The Money Mondays - Billionaire Boaz Weinstein's Winning Strategies In A Volatile Market 📈 | E52

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Boaz Weinstein, a renowned financial expert and hedge fund manager, is recognized for his exceptional contributions to the investment world. With a sharp analytical mind and strategic foresight, he has successfully navigated the complexities of global markets. As the founder of Saba Capital Management, Boaz has earned a reputation for his insightful investment strategies. His dedication to excellence and innovation continues to shape the financial landscape, making him a prominent figure in the industry. Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 Timothy Sykes Made Millions Trading PENNY STOCKS 💰📈 : https://youtu.be/EE2Dwe4Mvj0 Shaun Neff's Rise from Dollar Store Hats to Building Multiple $100M Brands 🧢: https://youtu.be/YUKutqC6jUc How Jesse Itzler Started and Sold 6 Companies for Millions 💰 : https://youtu.be/L0eJWPAMnRM Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k --- The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1 Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091 Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/ TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondays FB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/

I managed 5 billion, we're sparring right now with black rock. Yeah. I managed 9 trillion. 9 trillion. 9 trillion. Trillion. With a T, Dr. Evil. And so, so they have 9 trillion, there you go. I like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. podcast. I'm here with my co-host, The Real Tarsan. So I used to say that it gets 200 million views a month, but it's been 10 days into the month of January and he already hit 200 million views and counting. So we have to come over the new number. We'll update

you guys in a couple of weeks when we hit January 31st on how many views this guy got in the month of January. Now, on the money money is we cover three topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away the charity. Our guest today has done all that and a bag of chips and everything in between. I'm really excited to have him here with us today. He flew in from New York City. We've got to find out why he in Los Angeles. Because back home in New York City, for, I don't know, how many years we've got to find

out how long he's managed to work five billion dollars at Sabah Capital. So as you can tell, I'm excited. I've got a lot of questions for him. We actually met charity related at a charity poker tournament half a decade ago, maybe even longer, inside of what's called Gotham Hall. It has a cool name to it. It is that cool.

The place looks like Batman would play poker there. So, without further ado, let's do a quick two-minute bio with Mr. Boaz Weinstein. Thank you, Dan. I am very excited to be here. I didn't fly in for you, but I would have flown in for you. Thank you. Thank you. You asked me. Yeah, I've been investing since I was 15 years old. I got a job after school working at Merrill Lynch, and then in college I got a job at Goldman Sachs, and so for 35 years, I've been really focused on the markets and I'm so excited to get to talk to you about about the strategy. Now why I came here is you know they say never meet your heroes, be

careful meeting your heroes and I was on Bloomberg TV. It was the day after my 50th birthday and they were asking me about the link between investing in games. You and I are both pretty I'm good in Blackjack, poker, chess, and I referenced a man that I'd never met, but it long admired named Ed Thorpe, who's 91 years young, living in a new port beach. He's had some great great episodes on Tim Ferris and others and he's written an amazing book called The Man For All Markets. And so I referenced him and I said, by the way, as a bucket list item, I would love to meet Ed Thorpe and someone listening, you know, it's like Wayne Gretzky missed 100% of the shots you don't take. It took the shot.

I said, I'd love to meet him. Somebody connected us and here we are. So I had a two-hour amazing lunch with the guy and I might reference him since he's basically my idol for how to think about investing. Wow, that's so cool. So do you already have the meeting? Yeah, yeah. Very cool.

Interesting. Yeah, you lived up, so it defied the, the, the, never-me-your-go's it exceeded my expectations. That, very cool. Yeah, yeah, you lived up so it defied the the never-me-year rose it exceeded my expectations. That is so cool. Yeah. All right, so let's go over the three core topics. Let's start with how to make money. So millions and millions of people around the planet want to invest into the stock market. They're nervous, they're scared, they're excited, they have bad information, good information, they're researching, they're hearing, there's so much They're scared, they're excited, they have bad information, good information, they're researching, they're hearing, there's so much noise.

How can people make decisions about how to research or learn to first get their feet wet into the stock market? Yeah, so I was listening to the show you did right turn of the year. And you were talking about, there were a couple of things that I thought were really interesting. We were talking about buy into companies where you understand the product,

where you attract it to the product, whether it's Amazon or Apple. And that really resonated with putting things in simple terms that investors can understand. Because in the end, you have to have edge. Right? You have to have edge in the market. You have to be able to understand where your edge is coming from. And if you don't understand the product well, how could you possibly think you have edge? Maybe you have some information edge or some friend or some access, but what you were saying,

you know, and I always struggle like to try to put things because I do derivatives and some things that are more complicated into English. And I felt like you were putting the words of Peter Lynch from a gelin from Fidelity fame 40 years ago, where he said, look, my kids kept eating at all bun pan back in the 80s in New England and a paneroventually bought them. But he said, I just, kids kept eating at all-blown pan back in the 80s in New England and Panera eventually bought them.

But he said, I wasn't interested in the company until I saw it, my kids were eating, my wife was buying, and some of those stocks were 10 baggers for him. And so he put it that way. And I think that that really resonates. Now on the other hand, when you look at who are the leaders, like obviously Amazon, Apple, Tesla are going to be leaders in the future. But as a caution, if you just look at leaders, because I think you can make a lot of money investing in bankrupt companies, and I'll give you an example, and you can lose a lot

of money investing in great companies. If you look at what were the great companies of 1999 during the internet, the first internet bubble, we had AOL, we had Excite at home, we had Lycos, we had all sorts of things that are no longer Yahoo, that are no longer longer around or even shadows of their former self and so I think It's a balance because you want to buy great companies. We have to buy them at the right price and technologies evolving so quickly That what is a leader today? It's possible back then we would have thought that a well was gonna be a leader today no matter what for sure So that that's one thing what is my edge? possible. Back then, we would have thought that AOL was going to be later today no matter what. For sure. So that's one thing.

