Do Go On - The Corona Curfew Live Episode

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

This week, @RTRowe and @HDanhai break the guest count with 125 of YOU!We had a live episode that started with a sermon from the mouth 😩 from Pastor Randy and ended with a (lot!) of questions from our guests. We also had cameos from the Brick Boss @MSGillyJ who spoke about the expected effect of the current pandemic on JA's Real Estate Market, Books Boss(?) @GordonSwaby, who gave some insight into resulting eCommerce opportunities, @MsWhervin popped up and told how things were going in the Commercial Construction side of things (and asked a great Carib Cement question), Data Don David @JCKnight2 shared some insights with us & @chrisfromuwi brought even more questions!Come for the gems, stay for the Q+A!Contact Us Here 💻 📧 [e-mail]💻 podcast.everymickle.comFollow us on Twitterwww.twitter.com/Earnings_Seasonwww.twitter.com/RTRowewww.twitter.com/HDanhai ★ Support this podcast ★

Hi everybody, Randy here. I just wanted to apologize for the sound quality in this episode. No, we recorded over the internet. And as you'll hear when you listen to the episode, I mean, it is listenable. But whenever Danai speaks, there's a little bit of audio interference that pops in. Apologies. Hope you still enjoyed the episode. Apologies. hi guys welcome to earning season i'm randy your, which you've heard many, many times before, 31 times before

at least, 32 if you're lucky. And this is earnings season, a special earnings season also. But before I tell you all the specialties, I'd love my co-host to introduce himself. Hi guys, I'm Danai, at H Danai on Twitter. That's right, and I'm Randy Rowe at RT Rowe. This is the Cardi, yeah, the Rowe This is the The Cardi Corona The Corona Curfew Edition And I think I have here We're doing this Via Zoom

We're being socially distant As has been mandated By Sir Brogad himself Isn't it funny how everybody just calls him Brogad And no one's like nothing Right When I was at Stocks on the Rocks

I called Nigel Clark Oh boy And I I call him that because that's what I call him Anytime as you know that night Anytime I talk and I say I apparently hope People don't know what. Apparently, I hope people don't know what that is about.

I don't think they know, really. Oh, God. Look around now in Jamaica. No pure Kapek, you see. If you come here from Ocho Rios, follow me now. You go upon the North-South Highway, you're upon Kapek.

You come off North-South south you go for mandela and you make a left you depend you come up mandela and you say i want to check desmond in west kingston and you make a right you're the power and then you come power right, you're the power, carpet. And then you come, power square, and you know what they call it? The upstairs, downstairs road. We go up on Washington Boulevard, carpet. We make a left on Constant Spring, carpet. We make a right, carpet. We go up, carpet. Everywhere you look, cap it. We go up, cap it. Everywhere you look, pure, cap it.

I'd call one bro God and one cap it God. Yeah, I know with this COVID thing that's happening, I'd call the other one Dr. God, but apparently somebody in the past was named Dr. God. You guys can look that up. I won't put that in the show notes. But we need a new name for the Minister of Health, Chris Tufton, who I think has been very visible and doing a very visible job in terms

of the management of this crisis. There's no way to avoid it, so let me just start off by just talking about it because it's on everybody's mind, right? That don't mean to be good or great. It just means that we're not Florida. For the first time, I think we're all happy to not be Florida. We?

We. So I certainly am happy that Jamaica is not Florida. I don't know about you, sir. Having said all of that, we're back at chatting, which is what you guys came here for, right? I hope so. They listen to us chat every week at this point. Almost every week, right? Almost every week.

So this is the Corona curfew edition. Again, I'll get around to why it is I wanted So this is the Corona curfew edition. Again. Again. But I get around to why it is I wanted to do this one. And there are a bunch of reasons I'm doing it. But I tell first to the person listening to this, you're listening to this right now, doing whatever it is that you do on your own while listening to our podcast.

Hello, I'm Randy. Why we're doing this is if you've been following me on Twitter for a long time, so I don't mean two or three years ago, I don't mean since stocks get popular, if you've been following me for a long time, you know that one, I chat too much, two, well, if you really know me, you know, I really like to, I joke a lot, not just that jokes. And three, you know, I care a lot about finance, I care about stocks, I care about business, I care about a lot of things, right? But when I started on my public financial journey, I, I, how do I say this? When I started on my public financial journey, I was in a place where, I mean, I didn't know anything, right? And I'm afraid I'm at, people don't know that. I say, I guess, if you've right? And I'm afraid of maths. People don't know that.

I say it, I guess, if you've been to GROW, if you've been to any of the sessions or the things that I do, the classes I do, you've heard me say it. But yeah, believe it or not, I was one of them afraid of maths people. But I'm not afraid of money. Nobody's afraid of money. I pretty much was just having to teach myself

because I need the money. I need to take the money. And basically, I won't go through my whole story. I can do it on some other episode. But the point is I had to teach myself. I realized that it's something that anybody can pretty much do on their own, right? In terms of what I taught myself and what I learned. And so the fear of math didn't turn me off from doing it. And then I realized it was so good and it's actually working because it's something that I've always done but I started to wonder whether or not you know can I

really do this and can anybody else really do it and again this is somebody who afraid I might try but then dealing with money so I didn't want to screw up because I was using money and two I didn't want to be lost out there and three i didn't want when i found out that it worked i didn't want to keep the good news that i found out myself i think on which episode we had kalila and then i remember which episode no more episode no i do not remember yeah what are they but you look out for the kalila big up kalila if you look for the kalila yeah man if you look out for the kalila episode uh uh you hear her talk about how when she found out about stocks and what actually it is and how it works and how you can make money from it, blah, blah, blah. How big a deal it was for her and how she just wanted to share it with people.

And it's the same way for me. I run off my mouth too much, as you guys have heard over the last few minutes. So I decided that I needed to run off my mouth and tell people, make everybody else know. And I wanted to see if everybody else could do what I was doing. I don't want to say special. I want to say something that any and everybody can do, right? And so I tried it, meaning to tell people about it, and it worked. And so there's always that feeling of somebody just starting out,

which is why I'm saying all of this. There's always a feeling of somebody just starting out. And as doing it, this is back when when twitter was you actually were saying what it is that you're eating for lunch today so the old days so so i actually but yeah it i i started to tell people about investing a lot and i carried people along the journey in a way that if you're a beginner you can get a chance to start. And this is what I have learned. And there are certain little weird things that I do and certain weird ways in which I do it and things I say and things I don't say.

And the reason why I do it that way is because X, Y, Z. And the reason why I do it is because you need to learn it on your own and I want you to be able to do it without me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I believe, I'm saying all this to say that I believe that there should always be a path for the beginner, right? When I was talking to Danai a little earlier about this episode, I told him that there's something I'll tell him later on, which is that, which is that I, I was, somebody pretty much draw me up and say oh they like i mean they love the podcast they love the content they really enjoyed it and they're talking about the last episode or episode before last the one with just you and i and i and they're saying that you know the thing is there was a

first part of this corona thing and people scared the market dropped like boy but you sound like like you're talking almost like you don't remember that there are people who just start out. And I thought, wow, you're right, because I really do do the podcast with Danai every week, and our conversations are not really beginner

anymore, are they, Danai? What do you think? Yeah, we've really left that. It's really hard to speak up about the same thing every time so I think that's where it comes from start from the beginning all over again kind of hard to think that

get that thought process going to actually think speak on the same thing as we spoke about a couple of episodes ago yes I say it all the time on the episode that the conversation you hear on this although a lot of them are edited the conversations you hear

on this, a lot of them are actually real conversations. It's Dana and I actually having conversations about stuff. That's why a lot of the editing actually started to happen because we literally had to like we have something in mind and we we talking about it and they're like oh

i don't want to say this publicly yet or i don't want you know i think i have a play i don't want to push out yet blah blah blah um and so we have the conversation and have good part of it i forget cut but the point is we had the real conversations no when when you say when i say that you know i have the real conversations and we're actually talking, I mean, we talk a lot of times on the level where we talk, say, right, we lose a lot of the beginners, I think. And I think a lot of people have learned about investing recently, very recently too. Like, I did hear about Wicton and the Trans-Jamaica thing that come up, and now I met that missed me, which again, I can understand. A lot of people didn't make it miss them. I can understand. A lot of people didn't make it miss them. I mean, a lot of people got to know for TransJamaica. And a lot of people would have been

searching for stocks. They're hearing about a podcast for the first time. They're listening. They love the old episodes, but let's admit it. I mean, we have episodes that go almost four hours here.

I think they're great. But people tend to be daunted, especially before they start listening. I hear the same thing a lot from people. We start, you get the same line. I'll never forget how it started out without with us we start the podcast and I say yo we're doing quality however long it lasts however long it lasts you said no a podcast should be 45 minutes to an hour and and I say no quality is quality however long it lasts is however long it

lasts people say yeah man it's too long but a couple people listen people like it second one long i remember the first time that i and i did a short episode we were rushing to go do something else i would do the episode right before we did and then we'll send it out their message yo how this is short i forgot the two this week yeah but people people often switch once they realize that something good is there, which I understand. But until you've climbed that little hill, you've gotten over that hump, you are always going to be looking at it as daunting and saying, oh my God, it's three hours. There's nothing could be telling us about stocks that could last for three hours and still be

important. And you might actually be right. But other people might tell you you're wrong. Anyway, why all this yapping? Point is I want to do something very specific and open and clear for the beginners, right? And this one requires some conversations. But then I, well, let me just go straight into it as something I noticed that I, um, I have been quiet mostly for the last few,

however long, but I've been quiet, especially since the market dipped. Well, obviously not quite with you. Well, even quite with you. Cause you've been busy and I've been busy.

I think I've been more quiet than you. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I don't. Yeah. Don't really talk. I haven't been speaking much.

I wonder, I wonder if people that follow me for me speaking about investing are disappointed. You bring back the jokes. Yeah. And I've been staying quiet and just looking at what the responses have been from the industry because, and this is the reason why I came with that whole huge speech at the beginning, sermon at the beginning, because I believe, I've always believed that there should

be a path for the regular man or woman to be able to follow without going to accounting school, without being a finance specialist, right? There should be a path that you can follow and be able to get somewhere in terms of your money. It don't mean that you have to become Warren Buffett, but you should be able to go, okay, I want to start investing in stocks and there should be a resource for you. I want to start doing XYZ,

there should be a resource for you. You say, okay, in stocks now, I would like my portfolio to go, I want to make 200% in three months, right? You should be somewhere you can go where they'll tell you, hey, 200% in three months? That's heavy. That's a lot. For you to be able to do that, that's very, very, very, very, very, very, do I say hard?

What's the right word there, Danai? 200% in three months is what? If you walk into a house as a regular person, assuming that there was a house that's like magically good. Very dedicated. You do not have to be. Yeah, you kind of have to be. And if you're in only...

I say in only stocks, it depends what's happening with whatever company that's going to give that. Maybe there's no company in the market that will give that right now. Maybe you have to be in the right company at the right time. That's how it works for you. And good luck with helping you with that. Yeah.

Somebody walks into our brokerage house and asks for 200% in three months. I'd expect the brokers to go. Yeah, no, no, go for it. Yeah, that's not what you come to broker for for you you want to get 200 in a month then you're going to have to go for it yourself right and i believe that for a regular person especially ones that don't know anything about finance it should be that road that they can go they should be able to have that place they can go to get the start so they want them when they come with something like a 200 in three months there should be somebody there to

say hey that is actually kind of hard guys so i believe that there should be a path that anybody can follow even if they're a beginner even if they're new even if they don't know about numbers they're kind of afraid there should be a path that you can follow um and when good things happen there should be a path there for somebody saying hey how do i get out onto this good thing how do i how do i start how do i get onto this myself right i asked a couple of my brethren today and yesterday, yo, where has the response from the overall industry been for what has been happening in the market?

Right. Um, and I talk straight. I say, yo, outside of, outside of, um,

telling everybody to not to panic, to calm down and quoting Buff Buffett like Bible scriptures. The same quote everywhere. Like I see you have to drop it too. Yo, okay. Be greedy when others are fearful. And fearful when others are greedy. All right, cool.

But what that mean to me? Buffett must be tired, man. He lives another day for every time somebody quotes him that's why he's been around that's that's that's his secret secret to his long life value um not that there's anything wrong with that saying by the way it's 100 true uh it's just that the truth is if you are a regular non-finance person that don't really mean nothing to you oh be fit be brave when others are fearful

okay what that mean brother more or no going for the NCB watch NCB there right now less than $200 NCB, wait, how much NCB there right now? Less than $200. Less than $200, wow. 152.83.

152.83, goddamn. Okay, so the thing that I haven't said with all of this yapping is that we're doing the live episode, and so we're doing it live via Zoom. And so we have a bunch of people in there at this moment there are 90 my god there are 90 people in the chat um on zoom i was surprised at that amount of people and they were and the response was that they can't leave the houses so might as well oh that's smart you said you said you said you see how smart my marketing is so i put together get them when they can move yeah but then we're second best

you know i don't want to hear about being brave when everybody else is fearful blah blah blah when ncb media sounds like they have nothing else to say to be honest like the best you can say something somebody else said yeah and i'm not knocking that because i get a lot as you said i find it's a very true statement uh you know i'm a big buffett fan yeah there's no problem I can't it can't be that the only thing you have to say

is Warren Buffett xxx whenever I say it nah yeah and I'm not saying that to say that

people aren't making moves you know I mean there's a move maker it's Big Up Shanice oh yeah Big Up Shanice completely yeah the top striker

herself and there are people making moves I spoke about Pulse and I think since the time i tweeted about pulse till now i mean pulse has given even if you get in the friday or the monday you'd have been up 25 and in this market where everybody is balling all right 25 and that's just

one thing i like to say that one because it's an easy one for me to remember but my point here is i have not heard a big strong comprehensive response coming from anywhere in the industry at saying guys what's happening is xyz and here is how you get out of it or here is what you do in there or here what you here's what you do blah blah blah in in any specific situation yeah yeah i'm not hearing a strong industry response um and i guess it just i guess it's maybe it's just a shock it is coming i saw jmmb did their session um a couple days ago that was pretty cool listening on that and they had a couple of experts in there and those guys were big up kerry because kerry seemed to moderate it and and those guys actually went as far as to i

saw kerry push them to um actually say a couple couple of stocks, say a couple of things that you like and you're enjoying or that you think will provide value in the near term. the thing that used to be such a big quarreling point a year or two years ago about how short-term gains go back when I somehow gained a short-term gain thing title is now being pushed normally I hear people talking about what gains can be found soon you know people looking for what will happen next quarter and I'm thinking three months i am so happy now that i'm here even though sometimes it takes a while sometimes it takes a lot of common sense almost always hands through so yeah that's true it doesn't catch very slowly but you know it's still contagious it does catch very quickly let's not say anything about contagious right now all right that was the point i get you i get you i guess i guess that jokes can come from young people that's not a bad joke oh my god anyway

um like i said only jay mimby have i seen like a strong response from in terms of the session that sessions that they've been holding um i think Barita also had a couple of things. Okay, yes, I see in here in the chat, Alden Edwards said that Barita did a session on Instagram. And yo, maybe I'm still the bad guy in the industry that I just call in things as I see them. But I can't see a regular person, I can't see a regular person seeing any guidance here. I'm still hearing the same set of questions from people.

Yo, what am I supposed to do? And you press them in, they'll say yes, and if you press them long enough, they'll even quote the buffet to you. There's a couple of people who quote the buffet back to me. You know, be greedy when others are fearful.

