, 11, 11.5 months, year, return to date in 2025. And I sorted them. And of the 30 top performers, and I say, again, the TSX went up 32% last year, most Canadian many managers badly underperformed last year. And here's why. Of the top 30 performers of the 200 and change, the top 30, you know, in, like by performance, not by weight.

I don't know what they're waiting. I mean, I'm sure it's on my spreadsheet, but I don't remember right now. The top 30 performers all had words like gold, mining, silver, gold, exploration, gold. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, the TSX went up last year by a third because gold went stupid. Now, I'm going to suggest you don't look at gold last year.

I'm going to suggest you go back to the 2010 to 2015 era of gold prices and you tell me what you see. And what you're going to see is people tripping over themselves, especially in 2011, which was when I think GLD, which is the gold ETF, briefly outpaced the spy as the largest, largest ETF by assets. People were chasing gold like crazy. It did almost nothing for the next decade. In fact, it went down quite a bit. Gold, when you catch an updraft in gold, it can be a wonderful thing.

but it's also, you know, there's no intrinsic value argument to be made there. Storehouse of value, sure. But rapid upswings and gold tend to be followed by multi-year, if not decade-long periods of flat-down underperformance. And so last year, my portfolio, spoiler, did not beat the market. because the market was almost exclusively in Canada was almost exclusively a gold story. And so I submit to you, you want to be aware of why an index goes up, why a market goes up, and then ask yourself, is underperforming, for example, a tragedy? when I have a much more diversified portfolio,

one that is built out of cash flow-based valuation selections quite often or asset-based, I'm going to submit to you that occasionally beating the market sends you the wrong signals. That is a fair point. Now, speaking of cash flow, one more question on NellNet. I'm looking at our friends atfiscal.com. I hear another Canadian champion. I think Ryan is the one of the only,

you founded by a nice Canadian man, our friend Braden. Ryan works for them. I think that's going to be the next, you know, big winner on the Toronto Exchange in the near, in the next five to 10 years if they keep growing. But it's besides the point.

You're already here first, folks. You're already here first. And they're not just because they're our sponsor. All right. The dividend per share I'm seeing right here over the last 10 years at NellNet, 10.9% growth per year.

Just average dividend growth the last 10 years is 10.9%. They seem to be a dividend growth story. What are they doing? Because I look at the company

and I think people get a little bit nervous of the evolving of the lending operations. Now, where does the dividend growth say come from over the next 10 years? Meaning, how are they going to keep growing their earnings

like they have? over the last 10th? Well, they have the lending, but number one, remember that big pile of loans they've got that are slowly melting down? That's a beautiful source of cash flow. Their fiber, their fiber operations, which they've sold off pieces a number of times. And this is one of my favorite parts about, it's called Allo, A-L-L-O. They've sold out. I think they still retain 27% ownership, but they've monetized it a couple of times. And they've monetized it. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, at a higher valuation each. At some point, I think they're probably going to sell the rest of it.

And here's the fun part about it. They still own 27%. And they pulled out hundreds of millions of dollars in the previous two monetizations. Do you know what that 27% stake is valued out on NellNet's books? I do. It's zero. It's zero. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. And the price to book is barely above one. So there are a lot of hidden assets. Yeah. Okay. Again, the software business, cash flowing. And the problem was, and I like, and we understand why people get concerned about

lending operations because, you know, financials and leverage, those like to blow up on occasion, right? But you're in a space. Oh, and also too, they do all kinds of servicing for government loan programs, right? That's this pure cash landing in your pocket. But we're presupposing that these guys are bad at lending. And I just simply say, what if they're not? What if it's just kind of plain vanilla lending in a space?

And they've got a wholly owned bank as well. But like if it's just plain vanilla lending in a space that they understand and have been participating in for decades, could they do something stupid? Like, I don't know. Let's call it Silicon Valley Bank who decides to throw all their money into, you know, sub one or sub two percent mortgages and call them, you know, held to maturity. You know, that didn't fly very well. But, you know, I, there is a lot of plain vanilla lenders across the banking and other

financial sectors that you never hear of, even during times of crisis. Like we were talking pre-show. We talked about, you know, how the Canadian banks, you know, like during, during the financial crisis, the 08 financial crisis, a lot of, as a lot of, as. As Buffett would say, you know, the tide went out. You found out who was swimming naked. Well, like, you know, the Canadian banks not only were wearing swim trunks. They were wearing those, you know, the full body bathing suits from the 1920s.

Like, they were well covered. You know, and that's kind of like, you know, I kind of put NellNet in that, you know, I think these guys are fairly conservative. Again, 50% ownership internally. I think that should. It doesn't always, but it should. make you treat your capital and your investing activities a little differently because it's very definitely your money.

You know, the old joke is, you know, when they were privately held partnerships, the investment banks didn't blow up. Once they all went public, that's when they blew up. You know, how is Lehman Brothers doing? Has anyone seen Bear Stearns recently? And, hey, is Morgan Stanley still independent? Right? You know the answer to all three of those.

You know, and so I think that when it's your money, you tend to do things a little differently. And this is still very much their money. Yeah, we can we talk about the culture there for a long time. But we got other ones to look at. There was, I was doing the math before the episode. This is the only loser. The next three will be winners. How dare you, sir?

How dare you? Yeah. So we're talking batting average here. Well, again, I prize accuracy. Yeah. I price accuracy. This one is RCI Hospitality. Stock is approximately cut in half since the episode release.