I say, yeah, so what do you buy? Why? But no, no, you hear the thing, right thing right exactly the people are scared of stocks right they won't enjoy the thing about them still scared so then they're going and then buy the safest thing they know my buy ncd my buy separate my buy with cinco right now somebody yes that's what i wanted to buy and fontana so they will buy them thing, right? Fontana is like a scary thing. If you would not believe how many people have fit that mold. NCB, Wisinco, Seprad, Fontana.

And some of them might throw in a Carreras, you know, because it's safe. You get dividends. And I can tell you, what are some of the stocks that have dipped heavily? HCV, Wisinco, sometimes Carreras, Seprad, and of course, Fontana. Fontana has gotten a hell of a dip, although it has come up a little now, right?

So instead of keeping the balling and the yapping and the quarreling and the saying how the industry not doing blah, blah, blah. I figure, let me just do my part. Let me just actually start talking about some of the things that I see. Let me start talking from the perspective of somebody who's just starting out and maybe not just starting out. Let me try and channel that perspective, but not just just starting out, but also. Also. Like you started out a little while ago and you made some money, you made some nice money, but this is your first dip. For a lot of people, this is the first time

they've ever seen a dip in anything, right? And they're scared to hell. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and... But the people that hear you, that's usually saying, they're on everything cool. So, are them saying the same thing exactly and they're not and they're not hearing they're not hearing nothing else from

nobody else really right the truth is you can only hear the buffet quote so many times before you start um saying yo i really don't know what's going on and i know this because right now i am sure people would love for me to detail a couple of stocks for them i see the stuff that david big up david jc night two i got that right he's actually in the chat we might make him talk a little later on big him up for doing a light analysis started a light analysis of what was it we're syncing i think and do we see one every week Or one every day, something like that. And the light analysis is getting the grandest response because of how small the field of people

doing something like that out there is. And it shouldn't be that small. I kind of shame. I kind of shame on it, you get me? Then I'm going to try to do my part to show the path. And that was my whole point, that I'm trying to go back to that. I kind of lost focus along the way. I'm trying to go back to that focus.

Tangents. Exactly. We got lost in a tangent. I got lost in a tangent in life, and so I'm trying to bring it back here. So having said all of that, this one is for the regular people. All right? No. This episode is going to be a little different also,

not just because we're live and we're going to be taking some of your calls, your calls, your calls as if you're on the radio. But also we want to have a couple of segments that we break it down. We break it down to three large segments and we'll ask a couple of questions. And then with those questions, when we get those questions answered, we might move on to another segment. So we're going to start off with a couple of the very early questions. And this one, it was around housing. And for that one, if I may, I need to bring in the Brick Boss herself. Say her name, Dadai? Brick Boss, man.

She play her theme song. Yeah, but what's her name, sir? You have to say her name. No, no, you say it, sir. You say it. What's her Twitter name? Her name is Jillian Jackson. The one and only Jillian Jackson.

And so her Twitter name is Miss... And her Twitter at is at MissJillyJ. Okay, you got it right there Wow, Randy Welcome, Jillian Hi, everyone Good night So what do you want to know about housing?

Here's one thing that people were talking about six months ago that I think we all forgot You remember when housing was really expensive in Kingston and it's definitely in a housing bubble and the housing And housing was like really expensive in Kingston. And it's definitely in a housing bubble. And the housing bubble is definitely going to absolutely burst. And this is madness. How can I pay 40 million for a studio apartment in New Kingston?

That's crazy. Blah, blah, blah. Right? And then along came Corona. So having said that. Yeah, I would say all those people are still wrong. So I, on the episode that I went on, we discussed this and I told you that I didn't think that we were in a housing

bubble because of a few reasons. One being that the demand for housing was just so high. It still is high. Nothing has changed. Another being that one of the criteria that depicts a housing bubble is that the mortgage companies or the lenders start to have questionable practices. And they didn't have it then.

And I don't think they're having any questionable practices. No, they are offering a lot of sweet deals now for persons who are in trouble, but those deals are heavily risk-weighted, heavily assessed, and they're provisioned for, which means that the banks put away or the lenders put away some money to account for that risk. So they're still not involved in any sketchy practices, and the demand is still there what i do think will happen though in the short term because persons are now out of work or lost

a stream of income so they're probably either going to struggle to pay your rent or pay their actual mortgage so you're not being able to pay your rent you affect somebody who's possibly paying a mortgage on that same property. And then if you live somewhere else and you're paying a mortgage as well, that will definitely have some kind of effect on the housing market. Will it have a big effect? I don't think so in the long run because the demand is still going to be there. What's going to happen, I think, is that sales might slow down. So if we're in a lockdown period now there's not much shopping going on for anything including houses I would think because I would have to go to your house and expose myself or you know I would have to open up my house if I'm selling it to

anybody coming in to look at it and just people are not willing to do that kind of exposure right now in the short term and I'll say the short to medium term so nobody's really buying or selling now anyway so that might cause I would say a slowdown in sales of properties but I don't know if it would change the price too drastically because eventually when things open back up I don't see that the price is going to go very far down in comparison to what it is now across the market. The only thing that might affect it in a negative way is the Airbnb market. So we discussed that a little bit as well. That's exactly what I wanted to talk about because you know right now the Airbnb people are bleeding. Yes, they are. They're going through a rough patch.

To call it something that is a rough patch. I know somebody who take them Airbnb backup money and put it in Trans-Jamaica. Oh boy. She also jumped out. I said to her, yo, you've heard me say this on my podcast. You hear me talk about it to you before. We talk in person. Take your time.

You say you wanted it for five years? Chill. You know, so she jumped out when it did a 120 a little bit, like when it did a big drop. Oh, gosh. Oh, my Lord, man. All right. And then she locked up in her house no i'm gonna know guys

say a prayer for people who are locked up but yeah sorry but yeah that's that's how bad it can get that's so bad yeah and yeah i was talking about this other night i was saying that they're they're persons who they just buy houses to rent it out and they have a mortgage on the house and they've accumulated 10 20 houses that all have mortgages due and they're in a bind right now so over leveraging to do airbnbs might not have put you in a good position right now because nobody knows when it's going to open up again and and the face of tourism and short-term stays might change drastically. So what I think will happen is that those people can, they have a couple of options, they can either change to longer-term rentals, so we might see an increase in the long-term

rental market, you might see a lot more properties on the market now or a few more properties on the market now that are that you would normally not see you being rented for a long term period you'd see an influx of those possibly those persons can decide to just lock up their houses and not do anything with it so you just have a lot of vacant properties around the place which might happen in the short to medium term or those persons can decide to sell the properties because right now, as you know, mortgage rates are at an all-time low. And with the announcements by the minister in March,

they're expected to go down actually further because of the fact that you reduced the NHT rate. Last year when they reduced it, they saw a 74% increase in the number of NHT loans. So notwithstanding corona. Fly past that one. Say that again. Say that again.

Yeah, he announced this in Parliament in his budget debate that Dr. Nigel Clark said last year as a result of some of the initiatives of reducing the NHT rate by 1% and decreasing the stamp duty and transfer tax and increasing the amount you can borrow from the NHG. All of those things combined help to increase the number of persons applying for NHG mortgages by 74% which is huge. The fact that again this year the mortgage rates have gone down. Initially the asset tax the mortgage rates have gone down. Initially, the asset tax was supposed to have gone down and we had to roll that back or defer it for a year.

But those two things would have pushed mortgage rates down further. The asset tax being a tax on the banks that they would then pass along to the customers in terms of a reduced interest rate. So those things would have pushed mortgage prices down further. So mortgage prices being at an all time low and housing prices right now still being relatively high would incentivize persons who have those Airbnb's to try and sell those properties. It might if they don't have any other option. If they don't see anything happening in the next couple of months and they're in a bind, they might be forced to sell them. So you might see an inflow of properties from those from that market and remember they're only about 9 000 to 10 000 airbnb properties in jamaica so it's not a very large market but it's in the kingston and

saint andrew area you definitely see and montague bay is definitely you could possibly see an increase in houses to the market to win um yeah um so so it's a whole opinion you know you use a lot of the bank talk again because a lot of people get lost and what you're saying simply is that yo a whole heap of house might start get might get sell yeah i mean i thought that's what i was saying. No, but sometimes I would say that, and you see that little difference is just the real difference between the regular manner. Because you and I get that, got what you're saying? Yeah.

And it's clear, but I have to admit that, like I've spoken to enough people to know that sometimes they just don't get it. And worse, if they don't get it like that, they're almost afraid to ask or to say it. But yes, simply what you're saying is that a whole heap more house might sell going to sell as a matter of fact

and then people there might be a lot of houses available for sale and then people just like investments, you know right now it's a time to buy stocks I mean others are fearful right, I didn't Others are fearful. Right.

I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to get called a Buffett Bible photo. You're not going to get close to a Buffett photo. Right. So, I mean, people might look at this as an opportunity as well

if that actually comes to fruition and there are lots of houses on the market that were not previously there. People might use this as an opportunity. Again, mortgage rates are at an all-time low and they expect it to go lower.

So it might actually be a good time to look at buying, even though I don't know, nobody really wants to be out and about looking at houses right now, but on paper. On paper, right? You can use a lot of... What's that site?

Well, you just know the NMLS numbers, right? That's how it works. You're right. Go check out your real estate broker's and your real estate agent's website and see what's coming up now. And then how I think it might, there's one more thing I wanted to touch on,

the construction industry. So as you know, we get a good amount of supplies from China in relation to construction. And you know how the supply chain has slowed down because of the virus and everything. So construction might have some delays or the construction of new properties. That's the only other thing that I can say that it could look out for. So the new construction is being delayed and then the existing houses Going on the market You might actually see a lot of houses on the market

As you said, no post will be out there Yeah But here's a little piece That nobody talked about That people are feeling it What about the people who can sell the place You buy the place for 25 mil You use a 2 and a half million deposit

plus your fees or whatever. But you did that out of pocket. So your mortgage is what that work out to, don't I, Matt's man? 22.5 million. Oh, sorry.

I thought you went down to a mortgage payment. No, man. 22.5 million. I'm just doing rough math here, right? I've had a place for a year. You've hit a lot. The interest payments have been heavy at the start of every mortgage.

Right. And the Airbnb, and here's the touchy point, which is realistic. The Airbnb probably isn't going to make enough for you to cover the mortgage, but it might offset a lot of the mortgage, right? In a good month. Or sometimes it might make more. It might. Yeah, but it might. It depends on where it is and what you can get for it but the point is your 22.5 mil mortgage is now maybe a 21.5 mil mortgage so you knock off the first million or the first two mil but you still have 20 mil on it you can't sell the place some more because nobody now buy it

because maybe it's a 5 mil place that got you know with how crazy things are in Kingston you can sell it for 20 mil, you got it for 25 but you can't really sell it for 20 right now you sell it for 20 it's going to be upside down you might be down by 2 or 3 mil and you do have 2 or 3 mil to be down by

those people might very well be stuck and those are the people that are asking what the hell do i do right now and i mean it's definitely something that you have to sit down and work out and calculate with especially your financial advisor with your mortgage officer because all right another thing that i forgot to mention is that i do what i touch on it mention is that the banks are offering a lot of, I call it sweet deals, but in my lifetime of all of the banks and what they're offering a very good diagram it's just a table that has you know based on what each bank is doing on the certain categories but basically you can they're up to 12 months of loan forgiveness of payment forgiveness wrong word 12 months of a mortgage moratorium which means you don't have to make

a payment for 12 months or they could ask you to just pay interest for 12 months of a mortgage moratorium which means you don't have to make a payment for 12 months or they could ask you to just pay interest for 12 months they could also they're also looking at reducing the interest rate it's a discussion that you'd have with your bank so you could reduce the interest rates or extend the term of the loan which means like you take it from 30 years to 35 years and what that does is just bring down your payment some more you're going to pay more interest over time but it brings down your payment your more. You're going to pay more interest over time, but it brings down your payment, your monthly payment.

So you can manage for a little bit longer if you're without an income. So the banks are giving you options. So I would advise that person to first talk to the bank and see what options they have. And if they can bring down the payment or not make the payment for a while, as David said, David said by next year,

we'd be, we'd be back in business. That's what he was talking about before he came on the podcast. So I have avoided touching the timing and I'll touch it later on. If you want, you guys stay, I will talk about it.

I will talk about the timing because I have my own ideas around the timing. No problem. So whenever we come back on board or whenever things are back to the new normal, I won't say normal because nothing is going back to normal, the new normal. When things get back there, you can make your regular payments again. You can have a discussion with your bank, I would say, and go from there and see what can happen for you in terms of payment holiday or payment moratorium.

for you in terms of payment holiday or payment moratorium. Yeah. So I see in the chat, Brandon Thomas said, I doubt there will be any mass selling of properties. They have options at the banks for their mortgages and have a long-term rental options. And I hear a lot of things like that, but that's so easy to type. That's not realistic. You think right now, if you can make your payment, you can walk into Scotia and go, Hey, you guys have some of those long-term rental options. No, the bill due the 25th.

That's how it works. There's no long-term rental option. It's a big deal to put somebody in your property. Big deal. Are we talking like a top landlord? No, it is. And some landlords just, they've gone through the

hassle of doing it and they're just like, it's not an option for them. They're not interested in doing long-term rentals. Airbnb was their go-to and now that it's not there anymore, they might just say, sure, I'll sell it. Yeah, and not just that, you know, we always come, I'm going to stop. Sorry, Danai, go ahead. Go ahead, Danai.

I was agreeing with you. But I was saying the same thing there. The fact, the long-term rental, Airbnb for the whole time, nobody can tell you what's pop up on your doorstep and know for all the time and say, you know,

I really want to rent this space for 12 months. It just might not happen like that. Somebody lose them. If all people are getting laid off, you think they're looking for a place to rent? True.

That's true. And you know, the truth is also, if you are not just laid off, right. Um, the people who have these properties realistically, I cannot do anything other than Airbnb. Airbnb, I could Airbnb this apartment for, for 150 a night. Airbnb's fees come out of it. Um, the cleaning fee, well, there's a couple of fees that come out of it. And I did a cleaning myself. I may be able to have a lady that come and um the cleaning fee well there's a couple of fees that come out of it and i do the cleaning myself i may have a lady that come under the cleaning for me and she when

it done um if i'm lucky i make 98 let's say i make 100 if i'm really lucky so 150 a night and maybe 100 comes to me but the the i have to keep that place rented for maybe 15 to 16 days of Airbnb for the month in order to make my mortgage. 15 or 16 days. You can just sort of quick maths. 15 or 16 days at the 150, that's 2,250 US. And we said that we actually get 100 off it. And that means that you're getting you're getting the 1500 a month right there to cover your mortgage right but the reality is i also can't really rent the place for 1500

us a month i might look and can't rent it for a thousand us a month but can't rent it for 1500 us a month which means that if i cannot airbnb the place i cannot afford a mortgage so i might have to foreclose on it because i can't sell it, I can only sell it if somebody will buy it Yeah, so that's a simple, true reality Something so nice in reality Something so nice until reality hits you, right? Exactly And that's something that people have to think about

That's the kind of thing that I talk about all the time You have to be realistic with your money Because the truth is, the reality of that situation Even if you don't say it to yourself or believe it or deal with it yourself you know it doesn't change how real it is that mortgage has to pay on the 25th and if you don't pay it on the 25th and you miss the first by the end of the first week you get a call from the bank they just check in if everything is all right mr roe everything is good with you you missed a? You missed a

payment here. When can you do this for us? There's going to be a small fee. They're not waiving that fee either. They're not waiving that fee because NCB need to give me that $1 dividend a quarter. They are waiving fees. That's a good thing to talk about.