I think the question is what went wrong here and how do you treat, like you said, there's going to be losers in the portfolio. How do you treat a loser? You research your investments. You analyze markets. You manage risk. But have you researched your broker? For the past three years, interactive brokers, individual clients averaged an annual return of

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Again, visit IBCR.com slash. performance. If there's no losers, you should call me Madoff, and that is not a compliment. Yeah, so with RCI, I mean, here's where I think I went wrong and here's where I think other things went wrong. And so here's the thing. And this is going to come across as hopefully, hopefully with the intent I mean it and not just as shameless humble bragging. But here goes. My cost basis, purchased multiple times, generally when no one else wanted the stock was actually in the 12 to $20 range. And yeah, I was kind of talking about it around $60, I think, on the show. And I mean, it's a flaw of a show like this, right?

I'm not, no offense intended, but like I'm a point in time whenever I talk. A guest is a point in time. And then it's kind of on you, if you act on what we've talked about. It's kind of on you to keep up with the story and figure. And I mean, I understand that could be a not a great experience, but it is what it is. So, you know, and I, I exited personally, again, several times in the $45 to $65 range. I probably should not have been as infused as I was just around $60 when we talked about it. Because again, my cost basis, the times I'd purchase, was between $12 and $20.

Again, I think my lowest purchase was $12 and my highest purchase like $19.78 or something. And the valuation at 60 is not the same as it was at 12. I mean, obviously, right? You know, they had not 5x. This is a publicly traded strip joint company, by the way, folks. So they had not 5x their operations. Okay. And I know I lost a lot of people at publicly traded strip joint company.

But, you know, for people that don't know, this was a very popular stock a couple years ago. It was. We have the CEO on the podcast. The former CEO. Former CEO, yeah, I should say. Say hi to Eric for me. He's probably not going to talk to me. What happened?

I was getting, so I got out before what I'm going to tell you, what is the real reason the stock got shredded. But they were not, I didn't like their performance quarter to quarter. I said earlier, I don't think I've ever seen a bad quarter of NellNet. they had a run of four or five quarters where I didn't like, I don't like what I was seeing. And they see, they give a lot of excuses if I remember briefly reading.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's what caused me to get out between 45, maybe as low as 42 personally, between 45 and 65. I'm like, you know what? I can put my capital elsewhere. And I did. But really, what has rendered. it untouchable for me at this point. And again, you said you had the CEO on and I said ex-CEO.

Well, they were charged last year, last summer, I believe, 2025 with fraud and bribery charges, specifically that they, the charges that they bribed a New York state tax auditor with free trips to Florida, meals, hotel stays, and this is the most unbelievable thing I can, I think I'm about to say here, up to $5,000 a day in vouchers and other cash incentives for private lap dances. That's a lot of money per day. Yeah. That's a lot of debauchery in my, like, I'm just like, what the hell? And that was to help them avoid $8 million. Multiple executives were part of the indictments

why Eric Langen and the CFO also stepped down, but somehow stayed with the company and are getting their full pay. And so are they really out? I mean, it just, you know, when corruption hits and this one's got, you know, you can say, well, they're not, you know, it's not been settled. I just, I'm like, nope, we're out. Too hard. Yeah, I was already out, but at this point, you know, and look, I am someone who has very few places I will not go investing wise.

I think the value is there. But corruption is a hard stop. Or my perception of corruption anyway is a hard stop. So that's what happened with RCI. I want to emphasize it was a loser, because we're calling it a loser. It was a loser before it blew up. Okay. I want to call that out.

you know and and like I said I made mistakes bringing that one to you absolutely and then they compounded those mistakes with you know fraud and bribery so yeah so i mean we talk about batting average i think that's an example of as an individual and even if you're in a professional fund like you're never going to dig up every little piece of evidence you can i think it would have been darn near impossible regardless of how the business was going to say like, oh, I know this New York auditor. They're getting bribed by this company. Like individuals, you know, they have. I don't think I'm uncovering that. Yeah, exactly. Right. That's just the price of doing business and, you know, I think hidden jams lane.

Now, here's the biggest winner, one that I'm kicking myself for not owning because I love the pitch when he came on. International Petroleum. Take investors through what this company does and why they have had a 38% total return Cager since coming on. I believe it was in 2022, 2022, sometime along that.

And I guess, we don't have to stay total return because they don't pay a dividend. So, hey, there we go. All right. I don't even know that. But hey,

take us through it. It is one of the, I mean, I, you didn't go into it. I went in hard to it personally. I recommended it twice to Hidden Gems Canada members.

The first time in June of 2020, 2021, at $5.45 a share. The second time, three months later in September at $5.96 a share. And you can make one hell of a case that I probably should have been recommending that stock every month for about a year. I think I may have failed my members by only recommending it twice in a three month period. So they're an oil and gas exploration company, exploration and production company.

Okay? I mean, very simple, right? And in in 2021, oil could still remember when that brief time, it went negative during, COVID because certain people forgot to close their futures contracts. And but still, oil still basically in the toilet at that point and we're still COVID closure. And but yet here was a company that very modest leverage, like perfectly fine, generating a lot of cash at like, you know, $40 and $50 per barrel prices. And, you know, they've got operations and mainly in Canada, but also in mostly. Malaysia and for some reason in that, you know, petroleum hotbed of France.

I mean, that's always been funny to me. But it's just a good quality cash flowing company with a twist. And the twist was this was spun out of the operations of the London family or London or Lundin or how are you going to pronounce it. Scandinavian family, very big in oil and gas and mine. and whatever, London mining and whatever, L-U-N-D-I-N. And they owned about 26% of the company. And there's multiple Londones across the board of directors,

and there was one in the CEO chair, or C-O-O-Chair. Spoiler, he's now in the CEO chair. I'm sure he got it through merit, not his last name. And as oil and gas prices went up, well, I mean, it dragged up this company, right? And it was just cheap. Like, it was trading it like, you know, it's like, like it was going to make free cash flow over the next couple years or like three or four years

that was basically as much as the company's then enterprise value like what are they going to do with that cash right um but then of course every time oil coughs the stock would go straight up uh and what they started doing with their cash flow was twofold one they started doing with their cash flow was twofold. One, they started buying back their own stock hand over fist. Boy, I like that. When I first recommended them, I believe they had 155 million shares outstanding. Today, they have 111 million shares outstanding. Second, what that shares outstanding thing is done, or the share buybacks is done, is it is concentrated the Lundon-London family stake. It's gone from 26% to about 36%, 35% today, I think. They haven't bought any shares.

They just, as the company whittles down the sharehold, the share base, their ownership percentage goes up. So does mine, by the way, but I assure you I don't own a third of the company. The second thing that I think has created value here is they announced in 2023, I believe. I think it was Q1, might have been Q2, 2023. They announced the development of what's called the Black Rod project, which is a piece of property they owned, a piece of property, make it sound like this little lot.

Now it's like VASPy, but, you know, it had a very, very healthy, proved and probable resource balance under the surface. And they announced that they were going with phase one, Eventually, Black Rod is expected to generate about 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. By comparison, International Today is generating about 42, 43,000 B-O-E-PD, barrels of oil equivalent per day. Phase one of Black Rod is going to add about 30,000 barrels. So it's going to add about two-thirds of the existing production base.

And they said it's going to take us a few years. they said, we're hoping for first oil by the end of 2026. I don't know, has anyone looked at the calendar? What year is this? First oil out of black rod by the end of 2026 and the year after, that would be 2027. That's when you would expect to have that incremental 30,000. But to get there, it's going to cost about $850 million of CAPX. Well, we are now past that CAPX.

They came in a little over budget. It wasn't 850. It was 855. Oh, well, I'm sure we can burn the extra 5%. million dollars, it's fine. They were early on first oil. They actually achieved it last quarter. And so they're going to ramp up for the rest of this year and again, next year.

So again, oil and gas companies tend to do well, right? Like they, there's that operating leverage, the higher the commodity price goes, but your cost of extraction is not going with it and your cost of your daily operation is not going with it. And, oh, we've already spent the cap X, so that's done. So you're telling me now that the cash flow, oh, and oil's $100, too, right? So, I mean, $100 barrel oil is much, much better for companies like this than $70 barrel oil. Sorry, it costs you $5 a gallon to put gas in your tank, drive an electric car.

But their cash flow is about to ramp at the same time that their cap X, is going to fall off a cliff because that $850 million for Blackrod phase one is now in the rearview. We're done. And did I mention the Lundines, Lundins, Londons, now own about 34, 35% of the shares? Here is my fear with international petroleum, bro. Here is my largest fear with this company. There was a company that we had on, I owned it for many years and I had it on the Hidden Jems Canada scorecard as well. It was called Atlas Corp.

They were a container shipping company. And the container shipping industry is very volatile, okay? Very, very volatile. You know, when there's not enough floating tonnage on the water, charter rates per day go straight up, high charter rates, inspire all the shipping companies to build more boats. You build more boats. We've just introduced more tonnage onto the water.

That sends charter rates over the edge and falling. When they start falling, then the liner companies go out and start scrapping the older liners. and wash, rinse, repeat, right? 2021, I believe it was, maybe 2022. It's a little foggy. Atlas, after not doing much with new ship ordering for a few years, basically ordered enough ships in about six months that would double their floating capacity. That was the people closest to this industry see a massive upswing.

The problem is Atlas Corp had between Fairfax Financial, the Washington Group, which is privately held shipping guys. And David, oh, he's from Berkshire Hathaway. David Sokol? He got kicked out of Berkshire Hathaway by Uncle Warren. The Lubrizal guy. The Lubrizal guy, exactly. Those three entities owned 70% of Atlas Corp.

And just before those ships that they'd contracted to be built, started coming out of Dry Dock and being married up with their daily charters for 15 years, they took it private. And what could you do? They took it private. So they captured all of that anticipated upside for themselves. That's my fear with international petroleum, that at this point, the London family, now that Black Rod spending's done, and now they own a third of the company or 35% of the company, they say, yeah, the stock is $35, $36 today. We're going to acquire. it for $50 and you'll have people tripping over themselves to sell it.

But I'm like, I don't think I want to do that. But that's my big fear. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But anyway, yeah, international has been great. And it is paying for a not small part of my son's university career. I'll put it that way. There you go.

That's the goal. I think a lot of listeners will be wondering, especially because sometimes with the hidden Gem's portfolio, you'll see some winners, you know, materialized pretty quickly. Like, it was undiscovered, no one's following it. And then it becomes a story stock, three, four, five X over a year or two, something like that. That can happen, international petroleum, you know, kind of within that vein. How do you manage winners? Like, what is the general strategy? Because I know people worry about, like, oh, I have this one stock that was a massive winner. And now it's a huge percentage of my portfolio,

what have you generally found works for you or for most people over the years? Yeah, I mean, so Hidden Dems Canada is not a portfolio service. I have no insight into what the members are doing visa B percentage wise. My own personal thing is I sleep and forget index tracking ETFs, which is about half of my personal, my family's personal wealth.