So you mentioned the link. And guys, I saw in the chat the link has been shared. And if you're listening to this at a later date or you're listening to this on the podcast, the link is definitely in the show notes. So the link to what the bank relief packages are, I mean, some of them are there, but some of them, they go up to NCB for starting it. And then you remember all the others who started moving, Julianne? All of the others? No, just tell me about one that maybe you might be close to or know or anything like that no well the one that i would be close to or the one that i would know is my bank okay because when i got an email from them very early on that said that they were offering up to the 12 months to waive you um 12 months moratorium

waiver of late fees until april 30th and then the option to refinance with the longer payments or lower interest rates and several other things so yeah that's the one that that i think had the i would say the best but had the term to waive it but to defer your payments for 12 months that's the only bank that has that everyone else was six months or three months perfect i know somebody you want to tell people where that is? Oh, that's JN, sorry. That's a JN bank. They got JN for that, so they have their 12-month moratorium. It's a deferral or moratorium. Yeah. Wave of late fees and relief financing with flexible repayment terms.

You know, business societies and JN is not a bank. The member-owned thing, they usually speak about how much better they are for the clients and that's an example of that. The fact that they're 12 months, everybody else is way less. Yeah, members first. That's their motto. So it pays to be a member there. Yep.

I would love to be a shareholder there, but that's another story for another time. Members are shareholders. Member-owned. That means you're a shareholder there but that's another story for another time you know exactly what i'm saying but that's okay so let me so again if i can just cap that um julian and well then i have any views on i'll say what i think and then you can say what you think. And then we might, we'll move on to another segment. But, and thank you again, Julian. But you don't have to run just yet.

But thank you just for that point. No problem. But I have a bone of content, John. Okay. Hmm. Go ahead. I saw your tweet about the liquidity of a stock versus the liquidity of a real estate.

What? Ooh. Expound on it for me. Ooh. No, man, I'm not going to expound on it. tweets about the liquidity of a stock versus the liquidity of a real estate what oh I haven't done it for me oh no man I'm not gonna expound you tell me the part that you never like I joke I joke you know I I'm just kidding you know I'm just narrowing um but I thought you said that it persons who say that they can't sell their house in this crisis because if something went wrong and there's like emergency they cancel their house like this crisis because if something went wrong and there's an emergency, they cancel their house. They're more liquidated. I agree with that. That's true. But I think you're expounding further with some other points. I just wanted you to refresh my memory on what those were.

Okay. If I can remember here, I don't remember the exact words. You mentioned a second mortgage on a house. Yeah. All right. So the options available to people, is that what you want to know or you just want to know my general point, Julianne? Your general point, yeah. Okay, so my general point was that people often say that, you know,

they don't want to tie their money up in stocks, you know? Yeah, you know, it took me three years to get this 2 million saved and I can just tie all of it up in stocks. i don't want time i'm running up in stocks so you want to put in somewhere else i can get a little bit in case of emergency what people don't realize is that stocks on by itself is in case of emergency you can encash money yeah the longest yeah that that's that was one part but there might be parts that you don't agree with. There might be one part. The main point there was that,

yo, if you have a million dollars in NCV shares, let me know if you've got NCV. Let's say Fontana. You have $300,000 in Fontana and a little emergency. Look here, you lost your job because of Corona. The laying people off. You need to make it through the next two months.

You need that money, but lock up in Fontana shares right now. It's not really locked up. You can sell some of those shares. And on the flip side, you can also borrow against some of those shares. And I'll touch both of those points later on. Again, what the easy thing to say,

the simple version is that you can get to cash from a stock position very, very quickly and even without selling. A house, you can borrow against a house if you've paid it off or you can borrow against the difference between your mortgage

and the value of the property. The value of the property, yeah. Is that done very quickly though, Janelle, you can tell me? I would say probably not, depending on where you go though. It would take a couple of weeks to get, because it's a home equity loan,

it would take a few weeks possibly. Wow, yeah. And if your land valuation isn't recent, if you haven't valued a property recently. Yeah, it has to be revalued. How long do valuations last? Just generally. For a house?

I don't know if there's a time period. But I think if you've done it in the past year, you'd be okay. A year. Wow. So God forbid it's two years ago you did it and the emergency let you know and you need the money by next,

by Wednesday you need the money. And you have to go bank Monday morning. Can you imagine money I have to go bank Monday morning can you imagine having to go to the bank Monday morning first of all you're gonna be way out in the sun because social distancing so everybody stand up outside the loan office has come to you these days you have to go to the bank right now let nobody in my house, mum. Right now? Nah, mum. You have to stay out of the road. Like, quickly. If they go into the bank, it's the same person you would be seeing.

But they even trust someone in the bank to let them cough and touch your money. I'm joking. But yeah, you get the idea. It's not as quick. And that was the point I wanted people to get that. It's not as quick. And I will agree with that point 100%.

Thank you. It's definitely not as liquid. Yeah, man. We can come have our proper real estate argument episode one day if you want. Another time, for sure. Another time. All right, cool. On that note, I'm going to turn to a second question.

This one I know you know, Danaiay because you were talking about Corona and its effects on how we hit, how it's hitting our economy and the things that are rising up now as a result of that. I mentioned Quickplay just now Yes, COVID-19 and the new e-commerce opening that have come with it

Yeah. So what are the new e-commerce what are the new e-commerce openings that have come with covid19 yeah that's uh that's that's pretty much it yeah so i will see a lot of the opportunity that has come and guys as you can tell i mean instead of just saying it i'm trying to show it you heard us say it before though that um we see this entire situation as a um as a bit as an opportunity. That's not to say that we don't have an issue with what's happening

or that we're happy about it. We're not necessarily happy about it, right? But you never waste a good crisis. And out of some of the tightest situations, the baddest situations, can come really good advances. So for this example, I'm going to invite Garden Swaby. Garden, can you hear us yeah man i can't hear you clearly you can't hear me yeah man we can't hear you welcome garden

yeah man go down there how you doing guys i'm good i'm good i'm good so guys jillian who was just on you can hear on i think episode 20 or is that the gift of fans if not 20, on our first episode of 2020. Should we call her the Brit Boss? And Gordon is on our episode. I don't remember which one, but somebody will tell me later on. But he's on an episode after that, and he shares a space with Jeremy and Henry.

And they both talk about tech. And we had a good, I think a great episode. Gordon, I hear you say it's quarreling. You would have found the thing a quarrel. Well, we've been quarreling for years. Yeah, we're used to it. But no, we weren't quarreling, guys. It was a great episode.

So we spoke about a point that we had from before around startups. And then we spoke about the general market and things that we expected. And the reason I'm saying that and the reason I have Gardner here is because Gardner does run a, I don't think I still call it a startup at this point Gordon does have an e-commerce business though he has an online business locally built which I like and that's why we brought him here because also in the face of what's been happening with coronavirus we've seen where his company Eddie Focal has really stepped up so yeah so Gordon i handed it over to you you can tell us your story yeah man thanks ron you know so funny that you mentioned this whole startup thing um

i was in a meeting the other day and um somebody pointed out to me that um in you know the the acronym msme medium small sorry micro small medium enterprises And then they said to me, oh, based on your staff count and your numbers, you're no longer small, you're no medium. And I'm like, yo, that's crazy. I didn't even think about that, right? What a thing. Yeah, it's just in the day-to-day, you're not really thinking about it

and how your numbers are moving in a particular direction and think it's like, oh, I'm no I'm no considered medium size but um no I still consider the educo a startup um I mean we still have startup issues but uh yeah I'm grateful for all of the growth that we've had so far but yeah thank you for having me um I I you know as you said Randy it's it's it's despite you know what is happening and you know the chaos um it is still a time of opportunity. And, you know, I was mentioning in the chat earlier that this will not be around forever. At some point, you know, we will move beyond this crisis and we'll reflect in a year or two years, three years and say, wow, you know, that was a crazy time.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. But for us we've we've been pretty we've been privileged um i was mentioning to my team that you know two or three years ago we wouldn't have been prepared for a time like this because i would not have had the experience um i would not have had such a large team to help you know me navigate certain things that need navigating but okay yeah but garden sorry to cut you but but remember, you know, people don't know. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So frame it for what has happened. So, yeah, I run a company called EduFocal Limited. It's an online learning company. We focus,

we actually used to focus on PEP. It used to be GSAT. For some of you in the room, it may have been Common Entrance, but it's now PEP. No, man, Randy was the one before Common Entrance. We got the people that did mental ability. We got Common Entrance. people that did mental ability yeah well we don't come on their tracks yeah um but yeah so we help kids prepare for the for the for the for the pep exams um we used to do csec funny story we started with csec we started with um 100 questions math and english at the csec level um march 15 2012 we thought it was the greatest thing ever but then people stopped using the platform and i thought we were doomed um and then one day i was in bed and I said to myself, you know what, I'm cold sweats panicking because we spent so much money to start.

I said to myself, you know, let's try this GSAT thing and see how it works. And I mean, it was the response. It was amazing. And to this day, that really has been our bread. But anyway, in January of 2020, we actually killed killed the c6 side of the platform because we just didn't put a lot of resources behind it and started to kind of zoom in on where we were good at which is you know the primary level education grades four to six really um yeah so we killed that um but last year actually pivoted well i wouldn't say i wouldn't say it was a pivot actually it's just that we kill a product it's just like i guess you'd say it's not for you to say you started out being focused on cxcs and and you fully went into the smaller thing that is what uh that's that is the literal

definition of a pivot for a startup no so all right pause one second let's just hear that no no so we can't do people no i mean it's not it's not a thing well i know it's not that I have a problem with pivoting, right? But it wasn't a pivot because our offering didn't change and we didn't start it with the intention of just doing GSAT. So we actually wanted to get into every exam type. In fact, there are times where we've tried getting into SATs. We also tried getting into some exams in Nigeria. But the platform was never made for just pet. It's just that I lived in Jamaica or I live in Jamaica. I understand the space. So we started out there.

But yeah, it wasn't a people. It's just that it's like Grace offering aloe vera thing that they have. And, you know, it's not working out. And they decided to kill it. Not to say that Grace has done that, but just as an example. But anyway, I just wanted to be clear that that was garden speaking and not randy or daniel but yeah um but we also we also do um we do b2b um so we have so we've been in the b2b space since august and that's business to business business to business sorry um so we do create learning solutions for organizations um you know we can't transport

oh you know it's just I guess when you're, yeah, it's your day-to-day, seeing everything about it. But we've been in the business-to-business space since August last year. We create learning solutions for organizations. So we create learning content and we also create learning platforms

for these organizations. So we count the transport authority as a client, we count the JCF as a client, we count the JCF as a client, and we have a couple other clients. But yeah, that's something we got into last year and we're pretty happy about. So that's EduFocal. I like that, but right now we're focusing on the corona.

Coronavirus! Because this is a corona episode. So we're talking about the effects. So that has been pretty good for us. Because this is a corona episode. So we're talking about the effects of what has... Yeah, so that has been pretty good for us. Right before schools closed, the Ministry of Education reached out to us, asked us to make our service free of cost for students.

We decided to jump on that. And in 14 days, we had more than 30,000 kids sign up to the Edifocal platform which has been pretty good and you know just in terms of more visibility through the Ministry of Education itself endorsing us you know and that has been good. In terms of I guess more generally opportunities in the e-commerce space. When we launched in 2012, we thought that it was just a great idea to jump right into accepting credit cards on a platform, you know,

really not looking into the fact that not a lot of Jamaicans were using credit cards, right? Fast forward to 2020. And I think that has changed. We've seen companies like QuickPlate. Big up QuickPlate. Yeah. Big up Monique Powell. Yeah, man. You know, really, really happy about the work. changed where you've seen companies like um quick plate um who they got quick plate yeah they got monique powell um yeah man you know really really happy about the work that she's doing but i do think there's a shift happening now in jamaica um in terms of people who have access to to credit cards or visa debit cards right um i i think that the real shift will come when ncb launches their visa visa debit or master or MasterCard Debit product.

That will kind of open the gateway for a lot of companies to, you know, to a lot of companies to extend their offerings in terms of accepting e-commerce. You know, but also customers or consumers will have access to the ability to pay for things online. And that's such an important shift because, you know, when you have a next wave, when you have that next pandemic that hits us, I think Jamaica will be in a much different place. We'll be better prepared for it because more people have access, you know, to the electronic means of paying for stuff. But yes, it's a great opportunity. And I think this, I mean, I saw an ad from NCB

talking about e-commerce offering. You can get signed up on e-commerce really quickly. And I think that ad was directed at businesses, not necessarily consumers. So things are going in the right direction in that regard. Yeah. And I think even like our last episode where we had the CEO of Sprint Financial on,

he was saying that his business has also really risen over the last few weeks, the last few months, I think. Danai, you remember what percentage he was talking about, Danai, or what he was saying? No, not exactly. Yeah, but I don't remember the percentage increase, but I think he said he's up to six mil a week now in terms of receivables loans receivables uh it's not a loan financing that's correct that's correct um

yeah um because I've been paying attention to on your twitter you have been just putting out the count of people signing up you know I, day after day after day after day. And if I don't know how private this is, well, you put it out. If it's on Twitter, it's not private. No, man, what I was about to ask, but it is based on that, so it isn't. I mean, what is that as a percentage of the entire cohort of PEP students again? Okay, so on average, around 39,000 students do the PIP exam annually.

If you count grades four and five, it's about 200 and something thousand. But as it is right now, we have more than 20% of the total PIP cohort signed up in terms of grade six, the grade six cohort. So we have a lot of them. But I mean, the real value for us

is also the grades four and five, who will have a very long time you know so for the grade four students we'll have them for two years um and for the grade five students we'll have them for one year we don't currently have any grade seven content so there's not much we can do with the grade seven students sorry the grade six students that we have on the platform right now in terms of after they leave the Edifocal platform. But definitely a lot of value can be gained from the grades four and five students that we have on the platform. So obviously, after all of this, it is our intention to retain them as customers on the Edifocal platform. I mean, you're no fool, so you know what's up. And you started out doing more than you're doing now.

So even though you're right. By the way, it's important that i say this because you are correct um i agree with you it wouldn't have been a pivot then because you kept your offering the same you just the offering is literally the same nothing has changed yeah it's just that the content has changed and and we do plan to add more content so like we ultimately want to cover kindergarten all the way up to the end of high school right i mean so you know very soon we may for example roll out offerings for grade three two and one you know if we can have a child on the platform from grade from grade one all the way up to grade six then that's extremely valuable for us you might just be the new extra lesson ah you know we can't really we can't reveal those things right in a minute you are revealed too much yeah well I mean, I read that you've been doing that and you've been keeping your nose to the wheels.