We, about half is in index tracking ETFs. So S&P 500. TSX composite, TSX60, you know, broad pan-European, pan-Asia. But that's over there, okay? Of the other half of the portfolio that is invested in individual stocks, I kind of have a hard cap of what percentage I'm okay with an individual stock forming. And I'm not looking through like, you know, it's like, oh, well, you know, I own Bank of Montreal over here.

I don't own Bank of Montreal, I'm just using it. But if I own Bank of Montreal, or I do own, I do own Bank of Nova Scotia. But Bank of Nova Scotia is also all over the ETFs I talked about, the index. I don't do a look through basis and go like, oh, you know, I own 3% of this over here. But with the ETF stuff, it's up to fine. No, I don't bother to do that. Of the actively managed portion of the portfolio, I kind of feel 10%, maybe as high as 15%, for names like Berkshire or Brookfield. that's probably my upper limit.

And that's just a personal comfort thing and a personal sleep well at night thing. But I just choose to not, you know, and that's how I manage winners, as you say. I just don't let them get that large. Now, that's easy to say that because the other hook is that my partner and I, we are very big savers. We are very big live below your means type people. We're both big Lego fans, if that's not apparent by what you can see behind me. But like, you know, we very much believe in living below our means.

You know, we just, we're not, I don't need to impress you with my $100,000 car. I don't need to impress you with my big parties. And, you know, I'm quite happy. I dressed up for you today. Usually I'm wearing a black t-shirt and that's it. you know, I'm pretty sure this shirt might have cost me $10 online too. So, you know, it's kind of like when you live below your means, when you value comfort and, you know, like we have a family policy, we don't borrow money. Okay.

Like we have had a mortgage. We do not have a mortgage now. Haven't for a few years. You know, we pay cash for cars and if we can't afford it, you don't buy it. And so what this means, aside from, you know, proselyizing you in the Dave Ramsey-esque formula, I suppose. What this means is, boy, we got a lot of cash sitting around to continue putting into the investment portfolio. And when you do that, even if you're getting up against that 10%, 12% ceiling, I actually don't, I don't know that I've really ever saw. I can think of one about 10 years ago I sold because it got a little too high in terms of.

of allocation within my own personal portfolio. And that's where I encourage. But otherwise, because we're continually adding with two, you know, professional salaries, we're continually adding a fairly good chunk of money every, every, you know, every paycheck. It's a problem that I find is tended to take care of itself. Now, call me when my wife retires in like a year and a half and, you know, we stop saving on that front. But so far, you know, it's, it's, you know, don't, don't interrupt compounding unnecessarily. And if you don't need your portfolio money to live on, which we don't, you can do a lot of good stuff with it.

Long-winded answer. I'm not sure I answered the question. I think you did. I think you did. And, you know, of course, everyone has their different financial situations. Exactly. Personal finance is, as they say, personal. Personal. They have, but I think for everyone, whatever frameworks you need for your situation is important because I saw it in 2021, uh, seeing it now. You see it time and time again, whatever period. Really, if you don't have the rules beforehand, uh, if you have a big winner, sometimes it could talk to you and you can, I don't know what, you can make rash decisions. if you see big numbers on a screen.

But I'm also, I sorry, I didn't say this part, I probably should have advocated. Check in with your big winners. Okay, I'll give you an example. Like check in, make sure the valuation still makes sense. So Shopify, you may have heard of it. So Shopify, when I found it, I should say when we found it, Team Canada was pretty early on. It was 2016. my cost basis, personal cost basis for my Shopify position.

I'll just say it was a small cap when I bought it. Okay. It is the one of the two or three largest companies in Canada today. But it was a small cap then. My cost basis is about $4 Canadian. Last I checked, it was 180 or 190. Yay me, right? Yay, whatever.

I've pissed off a few people just by saying that. but I do have a point to make. And that is, I think the last couple of quarters out of Shopify are the best quarters I've ever seen out of them. And that flows. And when we first found it, you couldn't make a value investors case for the company.

Okay? You couldn't. But what do they do? Well, Shopify enables, I mean, that was, this was the play, it was to enable small and medium-sized businesses to basically ease of, commerce online. You know, you could, the, the joke was, you know, I can, I can, I can run a,

that's my daughter, Boba Fett costume, you, you, you, you could run your business from a phone, right? That's, that's what they're trying. And so it's simple and, and the value proposition for, for the customers is very much there. But Ian Butler, my co, my colleague in Canada here with the Motley Fool, he and I, I remember this conversation very vividly, we had this conversation where it's like, what, how many? How many. small and medium-sized businesses can be out there. And the answer, Brett, is, you ready for this? More.

That's it, right? Like, I don't care how many there are. There can be more tomorrow. And then, much like, you know, the original Amazon argument was like, well, they're just an online bookstore. It's like, well, what if they're not a bookstore? I mean, they're selling books right now in the late 90s and early 2000. But what if you reframed your mental model for Amazon from bookstore to online logistics company? And at that point, you don't have to sell books.

You can sell, I don't know, CDs or DVDs or Lego sets or plush toys. And it's like what if you do more? And with Shopify, the argument was, well, what if they move beyond the small and medium-sized businesses, you know, Jim and Brett's sock emporium online, you know, you can come buy your fancy socks, to what if larger businesses start using Shopify for their e-commerce needs? Like, say, I don't know, Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, for example, or, you know, Netflix Canada, or today in the city where I live in, it's junior hockey, it's opening night tonight for the 2026, 2027 junior hockey season.

See you there. If anyone's there, of course, you're listening to this after that, so it doesn't matter. I'm a season ticket holder. I was buying some stuff last year in the pro shop there, in the merch shop, and guess who their vendor is? No points if you said Shopify. So what if it gets bigger? And again, there can always be more businesses, but what if the world where they're selling into also expands? And so you want to check in.

And like I said, the last couple of quarters for Shopify, I think are the best ever. And I've been following the company for 10 plus years. So you want to follow your companies. When you have a big winner, you go look at it and say, okay, is the stock trading? Like, have I run a discounted cash flow and a model? And that discounted cash flow model says the stock is worth $20, but it's trading at $180 today. In that case, and it's trading for 100 times sales. And the CEO and the CFO and 10 of the 12 directors are selling, you know, between 60 and 100% of the shares.

You probably should take that signal. But if you see a company where, yeah, it's a multi-bagger, but, you know, like Shopify today is what? 15 times sales. And I hate the sales multiple, by the way, but 15, 17 times sales. Five years ago was 70 times sales. And again, the gross merchandise volume is accelerating. Their revenues are accelerating. Their cash flow is accelerating.

Two best quarters I've seen in the past decade are the last two quarters. Don't feel terribly upset about Shopify. And then what that then leads to is, let's say Shopify lays an egg on their next earnings report. Stock drops 10 to 15%. I'm probably going to not be terribly upset about that. because again, been following it long term, don't think it's out of line. Fallen, I don't have a chart up in the past decade,

it's probably fallen 15% at least 10 times from its all-time high. I think it fell 70% from its all-time high after 2021. That's fine. So again, there's your even more long-winded answer. I think listeners enjoy that one. since we're going to coming up on an hour here in the next 15 minutes,

let's choose whatever one you want to talk about. You can do them both. You can do it both. Winmark, TFS financial. All right. Let's do win mark real quick. Let's do win mark quick. In a little bit of drought on what's going on here.

Don't know. You should be interested and here's why. Full disclosure. I know the CEO personally. our relationship has come out of the fact that I've been a long-term shareholder and a vocal shareholder, he reached out to me.

And then we found out we actually kind of like each other because we're both big hockey fans. And, you know, but, you know, we keep it professional. But he is, Brett Hefis is his name. You know, and I very, I cannot say enough good things about Brett Heffes and his team there, frankly.

They really have, and I will, I will just do a quick commercial there are two, if you Google my name and Winmark, there are two Motley Fool Money podcasts out there where I talked to Brett and interviewed him for these, though. So I would encourage people to look those up. You won't have to, my name, Jim Gillies, and then Brett Huffis, Winmark, you will find these.

And now tell you more about the company than I could tell you. One of the things about Winmark right now, though, that you should pay attention to, okay, is they are a rare company that only buys back their stock when the price makes sense. Lots of companies buy back stock willy-nilly, regardless of valuation or price, they'll defend it to the rafters. Some of them even blow themselves up and destroy their company because they read in a finance 101 textbook somewhere that one-book stock is giving money back to shareholders.

And, you know, I am totally not talking about the recent. recently bankrupt sleep number company who did it to themselves twice. Oh, wait, I am talking about them. Winmark, however, makes a lot of cash. They are a franchisor, right, for the five franchise concepts underneath them, gently reused goods, resale. They do gently use goods resale, okay? So musico round, style encore, Play-Dohs Closet, Once Upon a Child,

play it against sports. Those are their five concepts. Franchising companies are cash rich, right? You get 6% of the revenue or 5% of the revenue. Every month, I call them check cashing machines. And so they're very cash rich. So you're going to see, like, you know, they'll have net margins in the 40 to 50% range. They have cash flow margins similarly.

And what they do with the capital becomes interesting. And so here's win mark. In 2010, they brought their dividend in a $2. Most recent quarter, by the way, it's $1.2. So they've gone from $0.8 a year to, $4.8 in about 15 years. Okay. Oh, by the way, they also pay a special dividend. They paid multiple $5 special dividends, $750, a $3 one. Last year, they paid out a $10 special dividend. I think since I've owned them, and I've owned them ever since the initiative. So I've owned them since 2009,

made good money on them. The total dividends I've received is more than three times my cost basis. okay i've received over $70 a share in dividends my cost basis is $21 so why do they pay those special dividends and the answer is because they're so cash rich there's only so many things you can do with your cash if you're a company in terms of capital allocation you can invest in your business not really much you can do here i mean it's a franchisor like you know they're already they're gushing in cash anyway uh you can make acquisitions when Mark really doesn't do too many acquisitions, and I can't remember the last one, frankly.

So that's kind of off the table. You can pay dividends. We've already covered that. You can pay off debt. They've got a little bit of debt. They've got about $60 million in debt. But it's at low interest rates. Of course, interest is tax deductible.

So at their after tax cost of debt, it's probably the two and a half percent range. You want to rush to pay that off. And it'll come soon enough. I think some of it goes off in 2028 and the rest in 20209. They'll pay it off then. And you can buy back. stock. But again, I've mentioned Winmark won't buy back stock unless the valuation makes sense.