It was important for me to show that to people that in terms of a real business, in terms of what's happening, things change and they're sad and they're terrible. But out of all of that pressure is always a situation in which you can build a diamond i just wanted to also you know acknowledge the fact you know for match we had so many corporate companies come on board to support us because it was it was actually a this it was actually a conversation we were having internally

with the team like all right guys we have all of these users do we do we monetize them no or do we you know do we kind of keep it free and because for me it didn't feel like the right thing to do like you know we gave 14 days the ministry wasn't going to write a check for us you know I said to myself how can we keep these people on but still pay our bills and you know that worked out for us because a couple corporate companies came on board and supported us and I mean we're obviously very happy for that the first call that I made was actually to Wisinco. And I mean, they said yes, and I was happy for that. And that just kind of gave me the confidence

and momentum to call a couple of other companies. And they were very much in line with what we were seeing and decided to come on board. All right. I am with you there. I am with you there, Gordon, because you touched on the next point. You never had to send anybody home. You actually hired in the middle of this. Yeah, yeah. I am hiring you there, Gordon, because you touch us at the next point. You never had to send anybody home.

You actually hired in the middle of this. Yeah, yeah. I am hiring right now. We're definitely hiring. Because we're doing live classes too for students. And we want to engage 20,000 students weekly via our Zoom classes. So we call them EduF focal life classes um for like for i'm sorry you call them what we call it edu focal life but we do it through zoom so on one class

last week we had over over close to a thousand people that tried to get into the class um you know which was pretty amazing so yeah definitely that's huge so what we so we're hiring moderators we're hiring data entry clerks, we're hiring teachers. We're going through a lot of hiring right now. Obviously, a lot of people want to retain after this because we don't expect any focal to be the same after this in the sense that we do expect some decline in some of our numbers. But what has been amazing to me is that our KPIs have not changed much.

So, for example, your typical time that... Key performance indicators for the people who don't know. Yeah. So, so in other words he's saying that he has kept the same goals throughout yeah so like for example the typical time that a child spends on a focal platform is around 20 minutes um we had 6.9 million page views last month and that didn't change like so even at scale or numbers have remained the same the activity on the site has remained the same, which shows me that even if we had 20 million people on the platform, the numbers would probably still kind of look the same. Boy, I say it.

Empires are built during a crisis. Yeah, man. Out of the Great Depression came the huge Rockefeller empire and all of that. I hope I never got that wrong. Out of all sorts of bad things, if it's not at a macro level, if it's not at a

country level, sometimes it can be a family. My own family. When the Black Plague happened in 1918, it changed a lot of Jamaica. Yeah, for sure. I'm pretty sure I got that wrong. The Plague was in 1980 it was like Spanish yeah it was like 1818 all right the Black Plague was what like 1818

or something like that yeah I'm not I'm not that old I mean oh shut up but um um it is a it's a huge deal and it changed a lot of things, but it makes a lot of things better. How we have started, yo, I never washed my hands so much in my life. I swear to you, brother. Yeah. Randy, you know, I'd say to you that the hardest thing in all of this for me is actually just the mental fortitude that is required in, you know,

just sitting in the office all day and focusing on growing the company despite everything else happening around it that is bad you know i mean i i have friends who have family members who are sick because of corona i have friends who know people who have died um my team my team is on you know on the verge of burnout so it's just managing all of that is it's that's the hardest part for me it's not it's not the lack of opportunity you know um so it's it's been really challenging in that regard as if I'm being honest I can I can understand your balance in the personal and I know doing so because growing a company is hard in the best of there's one team member right now I haven't heard from you in a week I know he's

good enough but he's just been mia and i know because i know that he's tired so i just kind of left him alone because it's just been a lot right um but i mean he's been working hard and stuff and yeah a lot of the team members you know even for me this weekend i just took a break um just and i have a lot of work to do but i decided to take a break because it's rough you know take the breaks yeah my lord yeah i feel the same way a lot of times almost every wednesday when i have to get this episode out and there's some for the last couple wednesday you're laughing don't i yeah i saw i see somebody commenting which my boss would leave me alone

i'm a nice boss still at least i hope i'm a nice boss i'm sure i'll bring on one of your staff to tell me otherwise yeah or see if it's true but um you made a great point about the personal and how it impacts and the fact that you're even hiring now you should probably show that out to people is there like a link for them yeah so you know it's so crazy um i i made a tweet um about two and a half weeks ago and in in in less than a week 2 000 people applied um i mean that was ridiculous i didn't expect the tweet to just like people were sending me message on messages on instagram um people when you were reaching out to me privately so it's

been crazy so i mean we have way more um resumes than we need right now but but the email address is remote work at eddie focal.com um so So you can send it. The resume is there. But Randy, I just also wanted to just back up on one of the points that you were talking about regarding stocks too. Yeah, man, of course. You know, it's so crazy that, again, in the midst of all of this,

it's easy to say, yeah, man, buy this stock because it must go up. And in a very instinctive way, you know it's going to go back up, you know. But to drop some money on a stock right now in the chaos, in all of the chaos that, you know it's going to go back up, you know, but to drop some money on a stock right now in the chaos, in all of the chaos that's happening, it's hard.

I would say it requires serious mental fortitude. Yeah, but bro, haven't you heard? You need to be greedy when others are fearful. Absolutely. So it's easy to talk, you know,

it's easy to talk. Yeah man, it's easy for someone. But to actually do it, especially when you're putting up your own money, I that's another story right yo can you imagine most people saying that i'm not doing it yeah it's another story yeah can you imagine the people who threw like all a million into ncd when it was at 170 because they never think they'd ever go 170 and then it go 140 yeah yeah yeah it. Yeah, yeah. It's so funny.

I know people, Warren Buffett, in that moment. I know people who are down more than 50, 60% right now. And I mean, that's crazy. Not me. I mean, I'm definitely not down 50 or 60%. Could be down heavy. Yeah, no, I'm not down. Wow, I like that kind of thought. That's strong. No, I'm not down at all. But yeah, I don't know if I interrupted not done. Wow. I like that kind of thought. That's strong.

No, I'm not done at all. But yeah, I don't know if I interrupted your point if you're saying something else because you're saying it's not easy to do. No, no, I'm just saying, I mean, whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's you trying, I mean, even for people who are trying

to start their own ventures now, I mean, it's hard. Like again, you know, you see some stuff on social media where people are saying, for example, oh, if you're home right now you're not being productive and you know you're wasting time but again it's very easy to talk you know you don't know what is happening in people's lives you don't know

you know just the things that they have you know so i guess i empathize there um not everybody will be you know attacking things in the same way you know know, right now. And I agree with you a hundred percent. And that's part of why I'm doing this because I want people to hear the different views. I want them here like a realistic view. I want them here. I don't want us to hide from the bad either. Because the worst thing is when you hide from the bad, but it's out there, but the person still have to face it.

You know, like when, you know, I used to hate, Gordon, you remember this. I don't know if you remember, you and I experienced this together. the hate garden you remember this i don't believe you remember you and i experienced this together the teacher in class or lecture in class and then we have three questions and there is maths right i'm sorry it's math and then give the first one as an example i help you the second one as an example and take over the third one on your own and it's graded the third one is nothing like the first two yeah yeah definitely it have a little twist in there right um and like i always wonder like yo sir if you knew this part was coming why didn't you say something about it or whatever it's funny it's funny you know for all know i know that it's because that well a good a good instructor good teacher wants you to be able to get it to yourself

so you can always get it right you can always find it out on your own. But in the moment, brother, somebody has to provide a guiding light. At least to say, yo, X, Y, Z. This looks good. You need to be thinking this way. A little bit more than don't panic. Although don't panic is good. I'm not knocking don't panic.

Don't panic helps. And the buffet courts also help. But I think it's time for us i think the market has advanced past past that level i think it's time for us to start being a little bit more real with what we say and what we do i have no i have no doubt that pretty soon that will come brandy you say yeah go ahead i want to touch on one last e-commerce point um i mean real stories when we had just launched we partnered with transaction e-pins. I mean, real stories. When we had just launched, we partnered with Transaction E-Pins. They're now known as

Go. It's owned by the FACY group, right? Which is owned by? Which is owned by God. The same set of people who own FACY.

It's owned by who again? No, it's not separate. It's a proper company. The same set of people who own? Yeah, man. Danai, how'd that go? Face is owned by who again? Seprad, mustn't. No, it's not Seprad, it's mustn't. Which is the same set of people that own? The same set of people that own Seprad. Yeah, the same people who own Seprad. Yeah, man. So, yeah, a couple of years ago, 2012, when we launched,

we were on, or we're still on all of those machines, those machines that produce phone credit, right? And my idea was, you know, we know that a lot of people in Jamaica didn't have credit cards, so we wanted to find an alternative way for them to pay. So then you'd just go to any vendor, any gas station or wherever, and you know, you just ask for Edifocal.

And they'd print the voucher, and you go to edifocal.com, and you put in the voucher code, and you'd be good to go. In my head, that's how it would work, right? But then you actually get into the meat of the matter, you realize that I was standing in a room with the sales reps from from the company like bro you know you'll have to pay us to market that you're on the machines and i'm like and there were like

30 000 or 40 000 machines across the island right so i'm looking at them and i'm like well i mean i don't have any money to pay to market it so i guess they'll just sit on the machines and nobody will know um and i mean we spent months trying to implement that and it was implemented and then I said to myself all right what am I going to do now and I decided to start distributing scratch off scratch off cards to schools because obviously or market was you know schools children specifically but then it actually wasn't scratch off at the time and i was distributing it to the schools with the code visible obviously a very dumb idea and then i found a vendor in the states who could produce a scratch off card spots

and then we started distributing it again and it would sit in the principal's office um because you know you'd hand it to him or her and then like oh yeah it's in the office they're not doing anything with it so zero sales and I just kept on iterating from there and I'm saying all that to say that so we eventually figured it out right long story short we figured it out but that's it I'd say that I was doing all of that just because credit card penetration in Jamaica was so low because if credit card penetration was high then all people needed is just go to edufulcall.com sign up with your credit card, and that's the end of the story. And of course, that's what obtains in developed countries like, you know, the USA and Canada. But we're now getting to a point in Jamaica where all of that is changing. More people have access to credit cards and Visa debit cards specifically. And our

sales online have reflected that, and I'm very happy about that because it means how we sell is changing, right? It means if we need to convert all of these people all these thirty forty thousand people have a current and a default on no chances are a bunch of them have credit cards it means that our sales process is much simpler so you know just to kind of give some perspective in terms of how things have changed and are changing and it makes my life and it makes everybody's life is it makes money powell's life from quick plate easier um you know it just it is really a big transformation and if you're not if you don't have your finger on the pulse it's easy to miss that that's happening

that's true it makes my life easier there you go there you go exactly literally only payable by credit card on exactly exactly right so you know i mean there are a bunch of things i won't touch on on this call in terms of how we can analyze that data and know who has a credit card and who you know who may not have a credit card but um definitely creates a huge opportunity for us in terms of how we approach the market well i think well i suspect we'll have you back to talk because that's a great topic but i don't want to go too long so thank you very much god so you're showing a good side i think so you're showing no problem very very thankful to have you here um you're showing that in terms of business and in terms of small scale small scale

here in in um air quotes because as a man say anything medium though but in terms of business still small so it's still growing where it means no. And I think I can say you're on the edge of startups still. In terms of local startups where everything takes longer, you're definitely still there. Yeah, man, for sure. Yeah. Lots of people in the chat asking you if you want some public money.

You know, I'm really adverse to this IPO thing. We'll see how it goes. But trying to keep it private for now. Making money, sir. Making money. I'm trying to make the offering as valuable to the public. I wouldn't want to be dragged on Twitter telling people because I'm in the investment now. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. I didn't want to say that. That wouldn't be nice. I didn't want you

to say that. That wouldn't be nice at all. No, but it's a good point because people do say that and I think that's a matter of... Yes. I think that's a matter of low financial literacy.

I don't mean that badly. But, Gardner, you're right. It's a rough thing for people to see and a rough thing to go through but it is... Because, you know... Trapped personally.

You know, a lot of the ceos that get criticized including ceos of large companies are on twitter between around a lot of them are just there but they don't tweet they have some anonymous account but they see these tweets and you know obviously again nobody wants to be nobody wants you know to get that trashing about your company online you know that's not that's not yeah but it happens and it is what it is and and people have a right to do that especially if you're a shareholder and they should yeah because it's exactly if you're a shareholder is your company if it's a public company public means public you're open exactly you're open to scrutiny yeah yeah and it's i think it's good for us to know what bad good and ugly is

somebody saying something about your share price or your prospects no doesn't mean that your company isn't great we need to get past exactly yeah but yeah thank you again garden for that thank you for having me um take care everybody yeah man no problem um so that was garden then i what do you think uh we've had two people answer for um we should probably have we should probably have, we should probably take one of those questions. I'm going to take one of these questions from Matthew Preston. What innovations are you hoping to make? You did the first question, I did the second.

Well, to be fair, this isn't really the first because Matthew asks, what innovations are you hoping Jamaican businesses will make during or after COVID? And I think Garden touched on one, is that I think we'll lean more on e-commerce. I saw that note, that thing that went out from NCB, speaking about their e-commerce platform.

Yeah. And look at what happened with Innovate 10X. That company had been around for a bit. And with the guy from Jimmy, let me call his name properly. He's not just the guy. Sheldon Powell. Yes. P-O-W-E Sheldon Powell

yes he he's mentioned his let me read this properly Jamaica Property Exchange Network so I was laughing at you because I was thinking about when Julian was speaking

it's an online it's an online space for buying and for buying and selling property so you want to sell your property you can put you can post property there and anybody who in the public can't go on the site and you can't do it there so as i've been saying i will say people come to your house now and you're saying you don't want to be in your house

this is a good alternative you can buy or sell your house through this yeah i think in a time when people be looking to sell houses you houses, you might get somebody there. And they want to extend the platform to more than just property sales. It's a good look. I'll post the Greener article speaking about it in the show notes.

I can drop it in the chat too. Yes, sir, I will if it's the right one. Is the app called Keys? K-E-E-Z? Not that I know of. I think so. I will if it's the right one. Is the app called Keys? K-E-E-Z? Not that I know of. I think so. I know of an app called Keys and I don't know if it has something to do with 10X. So I mean, come up with an exchange network with other prospective investors, and probably positive homebuyers apply and be approved for a mortgage without walking through the doors of a financial institution.

All right. Well, send me that link and I'll put it in the chat. So you're saying that that's one benefit that you see coming out of it. So people are getting more innovative, essentially. People are going more online. You mentioned in an episode with Gordon and Jermaine about how Jamaica is 10 steps back, 10 years back.

Every time... Oh, like if you want to look at where we are now. Yeah. Business processes that exist abroad and everyone in Jamaica just finds out about it 10 years after the fact and starts implementing it as a thing to do. So we're now looking, especially during the COVID,

but before, other companies were looking to, you know, the online transformation, technological transformation, you know, NCB 2.0, other companies are doing other type of things. COVID, it's kind of forcing companies because we need to beat the market. We don't have any customers walking in anymore, but we can't talk to our customers.

We can't sell them anything when they're at their house lockup, so we have to find a way to reach them. So they're trying to push this online thing now, and even their staff, we have everybody talking about working at home. Forcing the work at home thing right now, where the government was saying they need to have people working from home, non-essential staff, out of companies implemented at private sector and public sector.

Even me, I'm working from home now. Everybody talking about it on Twitter. So a lot of people are working from home. And working through this Zoom, can see resume is affected you can see the share price online how much you gone up since this whole COVID thing so yeah if a company is really stepping stepping up into the new world into 21st century yeah yeah and you're right 20 years after the fact 10 hour more but you know we don't get there until we get there.