So last few years, it's been 35, 40, 45 times free cash flow. Valuation has made sense. That's why you've gotten the big fat special dividends at the end of the year every year. Right now, sub $300, and Brett at the CEO of Winmark, will not confirm this for me, nor should he, by the way. But I said, I've got you, because I know. know where you will buy back stock. And you will neither confirm or deny, but I think I got them. Their price is 25 times free cash flow or less. They're currently trading it 23 times.

All right. So I wonderful drawdown. Good for you guys. Cool. That's, yeah, I remember we talked about this company and I was like, it's a little bit expensive at the moment. But I saw the drawdown. And I think I got to look, I think I got to look deeper.

myself. Okay. TFS financial, the most boring outperforming, well, we don't want to say outperforming, just the boring stock that has crushed the market, 22% total return caggar. I remember being like, what is this company? What is this sleepy bank? Why did this sleepy bank produce? Again, we don't need to talk about relative returns. Just have an absolutely stellar last few years.

Silicon Valley Bank. That's it. That's the game. This is, for those who don't know, TFSL, TFS Financial, and why would you, frankly, unless you listen to the show or you're a Hidden Jim's Canada member or a dividend Canada member. I recommend it there too. This is a bank that does plain vanilla mortgage lending basically in Ohio, Cleveland, and Florida. Okay, we're done. It's not sexy. It's, it is.

And it's also, there's a whole. hook there. It doesn't screen very well because it's currently only partial conversion from Thrift to actual bank. So it screens poorly because all of the shares that would be issued if this was fully demutualized, they haven't been issued, but they have to count for financial purposes. So it looks like this thing's trading at 35 times earnings. It isn't. Take out the 81% of shares that have not in fact been issued. And if they were, they would be issued at the current share price. So this already capital rich bank would be drowning in capital. And the CEO, Mark Stefanski, has absolutely said, yeah, full demutualization is for the next

generation of Stafanskys. I think he's the second generation. His parents started in the 30s and several of his kids slash nieces, nephews, maybe grandkids work there as well. They were already paying a big fat dividend. And we talked about this one in May of 2023. well Silicon Valley Bank went down in March of 2023 and people didn't want to go near financials. There is a very, any bank.

Okay, so you want to know why this has done well because you should run towards some fires. You should run away from some fires. You should run towards some. And I'd already owned this one before that. I watched it take, you know, a shot in the stomach similar to a lot of financials and banks. And I'm like, okay, the problems at Silicon Valley

Bally Bank are not what's happening here. This is, again, plain vanilla mortgage lending in Ohio and Florida. They're not, you know, they're not subject to a bank run caused by accounting choices. Are these mortgages, these 20-year mortgage bonds we've got, are they held to maturity, or are they available for sale? If we're available for sale, then the accountants come along and strike out our entire equity position, which might cause a run in the bank. Oh, that's what happened. This is just a plain, boring bank that got tossed in the dumpster with everything else because people panicked. Cool.

I was paying at the time 28.5 cents per quarter dividend. They continued that until June of this year, Brett, except for September, just literally last week. last week when we were recording this. They paid their first hiked dividend since that first show we did. Excuse me. They're now 31 and 3 quarter cents per quarter.

And so I was just playing the, yeah, cool. We will buy what no one else wants when no one else wants it because, and I gone through, here's all the financing, here's the, like, here's where they get their money. no one's going to you're not going to you can do a run on deposits at silicon valley bank right I can do a run on deposits at TFS financial like no one no one's paying enough attention no one cares

and and that you know that was the difference is basically don't be afraid to wait in where other people have decided you know ready shoot aim kind of thing it's like yeah you know what I'm going to take my time and that's why we talked about it in May of 2023 is this an example of Okay, people are looking at the banks and TFS in general. Maybe not too many people are looking at TFS, but a lot of banks like that, and they say, well, it's just not going to work for the next two quarters. That's what a lot of people are doing. And you're as an hidden gems person, you're kind of saying,

all right, we have a three to five year time horizon. If they keep producing what they're producing earnings-wise, things will work out. Yeah, I mean, I don't even have a three to five year time at horizon. I have a, I'm very much in the, all of my shares. all of my stocks are for sale every day and my favorite holding period is forever. All right. That's an idiosyncratic way to look at things, but I like it.

Yeah, well, I mean, like I, you know, we're doing this record on the day that Warren Buffett has officially stepped down as chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, effective immediately. He stepped down as CEO at the start of 2026. He was stayed as chairman. He is now stepping down immediately to become Chairman Emeritus.

This is probably not a good thing. I'm going to point that out. I came rather late to the Berkshire Hathaway story. Of course, Buffett took it over in 1965. I came in rather late. I didn't buy my first Berkshire shares until 1998. I've never sold a share. I purchased it multiple times since.

Never sold a share. I believe in the long term. And if I thought it warranted, I would sell my Berkshire today. They've just never given me a reason to think. think it's warranted. And that's the idiosyncratic difference. Okay. Now, we've looked at

kind of some case studies really today when you've come on the show. But I think a lot of listeners are like, well, what's Jim interested in now? And of course, these are not recommendations. These are just stocks on your radar, things you're looking at. You can tell us what your opinion is. Any hidden gems, one or a few or any sectors

on your radar at the moment as we close out this episode. How crazy do you want to go. We can go as crazy as possible. It's a podcast. Okay. Let's get crazy. I'll give you a couple.