When we get there, we do it good, right? On the flip side, we do have to know, learn from some of those things. It's so funny how Corona come, everybody forgets a certain house leak, all our information. That's something that's going to have to be handled in the future But we'll talk about that

I keep seeing people speak about I see people every now and then Somebody mentions how much It has actually affected Something happened to them and they're not affected By that leak So it's crazy to me that This type of society in Jamaica is they don't really talk about these things

They're very hush hush and they don't look into something That goes bad for them When I come to it We just run with it I guess This type of society in Jamaica is they don't really talk about these things. They're very hush-hush and they don't look into something that goes bad for them. When I come to it, we just run with it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is.

David is mentioning something. I think he just didn't hear you just now because you kind of zoomed out. Your sound went back for a second. Yeah, you could just repeat it though for him yeah if people are personally affected and they have been to every now and then i see somebody come out of the blue and mention it online say oh i've just been affected by that by my information being leaked by x company i keep seeing that bounce off the network everyone then uh i haven't

heard where anybody is actually pushing to get something from it or, you know, get some compensation or something like that. I haven't seen anybody push. I think the type of society in Jamaica is they kind of show something bad happen and they do it across the company and it's a power and it's a negative side. Yeah. And we have a culture of silence in Jamaica that is not serving us at all. The fact that we can even laugh at America, or Americans who do everything.

If any of this stuff happened to us, we'd really admit, boy, that thing happened, a really bad thing. But we never seem to understand how Americans would feel about suing. Nobody thinks about it.. Nobody thinks about it. Nobody does anything about it.

That's a joke to them, that, boy, America sued because they eat some fast food and some gourmet, then why did I really sue for that? Somebody's affected. Yeah, and you should sue. It is the way today, but we're changing slowly but surely. Let's hope we get there a little quicker. As you said, David David let me bring in David

David you can unmute and talk to the people because I see you asking about some things and I know last time we did this you spoke so I want you to make a talk again come in David people pick up JC Knight 2 JC Knight 2 JC Knight 2

David who's the first JC Knight I want to ask JC Knight, JC is a 2. David, who's the first JC Knight? I want to ask JC Knight. JC is a high school I went to, and the chess piece in Knight is where I get the other part of my handle from. Who's the first? And the two? JC Knight 2.

I don't know who was the first, but I got the two. All right. Well, JC Knight too, big up welcome to the podcast again. Tell the people who you are. Well for those of you know me already, I was featured last year by several entities Smile Jamaica, Observer, Gleaner, about the whole investing,, earning season in August as well, about paying tuition, about hauling stocks, and people were surprised that I'm a signed student.

The other day, I was in a session where lawyers were talking about a company, and they were like, wait, are you a law student? No. In an economics class? Are you an econ student? No. And that's just how I am. I will take the time to learn

something because application does not extend only in one field. That's just how I see things. You can't hit the dots wherever they are. You have to can't hit the dots. That's where we miss opportunities. There's something I wanted to say. In the the introduction you said the founder of

Financeter.ja Oh Financeter.ja for sure Yeah that is 100% true Financeter.ja I have some more threats to come out It's not easy Sorry to cut you David But I want people to understand what you're doing

So David is younger, he's tired He taught himself how to invest And he's been doing like you say not into not into econ and not into math and he has well and he also is the person who started finance with a JA he's the first person to use the hashtag he's a person who contributes so much to it and um recently he's been doing this thing where he just breaks on companies and give analysis but David not just that. That part is easy and we'll always come back to that. But I want you to talk about this on the Corona episode.

I want you to talk about just what's been happening and how you see the market, meaning the drop that has happened since, I don't know, when the market dropped. March 10. March 10, that's what you know that was the that was the first case of what of corona in jamaica oh yeah but we're talking about the stock market here well can jamaica coming into corona time yeah ah so tell me oh yeah what's happened since half a billion was lost within the first two, three weeks in market capitalization. How much billion have we gone so far? I don't remember the exact amount, but the index has fell from a high of about $514,000

around last December to around $360,000 now. Say that again, $ around 360,000 now. Say that again, 514,000? And the JSC index to around 365,000 points now. So that alone gives an indirect indication here, indirect. Yeah, so people, what he means there is the index. You don't know what the index is. I mean, go and listen to the whole episode.

Go ahead. This is the beginner episode. Go ahead and tell them go ahead and tell them so to basically break it down an index basically tracks a particular list of stocks or securities in exchange basically so different jc financial index tracks financial companies manufacturing and distribution tracks those particular companies the jc index in general tracks a particular cohort of stocks. And you see the junior market, but a particular cohort of main market stocks. And the performance of the index gives an indirect indication

as to the performance of the overall market. Okay. Tell me how you're feeling now about the market. Looking at the market overall, as an amateur investor, David, by the way, is not a licensed financial advisor but he is the first person to be on our show he was on our very first episode so thank you for that david but yeah how do you feel about it now there are opportunities in the market right now but some companies are

being bought based on the prices i don't see that value for being paid for them right now. So early in the week. So like 1-3-8 is still in living. What trade does have $9 on Friday. And I found that odd considering that. When you consider 1-3-8, right now, I go to UE. I know the situation. UE right now says up to March 31,

whatever you paid up, you're good. So if you're a final year student in the final year, you will refund your remaining amount to UWE. And they said like if you're a student who still has time to go to UWE, you're credit to the future. So right now, 138's source of income, primary residence, can't come onto UE because of the current situation and the curfew. As soon as I've gone back home. So even though UE itself will call the bill, here's a problem that can be a receivable. And a receivable is initially cash.

That is a payment that should go down in the future. So when you see one trillion for $9 is, I don't remember the book value right now, but to pay that kind of premium for the stock, I don't see it being worth it right now in the current, present term.

So you're saying that you personally don't really see... You have a problem with them getting the money later? No, I don't have a problem with them getting the money later. But in the current term, not knowing when the... The thing is, the UA says right now, until coronavirus is down, meaning borders can open back up, students can actually come to school and everything, that really and truly campus locked down. And UAE said that they're in orange zone right now, and they can go to a red zone at almost any time, meaning that nobody can be on campus.

So the revenue is a little bit there, but when will it be realized? Because UAE says right now there's going to be a financial constraint with the same population basically being shocked so yeah so the simple version is that you is um you we kind of lockdown and one you can only make yeah and what I want through it makes its money from housing you is students no then I you said that you we owe them right and we know that because when they were having an IPO they stated that they have an agreement a concession agreement with you which is what I mean the money is which states that they make their money go ahead yeah if you we say if there's nobody it's occupant for the housing is less than 90% of available.

So they have a home. If it's less than 90% full, then they get paid the difference. So if it's 40% full, then you give them the next 50% of money that they would have if they had 50% of people in there. Get me? That make sense? It makes sense to me.

Say that again. If I'm supposed to get $100 and I only get $90, well, if I'm supposed to get $100 and I only get $80, you will have to make me up to at least $90. Did I get that right? However, sorry, go ahead, David.

Basically, the problem right now Is that UE4 Isn't going to open back up And if they go to a red zone Nobody can be there So even though one third of their income Is going to be book to a receivable And right now UE said that

They're going to be financial constrained And we need to call on to the government To support operations for the going future But governments Do support operations for the going future. But governments do support operations generally, I think. No, they say operations, but they're talking about generally just drawing on the government right now because you itself was moving away from regional funding. They're trying to become more independent in a way

because the government's saying they're going to cut down on funding going forward. Well, the governments have had to do that, but UAE has been heavily funded by Caribbean governments. It was a big deal, I think, last year or the year before when the government of Jamaica didn't pay. They elected to pay. You had a big receivable balance from

governments. Yes, but I think we shouldn't get distracted. Yeah, we're getting distracted from the actual point of 138. Exactly, Danai. Let me just bring it right back on stream because there's a point I haven't heard anybody talk about, right? Now, we know that there was some

there was a court case. We know that they had a disagreement, them being 138 student living versus Yui. Yui, they won. We know that they had a disagreement Them being 138 students Living versus Yui They won 1-3 didn't win I believe They made a provision

Yeah they made a provision A provision was made From they went to court But what was the end result End result is what we were saying Obtains right Meaning 1-3-8 won to court but what was the end result end result is what we were saying obtains right it's like to me it's something like that meaning 1381 yeah so the decision was upheld yeah perfect

so we're agreed that 1381 and the decision was upheld now having said that um having said that i would say hey there cool cats and kittens hi guys randy from the future here just uh listening to this while editing it and wanted you guys to get some clarity because i think we weren't very clear just now um one there was a court case that ue had with a company called prime development but that was finished from 2018 2019 i think um and 138 student living did lose that court case however what we are referring to here is something else which is not actually a court case so we're incorrect about that uh it is just a concession agreement legal wrangling let us say but not in actual court so they sorted it out amongst themselves and the lawyers that's yui and um one three student living and one three student living got paid some money as a result of that.

There is a link in the show notes to an article speaking about it if you're interested. I just wanted to clear it up because I realized that this was a little hard to hear. So back to the episode. I would say, have we actually checked to see if the decision has not been amended in any way? Have they not spoken about some amendment? And are there any clauses that allow you to not have to pay the concession agreement? That's why I haven't heard anybody talk about it. Everybody just says, oh, but what about the concession agreement? Somebody mentioned it over in the chat way at the very beginning.

Sean, he asked, is there a question? Force majeure. Sean, post question again, Sean. Yeah, the force majeure. Are you saying that right? Yeah. Force majeure? Yeah. I don't think it's force majeure, but I am not a lawyer at all.

Within that new French. Yeah. Yeah, he's asking for there's any of that word that would allow you to not pay them. How can we validate that? That's a perfect question Danai. So how can we validate that? I believe that the idea behind validating it is one you call 138 SL and you ask to see the terms of the agreement which it might be your right to as a shareholder. As a shareholder, it might be. You check on Google just to see if there's anything mentioned in the articles around it or

around the court case. These are the things that you do as research. A lot of times people ask, how do you know all of this? I don't know. I literally do exactly what you hear me saying right now. The same questions you hear Danai asking is the same things that happen to me. I will look at it as if you're looking at it brand new okay is there any way that you cannot pay this you know like you have insurance on your house but if there's an act of god clause the force force major clause um then you get the insurance gets out of paying it to your paying the full amount or whatever so you need to know if that is going to happen because if that happens then definitely ue has gotten off the hook for it and then that would mean that um you know exactly but then people people um don't necessarily follow up to the disbar, right?

They just hear it and say, boy, it sounds like someone said something bad. Someone just said sell. People do that all the time. Because, David, you did start off sounding very strong. You're saying like, oh, you don't know about the book value. If they can meet up to it. I believe 138 Student Living. I'm going off Danae's company sheet here.

Let me say that again because Danae's company sheet. Well, he does work there. And Mayberry. Mayberry Investments Limited provides their price to book and their PE ratios, but their PV ratios are also on it and they have them at a PV ratio of

54%. So currently at $7.49 per share. That represents them being a little over half of their book value so they're under what you'd expect them to be meaning they're not even at book value yet david so why do you think that that would happen now granted in terms of pe ratio which is price to earnings ratio which i'm not going to go too deep into that one. Guys, you can do some research. In terms of PE ratio, at $7.49,

that's a PE ratio of 12.4 times. And we know lower tends to be better, higher tends to be worse. But we see Mayberry projecting them to have a PE of 40.6 times in a year at their 12-month mark, which says to me that... That's if I agree with Mayberry's predictions. that well that is if i agree with mayberry's

predictions right and i don't always because they get it wrong just like so many other houses but at least big up mayberry for at least putting their predictions publicly because not many people do that that in itself is its own bravery um so they're expecting the same thing it seems mayberry is expecting them to actually fold up meaning get a hit this year because they're expecting the same thing. It seems Mayberry is expecting them to actually fold up, meaning get a hit this year, because they're expecting them to do worse on a profit basis. So that would match with what you're saying, Justin, wouldn't it, David? Yeah, basically.

I'm saying that once you're a terrible company or there's not many value or whatever, but I'm saying that in the current timeline basically to get to pay for a premium that premium right there because based on what you're saying about the addition to the PB

with the company's current price and everything I don't see paying that premium to be worth it in that regard and I'm not saying getting one trade right now is a bad thing but where are you going to get it be worth it in that regard. I'm not saying get one free right now is a bad thing, but we're going to get it. A premium to what exactly? A premium to what? Yeah, because they're way below

book value. A premium suggests that you're paying more than asset worth. So what is the premium you're paying? Why are you saying it's a premium? What decision would make you say, okay, this is worth more than what it is? The terms of the proceeding or whatever happened in court, you know the terms?

Will they be due the money? Can you say we can't pay for this period and won't be paying for this period? the money can you be saying we can't pay for this period and won't be paying for this period so the premium assumes you're basically saying to me the thing is worth more than whatever it's worth less than whatever it's being paid for not being paid for it no that's correct basically well i have to check and see what happened. See if I can find out what Sean was asking before I make my decision on that. Actually, can you prospect us right now? And I checked the force majeure, and there isn't much detail going further into that context. It might word it differently. And you might not be seeing the full contract itself, so let's not assume that.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. But you see, those are the things that you need to check seeing the full contract itself. So let's not assume that. Yeah. We see those are the things that you need to check before you make the assumption. I saw something. I have something about it because of it's based on what happened last year. So that might tell you something.

Yeah. So that's just an idea of how we go about actually looking at companies and what to look at but i did promise that this should be for the beginners and i haven't really done much so thank you very much for that david and maybe we'll be in alka later on and something else yeah but then sorry guys are you hearing the sound screw up so much. It's not awful at this time. I'm pretty sure it's one of the ISPs, one of those companies that's causing it. I'm pretty sure I want them to send that chicken on so that I keep hearing. But barring that, I think Danai, you had a point just now? Oh yeah, a good point to take away from that with the research you do is you validate. You have to ask yourself, is something I'm saying wrong?

A quote me and Randy were discussing recently from what's a big short, it's possible I'm wrong, I just don't know how. So you might feel right, you might feel right, you might feel right, but you have to realize like there might be some information you're missing. So you have to explore to validate as much as possible. If I'm right about whatever I'm saying right now, or whatever I feel right now in the company. If you're right, then you're good.

If you're wrong, then make some changes. Always validate. Yeah. And then when you're sure, when you're absolutely sure, wait. Like, question yourself, you know you don't answer isn't a sound good the answer is to be accurate that's the point yeah anybody can sound good but there's not many people that can actually be accurate and that's the accuracy that we want but I promise people questions so if I throw it out to the crowd no unless you had something else you wanted to

answer than I actually hadn't checked the slide in a bit it's the second number two question so I never get there no my word there go ahead okay okay okay number one question so did number one was already answered. It's actually number one question. So did Danai beat his salary in the marketing branch? Short answer, no. The good answer, yes. Ask everything. So if that whole thing, me beating my salary, was really a push.

I think we discussed it here already. Just get a push so people can understand what is possible. Get people to start investing. I still say start investing every now and then. But I haven't been speaking about it much this year. Because if I beat my salary last year, that means I made at least 100% more than what I got last year. What I got as my salary. So to make it this year, to meet it this year, it wouldn't be necessarily as high as it would have been

last year. In other words, you have more to work with. You have more to work with. So even if I take a hit, no. So I'm down a small percentage now. You still don't? The money I made last year, I have to check it to be honest. I take a hit now. So I'm down a small percentage now, right? You still down?

The money I made last year, I have to check it to be honest. I'm just saying it's what I last checked. I'm probably still down. But yeah, the money I made last, I'm not completely out of what I made last year. I'm good. I'm really good. Just down since the year started.

And I think people misunderstand what I spoke about with the year started. And I think people misunderstand what I spoke about with the salary every month. I think people thought I was going on to every month and say, the money I have now, and see if I can make enough money this month to be whatever I get from my brother this month. You get me? If I make

100,000 this month, I can make 100,000 from the market this month. It wasn't really like that. I could have said, I made by halfway through the year last year, I was already beating the salary. I was beating the salary for the halfway month. I'm mixing this up. By June last year,

end of June last year, I would have made $500,000 from my job, right? I would have already made $500,000 before June. So it wasn't that I was thinking, oh boy, every month I make this money because I have to be by end of the year, I must make sure I beat anything from my salary.

At X period of time, I must always beat that if I'm explaining that well I get what you mean but I don't know if other people but all right essentially you're saying that and we can just use a full year at the end of the year you made more from investing than you made from your salary yeah so if you have a one million dollars i was more than i was i had already made more from investing for that year than my salary had given me well now here comes the hard question because the market is so terribly don't know so did you cash all that out because it made no sense uh no i didn't get that to me that would make no sense? No, I didn't catch that. To me, that would make no sense. Catching a call out because of what I'm doing. No, there's still money to be made. That's the opportunity

to move into the opportunity to make the money. All right. So big up Diane876 for asking that question. I hope it was answered for you. Boom, another question. Do you think the JSC has experienced,

and this is a real question, has experienced a full effect of COVID-19 as yet or is the worst yet to come in terms of stock prices? What do you think, Danae? I don't like the question. It's a good question. Yes, agreed. But I think they're thinking about the market valuation. So to say worse yet to come, they're looking at the whole market and everything is down.

Is everything really down since COVID? That's no. Something is. There's an opportunity there. Worse yet to come. I have a bad wording of that. Someone can, the person, person is in the chat, right? Yeah, I think they are.

But people haven't seen it. They didn't put a name to it. Has JFC experienced the full effect of COVID-19? Short answer, no. There is more to come. Some companies will do well from it. Some companies will do worse from it. If you get what I'm saying there.

Is it worse? Yeah. Come. Worst. Worst is some fall. So some companies, yes, they will fall somewhere. And some companies, I think, will go up somewhere. So worst yet to come in terms of stock prices. It's not all about the market, guys.

I know some people have made money since. Some people being Randy. So do I think the JCS has experienced a full effect of COVID-19 yet no actually actually I don't think JC has experienced any great effect of actual COVID as yet I do think JC has experienced I do think the market has experienced the heavy effect of the fear of COVID and everybody looking at it on TV and say, yo, my must move. No, I don't want to. And the fear, fear is what moves these markets. Having said that, though, do I think that the worst is yet to come? I think, I don't think in that way. All right. But I know what people really want to hear.

People want to hear whether or not um you only think it i drop you think it i drop more and the real thing what you want to hear when you press them is that they really want to hear about for them specific stock and i must know exactly what their stock is right i can't always know whatever your stock is guys i'm sorry but here's what i will say especially people have been to grow would notice you start with your goal you know exactly what it is that your goal is you look at the market all every time you look at the market you need to be asking yourself is what i'm in now still projected to give me my goal in the time that i have the goal or maybe give you 30 maybe you went into fontana hoping to maybe make a 50% and he went in at IPO and now Fontana, even after it dropped,

even before it dropped, Fontana is at, when it was at $7 or $8, right? When you got $9 and you go, yeah, Fontana, $9, great. You make 900%. Fontana came to the market at $1 or something.

$1.88. So, you know not not 900 but you make a good you get you make a good money off it off the fontana there um the fact that you didn't have a goal is why you stayed in it right you didn't make have a clearly defined goal for yourself is why you stayed in it and because you stayed in it you know started to pay attention not to a goal like not whether you got there but whether or not the stock price move or whether or not the people on Twitter are saying something nice about it or bad about it or what I'm saying on the news, right?

So now you're listening to the news to hear whether or not your portfolio is good versus you actually taking an active management role in it. How does that link back to what's happening with COVID? I think that a lot of what happens in the market is fear, right? I see all the time. I see David said it, and I believe Chris from you. Chris from from you in the chat unmute your mic and tell the people hi if you are yeah yeah hail sir what are you doing i'm living i'm good that's good living is good these days

um so one of the things that you you have also said on Twitter I've seen Chris Is that you've also spoken about The fact that the market is down heavily As a result of As a result of Corona as everybody sees right Most yes But in the same sense A fear of

Because it's really trans that really set off things In my opinion There we go sir There we go, sir. Yeah. There we go. People forget that. It is actually trans-Jamaican that started the big market. It's funny.

People forget that the thing was done from trans was out. So people are looking at people during the trans, people are heavily complaining, boy, trans leading the market. But as we hear about corona, everybody forget that and start attributing the fall of the market to Corona before anybody was talking about Corona in any real life. So why would the market fall from Corona before you even know about Corona? Yeah.

I don't know. But granted, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Corona, when Corona, the cases, especially in Jamaica, happened. There was something. Yeah, yeah. I think it was, I think I'm going to say it's David who said it earlier. I could be wrong. But that is March 3rd when the first case was announced. Whenever the first case was announced, you can see on the JSC, you can see the dip in share price on the JSC,

like the pronounced dip, and it just went all the way down there, right? No, that's where people really are. The thing is that if you're paying attention, you know that what happened before that was that a lot of known, heavy, strong, want to make 300% from them in the past, companies started to dip, yeah? Fontana is a good one.

Fontana dropped all the way down. Well, that dropped from before to about six, but dropped the way to three dollars something right three dollar a little bit um the big dog ncb i'm not touching that because at 30 percent of the market ncb movement is pretty much the the indexes movement and when ncb rises you'll suddenly see it rise there's a tweet of mine from years ago where i said in a couple of years everybody will be a star because ncb will fly in share price and all of a sudden everybody will know how to invest said that then i look at where we are i know what funny enough ncb has fallen and all of a sudden nobody not talking i don't hear nobody telling people what to do if

your money's in ncb nobody deliberate nobody has has um asked up upfront but I will pretend somebody did and say like what you do if you have the NCB shares and you see it drop imagine if you bought NCB at 150 a year ago you're so happy because it got all the way to 200 sorry

to 200 oh god I killed my throat oh lord 200. Hey, what's up? Oh God, I can't hear my throat. Oh Lord. What's up? We have a case here. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Loading.

Update coming. Loading. So, and by the way, it's not a cough, right? It's just late. That's all. It's, I don't have anything. I hope. Doctor is prescribing Rhiroman orange juice.

I will have some of that post-taste. What was I saying before? I've lost the point again. Corona took it out of my mind. Oh God, that's the problem with Corona. Memory loss. You would know. Yeah.

NCB. problem with corona memory loss you would know oh yeah um mcb yeah i'm saying who's going to talk to the people who have seen them ncb drop on the morning if they must sell it or they must come out guys i can't tell you what to do right i cannot tell you what to do but here's what i can tell you you buy a company based upon its fundamentals and in my personal case i buy companies based upon my expectation for them to grow in share price between where they are now and where you intend for them to go in the time that you need them to go so if my goal is six months down the line because six months from now i won't buy myself a bossy watch then i need and i i am going to look at the market and say, what stock can grow? Let's say I need 20% to buy the money, to get the money to buy the watch. What stock can grow 20% between now and six months?

Boom, you know how to invest. There we go. It is that simple. Is it easy though? No. So, and no matter where the market is, you're always looking at the market where it is currently. And you're always, you're also looking at the market where it is currently, and you're always projecting it forward. We buy stocks for where they're going to be, not where they are now.

So if you are looking at NCB at 145, 154, one whatever, and you're like, Jesus Christ, but it was at 200. When it was at 200, did you think it was overvalued? Truth is you never really know, right? You don't set up, but you never really know. And you think it's overvalued, but the price dropped. You need to know what's happening. You need to know what's going on. You need to know why the price dropped,

but you also need to know, well, no matter what, you need to know what moves stock prices. Now, if I were to go into that, this episode would last hours and hours and hours. I'm not doing that to you guys, right? We've gone almost two hours already. But what I will say is that you need to have your financial education up. But if you're actually in that stock and you actually want anything you must sell, NCB is at its strongest ever right now.

And right now when the world, the rest of the world and the region, if we bring it regional, the region is going through a rough time. NCV in terms of investment banking is doing amazing things and them actually have money. If you remember 10 years ago

when we were on our face and Trinidad did have all that oil money, how them bossy on us and them come and them buy up all these things. I remember seeing articles talking about how our distributors and manufacturers can't actually get proper access to the Trinidadian market and they never really care. They want to protect them thing. No, they want them face.

Who just broke our loan for them the other day, the Trinidadian government? NCB. Boom. So does that mean that NCB is a terrible company? No. Does it mean that they're a great company? In my view, hell yes. But does their share price reflect that?

No. Their share price is way down right now, right? And I believe it's way down because most of the people in NCB have been there for a long, long time. So to them, even $150 is great because they're buying it since it's at $20, $30, $40. So to me, $150 is way up, right? So I have no issue selling $30 million worth right now and putting it into something else. But you have to, the person who don't have that $30 million worth, the regular man or woman with 100 grand or 50 grand wondering what to do,

you have to look at what is actually in front of you. Eat the food that's on the plate in front of you. NCB at 154. Know what that means and understand that when it was at 200 and odd, it wasn't overvalued. So if that 154 now, it's a clear undervalued position.

So do you want to sell right now or do you want to buy more so that when it go back up to 200, you have even more and you got it for cheap, right? That is the actual beaming behind Buffett's when people are fearful, blah, blah, blah. It means say, yo, look on it, ignore the noise, ignore the ignore the things on twitter well don't ignore them but read it and take it in stride don't be don't be scared unduly and don't let the news drive you too much into fear right ncb is still the bank that everybody have to care about in jamaica ncb is still huge they listen to this podcast here talking about ncb from when and this is not ncb ad it's just It's just give it some consideration. It's such a huge thing in Jamaica that it is not possible to ignore it.

Right? In the same way, remember that when you're investing in it and remember your goal. Now, if your goal was to make a quick flip or you never really have a goal coming in, then I can't help you. Right? Because I can't suddenly tell you what is going to go good or what is going to go bad.

What I think is good might not be what you think is good. Because my timeline might not be like yours. I do things very quickly and sometimes I do things over a long time scale. Yeah. But I want you to think of that if you are in a stock. And I said NCB, but it's not just NCB.

It's about any other stock. This is Neil Campbell. Yeah. Hey Neil, what are you Campbell. Yeah, yeah. Hey Neil, what are you saying though? Start one. Yeah, so I'm saying what are your thoughts on Discover? Dolphin Cove is what you mean, Neil. Dolphin Cove, I think, is a great

stock. It's a great company. They were a great company back in the day. I think they still are strong now, but I think that the Dolphin business has seen a lot of contraction, which is why a big player has come in and bought them out. I know we see with the fact that they're in the tourism industry. I mean, it's pretty clear what's happening to everybody in the tourism industry right now, right? draw for a hill what i call a hill mary recently which is that somebody wants to build a hotel on the land that they occupy and if they take that option then there's a certain amount of money that comes to them and blah blah blah and they seem to be doing what could very well be a pivot because we bring that point back where it could be a pivot um yeah essentially it was at the time

i was saying that yeah i think these guys are great and they're going to blow up um but of course that was pre-COVID. So now COVID, the fact that their core business is in tourism, I think there might be a little bit of a gap there. But if you want to get into the nitty gritty, I would go on search and see when is their peak season? When do they have most people coming in?

When did this COVID thing start for them? When did they say a fall off? Did they get to finish their Christmas season? Did they get into this year? Were the numbers good up until February? I'd like to find out what that is. I'd also like to find out how realistic the projection, the idea of them getting that hotel done, built on their land is, and see the terms behind that. That's what I'd use to determine whether or not it's good, Neil. And just on a straightforward

PE basis, i think they are have a low pe now even maybe everything so maybe i have them at a pe of 14 times and expect them to go down even more 13.8 times by the end of their year so i think they expected good things i don't know which quarter they're on no which one of the quarters they're on, no. But that's also important to know. But I like Dolphin Cove personally and I would like Dolphin Cove I personally I'm going to give you guys a real talk.

If I was buying Dolphin Cove and they're in they're in tourism right now tourism must report a hit in the next six months, right? So maybe I just wait and buy them in six months when the price dip, because in a year, they'll be fine. People will be back swimming with those dolphins,

or a hotel will be being built. And on that basis, I would then look deeper to see how much they're worth, what the actual hit to their business could be, how long it will take them to recover. But yeah, just without doing any of that yet, just doing a top-of-the-line look, I would buy them in six months from now personally i would buy them six months from now when i expect them to do a lot better um or when i expect the price to be going all the way down which means that people will be going jesus christ dolphin covet the nine dollar den with no day well there's

seven dollars no one it might drop all the way to to what five four if you drop to five or four dollars I'd buy but even at $7 I'd buy it if my horizon meaning the length of time I'm waiting to go is longer than a year and a half or two easily hello who is this? Ryan Grant. What's up, Ryan? What do you do? I'm good. I'm a second year medical student at the University of Austin. Oh, wow. Are you home now or are you like in the... Oh, definitely home. Definitely home. So they haven't called you guys in yet? yet? Well, I've volunteered with the ministry, but it's for like call center type work. Our faculty dean has promised that we're not going to be put in harm's way. So we're not going to be involved in any of that physical contact. Okay. Well, come to your blessings, Ryan. I hope it doesn't get to any point where you need that. But yeah, you had a question, Ryan. Do you think the crisis will accelerate Jamaica

into self-sufficiency or anywhere close to that? No, Ryan. No, I can answer that quick. It's 2020. No country is self-sufficient anymore. America isn't self-sufficient. China isn't self-sufficient. Jamaica is not self-sufficient.

Well, since you answered that one quick, then I can ask another one. Oh, run, run, run. Ambition. Go ahead. That's ambition. Supreme Ventures took,

I'm assuming they took a hit by losing the bars. Came on a spark as well along with that change in management which I found surprising. How do you think they took a hit from the change in management? Pardon me? Do you think they took a hit from the change in

management? I wouldn't say they took a hit but I guess change in management can come wouldn't say that took a hit, but I guess change in management can come with its own challenges, adjustments, new ideas and stuff. What are the changes coming from people that are already in the company? Well, I'm assuming you're speaking about the chairman, the new CEOs are from within the company as well. So they are in the direction. Whatever changes are happening, they can already take it on.

Okay, cool. It might not be that bad from that person on that one, but they will be challenged from changing management. Took a hit from Boris. I agree. Came on as far as closing down. I agree. But then I want to turn this question into a question for you

because you're going to ask, how do we think they will fare? It's a kind of open question. This is where it goes on the research for you specifically. You have to look at how Cayman Aspire affects them. What will be cutting revenue from Cayman Aspire before it affects them?

What kind of expenses will it be cutting down from the closure? What kind of expenses will go up from the closure? You look at stuff like that. You look at the buyers, how much money were they making from having whatever sales they're getting through buyers? How much money were they getting from them? How much money were they getting from Kerman? You look at that and then you analyze. How was they fair? I don't know too much in my head. So I can't tell you about it with a 30% eating profit. You get me? This part is heavy research. I have to look deep into the company to find out what's happening in the company, what they do, how they make money. You can even look, maybe they're better off on some fronts too. You can look into that. That's my answer. All right. Thanks. I'll look into that. That's my answer. All right, thanks. I'll look into that.