The first one, I am Canadian. If the maple syrup aroma is not coming through your computer. And hockey. And hockey. Maybe the how I pronounce a boot. You know. So your listeners may know, viewers, I guess, I don't know. You may know that Canada legalized marijuana.

in 2018. October 17th, 2018, to be specific. I think I know what I, I'm 80% sure I know which one you're going to choose here. Oh, are you? Yeah. Yeah. I should have you write the ticker down and hold it up while I stall you here for a minute. Yeah, I don't have it.

I don't think I have pen and paper, but. What's the first letter of the ticker you're thinking of? H. You are wrong. Damn. Good try. Okay. So here is the issue, right?

Pot stocks were all the rage in Canada and I was trumpeting from any pulpit I could find. You are stupid if you buy these. There's no cash flow. They're cash burning messes. Stay away. Stay away. Stay away. Oh, and also legalization was the biggest by the rumor sell the news event.

And by the way, it was the sell the news part. Okay. Pretty much every potstock from October of 2018, if they are, are still alive and haven't been acquired or just gone out of business. The average return is, I think, about down 99%. That sounds bad. It is bad. Survivors.

We have a company called Oxley, A-U-X-X-L-Y, Oxley Cannabis Group, which is ticker X-L-Y on the Toronto Stock Exchange. They are a leader in branded recreational cannabis goods. they, wait a minute, this is a potstock, Brett, that generates free cash flow, that generates growing free cash flow. And management's been derisking the business via intelligent capital allocation, including buying back there. I need to lie down. What the heck? The businesses survive.

So the brands, they have the Back 40 brand, which is consistent. They're the number one brand in Canada. They've also got Foray and parcel. They, you know, they were a literal petty stock. They were like 15 cents a share kind of thing when I first found them. And I said, I'm not going to recommend this one because I don't like pennies. But, you know, boy, a 50 to 1 or 100 to 1 reverse stock split would go a long ways. They only did a 14 for one reverse stock split, but that's fine.

And the idea. And look, they were, they were down. pretty much to, like, look, it's fine, but we're not buying back in 2018. We're buying in 2026. And revenue growth has been accelerated. Free cash flow growth is up. Margins have been widening. They have a large, you know, as a lot of the cannabis companies do, they have a large external investment from one of the large tobacco companies who are, you know, tobacco the company struggling with growth, obviously. Imperial brands owns nearly 20% of this, the British company,

not to be confused with Imperial Tobacco. You know, and like Philip Morris owns, or what is that, British American tobacco is in another one, organogram, another Canadian pot stock that survived chronos, Altria groups in there. If you run out, I think I recommended this at $3,000, just over three bucks. If you run out very low growth and assume very conservative modeling statistics,

I think I could justify a $5 per share price very easily. The stock is up a little bit, it's about three and a half, 360, I think, at this point. And I always do what I like to call. I call it the hillbilly reverse DCF, okay, which is basically just to, to reverse DCF will tell you based on whatever your assumptions are, and hopefully they're reasonable ones, what is the growth rate embedded in the current stock price to justify that current stock price? And when I recommended this, and again, I said,

assume the recent margins are as good as they're going to get, assume all equity cookies have value and are deducted from firm value. What growth rate justifies the current share price, which was, again, about $3.20 when I recommended it, I believe. And the long run growth rate that justified the current price was 2%. I think this company will do better than 2% growing forward. And I happily put my money behind. So that would be one crazy one.

Do you want to get really crazy? Let's do one more. And then we have time for one more. We got time for one more. Cool. I want to take you to Erdry, Alberta. You've never heard of Erdry, Alberta. That's fine.

Most people haven't. There's not much there. I've actually driven through there. It's a simple business. It's a company called Vitrius Glass. This is a tiny company. It's 40 million market cap. I think it's tiny company.

I could never recommend this formally. I've owned it for over a decade personally. Okay. Me talking about it publicly previously has spiked the share price such that the company had to release a press release saying, we don't know why our stock price is going up. because I didn't phone them beforehand. So if you guys are,

if the CEO is watching, it was my fault. You're welcome. But again, it doesn't. Vitrius glass, basically, you know,

the glass, waste glass, you throw in your recycling bin. Yes. And what's the ticker on this? Because it's, you know, small cap.

The ticker is, it's a microcap. The ticker is VCI on the Toronto Venture Exchange. So not the TSS. the TSX, the TSXV. If you go to Yahoo finance, you type in VCI.v. And that will get you there. It's a very simple business. They collect waste glass that you toss in your recycle bin and never think about again. They collect it. They crush it. Remove contaminants and sell the final product. They're just a, middleman, sell the final product to manufacturers of fiberglass building materials.

Who does not get weak at the knees and dream of the sexy business that, is crushing recycled glass and turning it into feedstock for fiberglass. I mean, like, you know, it does not get any better than this, right? Okay, number one, it's a ridiculous business, a ridiculous niche, except who is going to take them out? Who wants? You're not going to build a competing plant in Erdry, Alberta, right? I presume.

So it is not a sexy business. It is a profitable, debt-free cash flow business. Here's where it's about to get fun. Insiders own about 40% of the business, including the largest shareholder, who is the longtime CEO named Patrick Cashion. His wife is also, I believe, on the boards, I'm counting her as well.