Randy? There's a strong answer. There's there's much to add to that. I mean it's literally, just because you hear about something on the news, you don't mean that you should be fretting yourself about it very much. You see that K-Man has had a hit, exactly what Danai said, just go and quantify what. That's all we we talk about when we say quantify. Find out what it is. Remember when it was a big deal because, oh my God, we single lost.

They're not going to be able to make any more plastic bags. Yeah. And it turned out that was worth what to them? Two bill in revenue? Not much profit? Or it was more profit. I mean, they replaced it very quickly. Yeah.

In fact, there was not even a hit to us as shareholders. They replaced it before the hit came because they're proactive. But the straws, yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you this big up man like Stu Pert on Twitter, because Stu Pert, I saw a thread where he was pointing, he had the same question, well, a similar question,

asking about cashback. And he went and found out how much it was that cashback impacts SVL. Cashback is a little more than half of their earnings. Their revenues, I think. I don't remember how much it was in terms of earnings.

But yeah, that's the kind of research you need to do. So if you go and you check and, boy, you know, the last K-minus, but it turns out the K-minus is what? 20% of their earnings? Maybe it's not that big a hit. boy, you know, the last K-minus, but it turns out the K-minus is what? 20% of their earnings. Maybe it's not that big a hit. And then you think, okay, what else do they have that could make it up? Right? So you look on a company, you think,

how can SVL as a company grow during this COVID time? How can they keep things going during this COVID time? One, your assumption that people stop playing cash pot. Is that as true? No, I'm not assuming that people stop no i'm not saying that you are but i'm saying that well think of that if you're not assuming that people stop playing catch what are you assuming well um i'm assuming that people would stop playing well not stop playing but their ability to um play the games would be decreased

because most of the retail spaces that they would have had the opportunity to do that would have been compromised. So I was thinking about that. You're thinking that there were? That most of the spaces that, not cash pot, but like the lotto and those stuff, most of the spaces that they would... That's still out of the same machine Pardon me?

Lotto, Cashpad, all of them Sold out of the same machine Oh well I don't gamble so I wouldn't know You have to know the companies You have to know what they actually do for money Is Lotto still on TV? Is Lotto still on TV right?

And the Cashpad draws for somebody buying Brother, them could I tell you how much COVID case they are right now if them tell you around the cashback time that have a pause. No, they run them at the same time.

There was a press briefing. Then and then the most. A COVID press briefing and they put, they split the screen so one was on cash, one was on the draw, one was on the cash.

Yeah, bro got big but him not bigger than the cash spot. I know how strict and those things can be in terms of hearing. Cause I know they do have a regional, they're involved in regional a lot as well. And those things are time sensitive,

meaning that they have to be done at a specific time. Precisely. Precisely. That's, that's one thing that people ask. How can that be? There must be a reason for it. It's a very tight contract. Yeah. The contract, I think, requires that it has to be done. It has to be visually seen by people. For example, this is Jamaica. We're coming from Japan, where people think that, yo, the manna plays something.

So you have to show people, say, the ball, and it actually blow. And it actually still go in it and the draw was actually going to the volley. That certain weight as well. Exactly. And at the end of the day, people still think

it's fake. You're even. Yeah. Even though it's obvious that it's fake, but it's fake. It's not fake. It's,

it's, it is, the trick is in front of you. You pick one number out of 36. That means there's only one number can win and the other 36 must lose. Those odds are terrible. Danai, I think on a previous episode,

made a joke. He said, if there are 36 doors, if you go through one door out of these 36 you'll die would you go into that house and try and guess which door it is you just avoid the whole thing right Ryan you sound like a leading you know

but my point is that people who think that it's fake are so strong, have such a strong voice in Jamaica that SVL has to make it known, obviously, that it's not fake, which is why no matter what happened at the contracted times, it has to come on. It has to come on, yeah. Yeah. Having said all of that, though, thank you for your question.

I hope you got an answer. The answer is that you do need to do some research, but don't worry about that. Find out what the impact of the thing that you care about is. So you find out what happens when it goes. So them stop selling this, but how much did they used to make from this? Okay, cool. Yeah, man. Thank you so much for that, Ryan. No problem. And there are other questions there too. So when you get there. Yeah, man. Thank you so much for that, Ryan. No problem. And there are other questions there too.

So when you get there. Yeah, of course. Let me just. Yeah, man. I can tell. I don't have a tab up that night. Just ask and answer one for me now while I try and get it back up. Chris from U.S. Question.

Can you say that, Randy? I'm trying to get a tab up. So just go ahead. Why did Rita sell the $9 million she buried? Rita Humphries-Lewin? Yeah. That's what he means?

Do you want Rita, I think? Mm-hmm. She's still mine. Yeah, she. So you know that she's the only shareholder? Did the research top shareholder list only press with that man? It's either her or the... No, it's her because I said director.

Okay, cool. So I think it's her too. So why did she sell? Why did she sell, Chris? Why did she sell? Other than us. Other than us. Other than us. Wow. Because I can't, I hate this type of speculation. I can't, there might ever be something there. But if there's no connecting factor where you can get the point

to, oh, yo, this, it can be connected to anything else externally. Suppose you just launch it and make a bag of money out of it because that's still more than what you stole the rest of the company for, right? Hmm. Go again. What?

Do you have a connecting factor where you think it's something that we can guess at? The last time she sold anything it was a big deal because that's how the whole corner is doing. But I don't have anything. I haven't found anything. I haven't found anything. Chris, sometimes we go to know who she sold it to. Chris Sometimes We go to know who she sold it to

We go to know who she sold it to Yeah I think there's more I think there's more More gain to be had In looking to see who bought Instead of the fact that she sold And you think about why she sold

Chris When you sell your stocks Why you sell them? I'm on my tanto journey Trying to make the gains Alright Let me tell you something that journey lasts for life alright

how much did Rita Humphries-Lewin sell her initial amount to her initial amount to Barita for to Cornerstone Cornerstone sorry not sure couldn't remember

check that you need to check things like that if you're looking at it Sorry. Not sure. Can't remember. Check that. Yeah, you need to check things like that. If you're looking at it, you actually look at the company. It's a good amount easier. Yeah. Because if I remember correctly, it was 3 billion.

Yeah. A little over 3 billion. Yeah. At 920 per share. Right. In 2018. at $9.20 per share right in 2018 I saw it yeah but I don't know how true it is so I won't say it on the episode is that insider info

I don't know if that's insider info that's not insider info that's people worrying about I'll talk about insider in a minute that's just info but yeah just think about the share price, my lord. Right? She sold a little over $9 per share, I think. And then

they've had what's in cents, splits and all of that. How much did she sell it at? The 9 mil? Around 50. No. At the time, yeah, it's 55 54 per share yeah yeah but i was working before and two years before she sold a share at nine dollars per share brother the lady might just want beta floss

everybody want floss you know corona not to break them off Yeah So it's a personal sale I tell you not to look too deep on that Because often times you look too deep on that And you worry about that stuff And you lose the actual part Because you're paying so much attention To what you think is like

Oh god a terrible thing Why would you sell Yeah People sell all the time thing why would she say why would she say that giving us a lot of reasons yeah yeah people sell oh yeah i went through i had about if you see it on twitter about three days of it i saw and i thought jesus christ this man this man really doing it to himself something could have been 20 minutes and i'm taking the book value on there but yo simplicity first my lord always remember that simplicity first i have never seen a gain

i have never seen a gain on the jamaican stock exchange that could not have been predicted and deduced by just using common sense and maybe PE ratios. Literally just those two things. But that's just me personally. Yeah. So you don't ever have to go too deep. I'm not knocking you. I rate how much research you do and I like that. It's a good point out there for people to look at, but simplicity first man you don't have to be that direction put the right place yeah akans race is right simple answers are usually the best thank you chris hi good night everyone i'm janelle warving as randy said i'm in the construction

industry as a project manager and my question good night everybody how are things with you in your industry right now that's a good question construction because that's something that that kind of finishes what we're asking with Jillian earlier well I mostly work on commercial projects so I don't have much say as it relates to real estate from what I'm seeing though real estate projects are slowing down along with hotel construction but for the commercial projects that I work on they're still going so I'm still working from home and on some days I'll go to site when necessary but yeah projects are still active.

A few of my contractors, they've scaled back a bit, but thank God nobody has stopped working altogether. Wow. They scaled back to meeting social distance at some hand wash stations on site. You know, I dare to close in our times, et cetera, but the sites are so large that we can't afford that to some extent. So we're still, you know, going along. Thank you for that. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. So my question is, you know, piggybacking on what Gillian spoke

about earlier, where we're not in a real, we're not in a housing bubble yet, but we're seeing where other areas within the construction industry may be slowing, but at the same time commercial construction seems to be continuing. I was asking was your view as it relates to caravan cement versus other companies that invest in real estate, if you could do a comparison of it. Just give me your views. CCC dropped, but not significantly. Yeah. Dana, you can take this one. I'll follow. Hold on. It's not earphones. Hold on, I'm looking at earphones Okay, well, I'll

answer then, CCC But before I answer let me get the numbers, or you can tell me right off the top of your head, you know how much they've fallen by I stopped owning Carob Cement a little while back I think they've had their run.

Or is it Carob? No, sorry. I'm confusing them with, I think, Virgil. I think I last traded at 43 something. Yeah, with a PE ratio of 19.5 times. And Mayberry has them projected to go down to 18.95 times. and projected to go down to 18.95 times. I don't think construction is going to stop so quickly.

And because we're running out of time, I'll touch this with my COVID point also. I actually don't think COVID is going... We could do an entire other episode on just my thoughts on just straight COVID. But I don't think that it's... I don't think that it's going to last as long as people are thinking and terrible, right? Human beings, especially these days, our attention span is sharp. We were going crazy 14 days ago. That's two weeks ago, right? If you think we can stay locked up for three months,

you're out of your mind. Financially also, financial markets and business moves a quarter at a time. Yet one entire quarter is not going to end and this thing isn't sorted out somehow. That's not to say that it won't still exist or there won't still be issues around it or America won't have still a huge number. But I think that business will have to return to normal. And you have to remember something,

there are a lot of people in Jamaica who cannot do what many of us can do. Lots of us can't stay home and still get paycheck on the 25th. Lots of people in Jamaica live, not even just paycheck to paycheck, but day to day, if not week to week. Meaning them literally have met the money today to be able to get back their money tomorrow or they to make the money today to be able to get back their money tomorrow or they've made the money today in order to buy dinner this evening

and send the kids to school tomorrow and then go work again to get it right. I mean, there are literally a lot of people that live like that in Jamaica and that's at the lowest level, at the top level. People that have businesses, the business can't stay locked for three months. You said, well, I was sending employees home. They don't want to send employees home. Employees

were there for a reason. They do not. Yeah. They don't want to send people home. So they definitely, just the mere fact that we needed to push says to me that I think by the end of April, you'll hear it flying. Expect to hear this on the US news. Markets rose in anticipation of a faster than expected recovery from the coronavirus. Just expect to hear that phrase in the news in a couple of months. And people are going to be making crazy money in the US markets, as they are making it now. But carrying it home to your carb cement point, carb cement makes money from straight up cement. They'd have export sales and they have local sales. And you yourself said it. Construction

at the major level, which is the level that you work at, commercial construction, has slowed down, but it can't really stop, right? If I make a big move to create a big shopping mall or a big hotel or something and we're halfway through it, we can't stop. That's death to stop. We have to to keep going we have to keep buying the things return on their investment

i mean they understand the situation but with such massive investments exactly yeah you know they still want a return you're not concerned about the construction industry they want that end product so that they can start getting their investment. So it's like a rock and a hard place because whilst they understand COVID, they're still saying, okay, well, what's happening? Is construction going to stop? Yeah. If you want to get a good idea of people extremes are often very similar believe it or not

if you want to know how i believe this is my personal belief you want to know how the top end of society might see covid on a macro level look at how the bottom end of society is treating covid on a macro level. There's that video about the guy who's saying that, boy, no matter if you get it or not, I don't mean the guy in the road who was being an idiot. I mean, a guy who lives on the road saying that it doesn't matter if you get it or not, because, you know, look how I'm living. Things kind of bad already. Right. And at the top end, yeah, kind of bad if people get it i don't want people to get hurt i don't want people to get it but the reality is things still have to go i can't shut my multi-billion dollar business down because of this thing all right because if i shut this business down right 200 people are going to have to go home i've seen my bay i'm call center people

are getting sent home that That's hundreds of people. We can't afford that. So it must fix up. Exactly. What I'm happy about is that I'm happy that it's happening everywhere in the world. It's not that we are losing something that somebody

else is getting. It's that something is just being stopped or paused. You get me and it's going to be a very quick race in the next four to eight weeks to see who can be open quickly i say hey guys we're back in fact if you're hungry enough and you're skilled enough and you're running a big enough company you have certain contracts that you want to get onto i'm talking like mostly bpo herePO here, but it's for anybody, you might very well have an opportunity over the next, I'll be generous and say two to three months, in which you can grab contracts that other people can't grab.

Because, you know, the graphic designer, they're in Florida, but Florida right now look wicked. But guess where things look good? In Jamaica, click, click, I have that contract now. And you might do such a good job that you keep that contract for longer. And I think that is a lot of what is behind the try and control the curve, flatten the curve sort of narrative. Because, yes, it's not to overwhelm the hospital facilities, but it's also that at some point for the entire world, this is going to have to restart. And we need to be first out the gate.

We need to grab those opportunities as soon as it happens. You notice what Proven do? Proven never cancel the APU, you know. Them postpone it and then give us a date. You know what I'm saying? By June, coughing, sneezing are fine. That half a come road. It's the same sort of thinking

I'd bring to carob cement. So if you're buying carob cement, and it always comes back to what your personal goal is, but if you're buying carob cement and your timeline is longer than a year, this might be a blessing. Unless you think we're going to stop using cement. No, I don't think so.

It's terrible. Thank you very much, Anneli. Do you have any other questions? No, that's it think so. It's terrible Moses. Thank you very much, Janelle. Do you have any other questions? No, that's it. Thank you guys. No, but thank you very, very much. So this is Bridget from Canada. I work in IT. Hi Bridget from Canada.

Hi Bridget from Canada. Hi Bridget from Canada. So I'm just saying, would you say like right now or six months from now after COVID and everything or like know that the markets are down, would you say that

the Jamaica Stock Exchange is the better bet to put your money in versus like the New York Stock Exchange? Oh, if you have less than 10 million, Jamaican, hell yes. Okay then. All right, that was easy. Yeah. Hell yes. Hell yes. I know it better. Yeah. I mean, it's good. Anybody can say, yo, we're, we're talking on zoom right now. So zoom can move, right? Zoom probably move like 5%

a day. That's great. Zoom move already. Right? Way up bro. Check it. Yeah. But, but on the flip side, the US market is truly an advanced market. You don't play that market unless you unless you you know it um yeah i still like the jamaican market above all else and i am looking on certain things that i still think that as a jamaican we have an advantage above everybody else right i don't need a great analyst to explain why Wisinco is good to me because everybody in PriceMath had water in them thing. In them thing, right? Them cough and them going home. And what else?

They don't have tissue, right? And if them start selling masks tomorrow, all that means that people are even more excited. Oh, big up, big up. A former guest of ours on this show, Manny Schwartzer, who has been pushing heavily to help our doctors. I see him doing some masks. So 3D printing some masks, I think.

So big up for that. But yeah, going back to like looking at the market and looking at like how we think. I can tell when tell when a Wysinko is moving easier than I can tell when a TikTok is going to rise. Right. Drip might do a new little video and yeah, TikTok doing good, but I don't know what that means in terms of real dollars, but I know what no water on the shelf for one week means. Right. Some things are easier to look at in the U S market. Amazon in two years is going to be

massive this is a great opportunity for them they're not wasting their crisis um the fact them stop selling certain kinds of products to sell others just shows you how huge it is for them but they're ingrained in the u.s society right now in the same way in jamaica uh there are things that are ingrained ncb's ingrained in Jamaican society. And you can tell when they're moving well. If suddenly people start buying a whole lot more cars, I know what that likely means for Jetcon. If I hear that, yo, First Rock come out with a scheme and the scheme or a set of apartments

and a set of apartments is up to, or is priced at 25 million on average. I know say, wow, they must sell off immediately, right? And Kingston properties, if I hear say, yo, while everything is done and people are foreclosing, Kingston properties came in and bought up 20 properties. I say, okay, that's great. If I look on JMNB or this one is for you, Bridget from Canada. If I look on JMNB or this one is for you Bridget from Canada if I look on JMNB and I see what Sajikor Financial in Canada has done a huge dividend and 22.5 percent of that dividend is going to go directly into JMNB's profit and loss statement so directly into their bank account and the same time I'm seeing that I'm seeing JMN be at 38 14 when it was at 40 just the other day

that says to me that that's a percentage movement that I could not get anywhere else in the world I could get someplace in the world but I don't know any of them the way I know Jamaica so Jamaica to me is still the best market and I just talk about three little companies just now there's so many more companies out there that we can touch. Dan, I think I support this point any better. In Kingston, you can see the scope of our business and it's much easier to say, oh cool, this business is doing well in the entirety of this business versus USA in Florida and this business is doing well in Florida but elsewhere, not again.

And they're spread across all of America just for doing well. What you're seeing isn't the total view and to make a bet on that might not be the best for you. So I agree with the scope of that and I want the information that comes at any rate. A news report can be in one state. So one state can make a news report can be in one state. So one state can make a news report about something that's very material to the business.

Where you're looking, it's not your analyst. Then you just missed on key information and you can make the wrong decision on the business. This is very often in looking at the American market or just looking at companies in this market, then you can see that happens.

Well, it's much easier to verify versus you have so much information, you might read the wrong report because you read 50 reports and 51 have the thing you're missing. All right. Bridget, did we answer the question sufficiently? Yeah, man. All right, great. Yeah, I still believe in the Jamaican market. The second I don't, you guys will hear first. Hi, good night.

Good night. Okay, KR. All right. Resignals, I was the one who had the question. Okay, I forgive you. I look at talking first, man. How are you? How are you doing?

I am well, thank you. Working from home some days. Every other day, actually. What did I say? Your choice or the boss' choice? My choice. Are you the boss, Kay? No. Okay. You want to tell us where you're from? I'm kind of consultancy. Oh, wow. You're unemployed like me well not

well if you want to put it that way but not quite I put it that way all the time but I understand what you mean I'm not unemployed at all but I get you. So what's your question? Okay, my question was the one about Signos. I'm new to the stock market. I started about, my first stock actually was Fontana last, in 2019. And I'm happy that I started with that one because if I had started now, boy, I don't know how my emotions would have been. But yeah, so Signos, I like the company because i've done what kind of research that would be no i guess qualitative and i feel like the leadership of it is strong based on some questions i would have asked of some people about you know how did how strong

does the governance look and also actually, did someone actually help me? They look at the financials, look at the books, and they look quite solid. Right, I don't really understand everything, but I was learning the earnings per share thing, and I actually reached out to Danai and I was saying, the PE ratio is almost exact to, what was it like? It was almost 20 times. so why do people love the company

so much but I think it's because of where it is going that was my conclusion at the end of it because it seems to me that it was things that are below good companies that are below the market price that people normally go on for it to rise to the market price but that one was almost at market weight so it's a lot of concepts i'm trying to understand but i like the company now my question is their exposure to tourism based on their pie chart would be most in terms of um loans private equity that they give to the different sectors um with what happening with what is happening with the fallout in tourism at the moment, I was weighing between how will they react in terms of will people be defaulting on these loans?

I don't know how tourism is structured. I know it's seasonal, but I don't know how easy it is to pay over the loans versus will persons take out more loans now because they need to recover and get back on track within the next six months to a year as people build up confidence to travel so i've been trying to figure that out haven't reached very very far but i'm hoping for the latter which would be people taking out more loans to try and boost um the recovery in tourism I don't know if what are the thoughts on that in terms of their exposure what is their exposure how much of their business goes to tourism

yeah I know it's most based on the pie chart. The last one that I saw. So what person is in the pie chart, I'm asking? Oh, you know, I don't remember. I think it was like 30-something. I think it was something like that. But I don't have it in front of me right now. But I know the last time I looked at it, it was something like that.

I think the one previous to the last one wasn't, but I think that one is about, I don't know, but I know it was the majority. At December 31st, 2019, they had in tourism, I don't want to say actually break down what I'm looking at, but I'm looking at. Hospitality being at 32%. So I'm assuming, you're assuming hospitality is tourism.

You're right. You're right. It wasn't tourism, as you said. It was hospitality. You're correct. First lesson that we have to look at what's there, not what we want to be there or what we're afraid is there. Right? Yeah. Right? That's not to say that hospitality

isn't still going to get a hit. It might get a hit because nobody's going out to bars and restaurants. No, I hope not. But they still have a hit to get there, I suspect, in the medium term. But then the second question I think

would pop up now would be what does signals do for money how do they actually make money what are the agreements you said I'd give a loan so it's not like they're giving loans willy-nilly like the bank they specialize according to them and I'm paraphrasing here but they specialize in a special kind of loan special kind of bespoke loans let us say where they customize a loan for a specific client in a specific way and then they cover themselves themselves being signals here they cover themselves with this with their risk in a certain kind of way um and that way in which that they cover their risk is is

multiple things but one of them is that they're called mezzanine the simplest version is that if you can't pay we'll take some of the shares in your company so think of it like um you you you you lend a half a million dollar a million dollars to creamy and if creamy can't pay you in six months they have to give you a million worth of shares so you still get paid on the books you get. It's just that you don't get paid in cash. You get paid in kind. You get paid in another way. And we forget that a lot of times in investing. What we invest in here is value and what we're trying to receive is value. Not necessarily money. Money is a standing for value. I won't go back into that gold standard thing that we did the last episode.

But money is a standing for value there and are represented as a station of value. And you don't want to ever be confused or be locked into thinking that just because something is happening now, they're going to miss out on the money. Because you're right. They have invested in a few places. We saw that article the other day that part of the Cygnus group invested in Aruba wine yeah the Aruba Aruba wines and spirits wine and dine or something so yeah yeah whatever that thing is in Aruba I'm pretty sure they're not having anybody right now um

in their space obviously things might be done but we also have to assume that these companies had a little bit of cash flow they had some money in the bank, or they can get a second loan, or maybe Cygnus can give an extension. We've seen companies do that. We've seen Pulse give up a little bit of rental for the rooms. In the same way, Cygnus could maybe do that, or remember Cygnus is built for lenders that, Cygnus is built to act as a lender that specializes in giving the sort of loans that the bigger banks might not give

or in terms that the bigger banks might not be okay with, which means that they are ready to take on companies that have a little bit more risk. And so they've padded themselves for the risk. Now, if this COVID thing lasts six to eight months and nothing still now go on nowhere,

then yes, I'd start to fret about the hospitality months and nothing still not going on now, then yes, I'd start to fret about the hospitality and tourism sector, not just for signals, but for everybody, right? Especially Jamaica, because that is where our money still comes from. But if it is not being looked at that way, if you're not looking at it from that perspective, then you have to consider that, okay, two or three months months they might just get a small hit and the people still pay them anyway or worst case scenario they now own shares in a company and in a year that company could do anything they could list those shares and could sell them back all sorts of things so you have to look at it deeper to see what the companies actually do to know what are the things that actually affect them and then you see how much they affect

them along that lines we've been talking I won't give you guys just a couple of tidbits i mean i always give the example of grace i don't know if it was if it was um if it was if it was a prophecy but i always give the example of grace to say that you know when that thing happened with grace a couple years ago um with the corn beef factory having an issue and it was on the news and people were freaking out i mean in terms of their sales yeah i mean it might have a little bit of money up there um but the truth is foods don't really make that much money for the grace group what really make a whole heap of money for the grace group which is what i always use as my example i always use grace and ncb because everybody know them what i use as an example

is what really makes money for grace is not the foods it's actually their money, their remittances money services, that's correct the GK Financial Group recently as you'd have heard with COVID, remittances to the island are down heavily. I think they said 20%. So if them said 20%, it's probably actually higher.

That means that the thing that is getting them money, and I believe remittances are a huge part of their profit. Profit, it is. Yeah, I didn't say revenue. I said profit. I actually looked at that randy the other day because it came up and i was like whoa grace making i think based on it and he's 60 billion in in terms of food but the profit before tax is like 1.5 billion versus comparatively two as you said the money services that I would make, like, for example, probably five, and before pre-tax, it would be, like, two point something, and I was looking at it, if my,

as I tell you, I'm not so hot on the financials, that just never made much sense to me, in terms of the foods part, but I don't know, but I did notice that, as you said before, not revenue, but profit. There is a regular person, as I was going along in life, thinking that food was the cash cow for grace. Most people think that. But then when you look at it, you say you're not that hot at the financials, but you might actually be a lot hotter at it than you realize. When you actually look at it, you're on the nose. You can break down what your actual contribution is so you can see so now am i fretting about grace with the remittances being done actually yeah no noise when i'm actually i'm looking at them and wondering but

at the same time they were making big moves through their financial group recently in my view setting up to so let's see how the timing on that works so but i wouldn't be surprised if there is a bit of a hit to them and what they have is money services to the entire region so not just jamaica so but but again sends randy what do you actually don't sorry sorry to cut you but i'm just saying sends to the entire region are actually down so it's not just jamaica what are you saying what what i think about i was saying um high low is a part of grace I don't know if your high low is what there is in the supermarket that are the regular make on would go to probably they will make up some of the sales from there yes even though yeah it's the same it's the same um thing you just have to look to see what percentage of the grace's business is Hilo.

I can tell you Hilo is even smaller than Foods. Hilo is not that big. It's good. It's an important part, but it's not that big. You don't register. Grace is a huge, massive group, not just in Jamaica. They're across the world in Africa, then in England, and all kinds of things. So Grace itself is huge.

So Hilo in Jamaica is good, but it's not that huge a deal. Yeah, man. Remittances, however, is a major thing. That is actually a major hit. I am actually worried about grace. If this thing lasts too long, I'd be truly worried about grace.

And I say worried about grace, I mean like they might have a couple quarters of bad results. It don't mean that they're going out of business and oh, God, them Terry don't run. They said grace's not good. Don't do that. That's not what I'm saying.

But talking about maybe the next two, three, maybe even four set of results. Yeah, I think things are rough. I think things are rough. And the thing is, we've had for the last few decades, when things are rough in Jamaica, things kind of better in foreign, you know, U.S., England. And so money can come in. But right now, as you can see

Yeah man, New York under pressure Florida under pressure Right, England under pressure And right now we're in the midst of it But now the money for real is sent Come back a yard, you know And what's more Everyday I'm assuming

On Instagram Yeah Unemployment claim number Yes That might just be some Jamaicans like yeah Supporting family Yes And a lot of and unlike Jamaica A lot of the US companies didn't wait

They sent people home immediately So And a lot of our BPO Contracts being suspended Or cancelled As a result of those companies sending everybody home and going, right now business stops, so why the hell am I going to keep this contract? Let me cut it also. It's a blessing and a curse. It might be a blessing in a little bit, but right now it's a curse.

I'm worried about that sector and I am worried about Grace in the near term. Having said that, I don't usually say, but I will say I do own great shares and I probably won't sell them for now. And I bought them relatively recently. So yeah, if it dip, I might buy more based on my personal horizon, some things I'm looking for, but yeah, just on a fundamental basis in terms of looking at the business and what can happen to them. Remittances is a major part of the business. And I think the them. Remittances is a major part of the business. And I think the hit that remittances is feeling might

actually translate throughout the group. But hey, those guys are pretty genius. I see what they're coming for because these guys aren't slouching either, right? They're not just making things happen. They're making things happen to them. That's true. Thank you very much, Kay. Thank you.

Alright, guys. We've been doing this now for a little while, this episode. I don't want to have our usual long Alright guys, we've been doing this now for a little while, this episode. I don't want to have our usual long episodes, but we've been doing it for a good little while, so I want to thank everybody for coming on. Yeah, it's already a usual long episode, right? Let's see if I can cut it down to two hours and a little bit. If not, I hope you guys

enjoyed it. Thank you again. I'm going to try and do more and more of this. You'll see more of this coming up. But what this is me just trying to ensure that we have a voice out there actually trying to help the regular normal person with regards to their investing and their investment knowledge. I hope this one was good enough for you. If you have anything else you want to say, now is the chance to say it. Boom, it has passed. It's too late. Danai, you have anything you want to tell the Now is the chance to say it. Boom, it has passed. It's too late. Danai, you have anything you want to tell the people

before you go? Start investing. Keep investing. Look at everything, find an opportunity and make that money. That's all. There's a whole heap out there.

I've said it in a couple episodes. I'll say it again. If you are getting started in investing, if you're thinking about jumping into the stock market, right now is the greatest chance you have to jump in. If you're already in and you feel like you're down on something,

take a hard look at what it is that your portfolio is at and make some hard decisions. You're not in love with these companies. Feel free to sell something at a loss and jump into something else better later on. I'll admit it. I actually sold a lot of NCB shares. Yeah, I sold a lot of NCB shares throughout the day.

And I put a lot of that money into Pulse. Pulse has been growing heavily. And then, as you see what's happening with Pulse, and this is in the middle of the night, right? You know what I even bought tonight guess one guess one guess I'm giving you one guess Siboney oh no I still own

I was guessing for guessing sake Fontana I bought some Fontana oh yeah yeah once it fell below $5 it was back into good territory for me You know already I can't see it above $8 But at $5

The distance between $5 and $8 Is nice to me It's more than 50% And I actually bought it below $5 I'll think about that The $3 plus sells nice to me Might just jump in. I'll be considering it.

I also grabbed up... Labisal is good. Lab is its own headache. I also saw options happening with cab brokers. Still don't know why the ticker is cab brokers instead

of just cab but you know yeah cab I thought was an interesting one and with the numbers that came out the other day it turns out that it is exceedingly below value right I think in a little while we're going to have to see people

recognizing that I need jumping in time but I won't go too deep on the list. We have more coming. I think I've spoken long enough. So thank you guys for this episode. Thank you everybody who joined in live. And thank you, Danai,

for being here. Thank you to our guests, Miss Jilly J. Jilly J. Gordon. You got Gordon. Gordon Swaby. Yeah.

Chris, I'm you and everybody else who joined in. Thank you guys very much. Look out for this. Yeah. This has been Earnings Season. I'm you and everybody else who joined in. Thank you guys very much. Look out for this. Yeah, this has been Earnings Season. I'm at RTURO on Twitter. I'm Randy Rowe in real life. And I'm Benat H.

And this has been Earnings Season, the Corona Curfew episode. Thank you. I'll see you next time.