And Patrick takes a very long, modest salary as CEO, $86,000, $800. I'm sure it's complete accidental that that's the number of seconds in a 24-hour day. But anyway, he has taken that salary since the early 1990s. Okay. He also has an incentive agreement with the company that did I mention he and his wife own 40% of. So, I mean, you know, there's nothing like making an incentive agreement with yourself, I suppose. and that incentive agreement pays him 20% of the company's pre-tax operating cash flow

to ensure his interests and motivations are tied to those of the corporation. That is good for another $800,000 to a million payday a year for him on top of his $86,400 salary. But wait, there's more. Vitreus We go back to what I was talking about earlier about what you can use your capital for. There's no real need for ongoing capital expenditures.

They're not going to, they're not expanding the place that much. Excuse me. There's no debt to repay. They're not really trying to grow. This is just a little, you know, it's a nice little business. What do you do

with all of the cash you're generating after you pay Patrick Cashion, his, 20% of pre-tax operating cash flow. And the answer is three to five times a year, usually four times, but occasionally three, occasionally five. I apologize. I'm apparently not drinking enough. Stay hydrated, kids.

What vitreous glass does three to five times a year, they declare a special dividend. So it's not ongoing. You don't have to, you know, make quarterly payment. They can just choose to not pay a special. But weirdly, they pay out. Three or five times a year they do this special dividend. And funny thing, if you add up the total cash paid out in those three to five special dividends a year, they tend to round, again, like I said, I've owned this one personally for over a decade.

They tend to add up to about 99.9% of the total remaining free cash flow of the company every year. It's really strange, isn't it? did I mention Patrick and his wife own 40% and so they claim 40% of the total cash paid out. So not only is our dude collecting 20% for his incentive agreement, but he's also collecting dividends per year. By the way, it's an eligible dividend in Canada, so he's also getting preferential tax treatment on this. you know, he gets another 40% of the total cash paid out of, you know, the sum total of those dividends every year. So I do apologize. Sorry, folks.

I call this the management avarice investing thesis. I think you should assume. I have a saying I love to use. I call it behaviors and language. So in other words, talk is cheap. Watch what people do. Don't listen to what they say. Watch what they do.

Behavior's a language. That's number one. Number two, the best predictor of future behavior is, weirdly, past behavior. I think they're going to continue, because I think Patrick Cash and his wife like the money. I think they're going to continue to doing this. And funny thing, when I last looked at this, let me see when I looked at it briefly here. It looks like it was last time I did my math on this was mid-discay. July of this year. So you're getting a little bit older. The 10-year, and I know I say I don't like

comparing individual stocks to markets, but in this case, I will make an exception. As of the mid-to-late July, mid-July, 26, the 10-year total return for the S&P TSX composite, the Canadian benchmark, was 227%. The 10-year, the 10-year total return for the S&PTSX composite, the Canadian benchmark, the 10-year total return, again, dividends included. It's very important. For the S&P 500, you know, the thing that is currently dominated by the MAG 7 and has been dominated by the MAG 7 for a few years now and is leading the AI buildout, you know, that we're all excited about. The 10-year return as of mid-July, 2026 for the S&P 500 was 312%. Tiny little vitreous glass, no growth, middle and middle of

nowhere Alberta glass crushing factory 10 year total return 340% outpacing the market on both Canada and the U.S. side. Badly outpaysing the Canadian one. A no-growth waste glass recycler

with most of the return coming by a special dividends was a market beater over a decade. How crazy is that? I think that's a great way to close things out. It's a good example of where you can find returns.

I mean, hey, I might write about it on the Molley Fool website, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, whatever the hot topic is the day. But there's opportunities in little corners of the market as well. Jim, before we get out of here. It's more fun, man. It's more fun to chase the bizarre little stories. It is. It is.

All right. Any final words before we let everyone go? Any final words? make it sound like I'm walking to my execution. I will share my, I'm going to steal from Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, and I will share my three, I would like to say a few words on phalloskepsis, defenestration, and schadenfreude, which are my three favorite words. And I'll leave them to you guys to look up.

No, no, it's been fun, Brett. I always like when I get invited to come on here. I'm sorry we've not been able to do it last couple of years. I don't know why, but no, this has been fun. And, you know, I think if what I would want people to take away from this is I love the game of investing. I love the small, the unloved, the weird, the strange. The big stuff is great too. Like, I mean, I, you know, I'm benefiting from the AI build out.

I've got all kinds of S&P index fund. But, you know, where like I just, I love finding little stories and getting excited about these stories. And hopefully I've made you excited about these stories. So again, I'll say one more shameless plug. I'm sorry about this. You know, feel free to believe, but anyone who's interested in Hidden Jems Canada, where we recommend one Canadian stock, one U.S. stock per month, and I've been doing so since 2018. I've been in charge of it since 2020.

If you just want to hit me up at J. Gillies at fool.com, J-G-I-L-I-E-S at Fool.com, I will send you a new member pricing link. And you can come see what all the fusses. about or not fuss. I mean, you know, I'm not the boss of you. It's fine. All right. Thank you, Jim, once again, for joining as a disclosure. We are not financial advisors. Anything we say on this show is not formal advice or recommendation. Ryan, I, or any podcast guest may hold security is discussed in this podcast. May have held them in the past and may buy sell or hold them in the future. Thank you, everyone once again. We'll see you next time. The hit original series is now streaming on Paramount Plus. We are the Harrogans.

Don't know than it? And Google us. From the underworld of Guy Ritchie. Do you want to step up the matter? I won't call him dead. Starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosman, and Helen Mirren. Do I have to do everything myself? You want to want!

I'll give you a... A blad. New season is now streaming on Paramount Plus.