What is my edge? On top of that, you know, you might be doing something in the market where you're providing scarcity. So the main thing, if you look at like across cycles, what is the main way to make money is to provide scarcity. If everyone's on one side of the boat and it sounds very sexy to be on that side about that's where everyone's there, usually the price reflects too much about how good or bad it is. If you can be on the other side of the boat and provide scarcity sell when people want to buy, buy

when people want to sell, in my career that's been when I've made the most money is taking the other side in extreme volatile chaotic situations. So that's actually a question I often ask at the end of the podcast is about how do people stay calm in the chaos. It sounds like chaos is actually good for you when it comes to investing. If you know what you're doing, if you understand the markets, what would you say to someone, especially going into an election year when there's going to be a lot of chaos, a lot of noise, a lot of media, the stock market is going to go up and down, how can people stay calm in the chaos? Right. So it's really hard because most of the time, first of all, the media, the stock market is going to go up and down. How can people stay calm in the chaos?

Right. So it's really hard because most of the time, first of all, the way I access it for our investors at Saba Capital is to do things that a retail investor can't do, to use derivatives and go short. And one of the main things we do for state pensions and endowments is provide crash protection. So I'm kind of a little bit, in that sense, ambulance chasing where like I'm hoping for a big event because that will be good for that strategy, even if it's bad for the market. That's something very hard for investors to access.

So what can they do to deal with chaos is to, I think, is to have dry powder because people wanna keep up with the Jones's, they wanna be fully invested, things are going up, and you fall into this trap of wanting to stay fully invested, and if there are times where you don't, those times often you can't stomach staying out for six months. But if you have dry powder to put to work in the market, and you say, I'm going to do that after a 15% drop, or 20% drop, it can happen, you can get that drop and then there's a hundred reasons

why not to invest. I'm not saying it's necessarily a time to invest, but buying when people are selling, I can give you some extreme stories back from COVID of the unbelievable bargain. One of the main thing for me is finding a bargain and you can usually find bargains in chaos. I loved the way you frame that for the Asaibo company that was able to arrange this back again to that podcast two weeks ago, arrange really special leases

when no one else is willing to sign leases. And I think that to me is the main thing because you are doing something scarce, you should be rewarded for it. And B, you don't always have to have all your chips on the table and you can kind of invest in ranges and not think that you always have to be invested which is for for me I think a more defensive way to approach it. So you said a couple key words I want to explain to people

they're listening. First one is dry powder. Dry powder is essentially having extra cash sitting aside for special moments. So think about your piggy bank or think about your savings not your savings to cover your life. So if you have savings set aside, let's say you've got 20K or 30K or 100K, whatever the number is, set aside to cover your overhead and in case you lose your job or have a medical expense, that's not dry powder for investing. That's dry powder to protect your life. Over here there's dry powder. You might save 10K, 20K, 100K, a million dollars.

Again, the number is relative to your situation. That money is ready for a situation, an investment. Something goes on the market, you're like, wow, Tesla is gonna do this. Maybe I wanna buy more stock. Amazon's gonna do this, maybe I wanna buy more stock. My friend is opening their seventh pizza restaurant. Maybe I wanna put in 25K into their seventh pizza restaurant.

Dry powder is cash, you have sitting on the side for those special moments. It's outside of your normal investing money or your normal overhead, dry powder is extra capo. You also mentioned something about shorting. Can you explain the main idea of what shorting a stock is or shorting a company is? Sure, so shorting was shown to be extremely dangerous

during of course the meme stock craze with GameStop and sure you were all over that. So fun. But there are ways to be short using options where all you can lose is your premium. So you buy a put, which gives you the right to sell a stock, the right, but not the obligation. And in that way, in case the stock falls a lot,

you can make multiples of what you put in, just like a call if the stock goes up, but all you can lose is your premium. Now, for us at Saba, we're shorting involving products that retail cannot access. They're called credit derivatives. We're shorting credit using what's called swaps. This is like this is not for today's conversation because it's not something we can all do.

But there are things one can do to take advantage of chaos and dislocation that don't involve shorting and what we'll get to that with closed end funds when we get there. So on a closed end site, can you explain, can someone listening that has 25 grand, a hundred grand, 500K, a million, whatever the minimum is, can they actually invest into your world? Like, we all watch billions, right? Watch billions on TV, we're like, yeah,

I want to be like X capital, I want to invest in that. But oftentimes they have a minimum of like $10 million, or some crazy number that 99% of the world can't afford to get into. Is there a way for someone to be able to invest with 25K, 100K, 500K, whatever the number is to these closed-end funds? Yes, so first of all this kind of investment is not gonna be a double triple your money and I've been more of the Tortoise than the hair and I think for all those things that go up 5x there's a lot that go to zero

Sure. And if you can make a 10-11% return over and over and over and over that's awesome and again going back to where is the edge buying something at a discount. If you're paying full price or something that is not as good at buying at a 10-15-20% discount so let's get to closed-end funds. They've been around for a century. They're sort of a predecessor to exchange-strated funds ETFs, which probably most of your listeners know a decent amount about. They're on the New York Stock Exchange, 400 of them.

There's another 300 in London, but let's stick to the US. And they are pools of assets, maybe it's equities, maybe it's energy equities or tech equities or municipal bonds or high yield bonds managed by the most famous managers in the world like BlackRock Pimco right pick pick somebody out here in California a specific investment company and it's a way for Mom and Pop to get one stop shopping if you want a pool of California munis or you want a pool of Energy equities they'll manage it for you and you can trade it in and out like a stock. And so these funds, which again have been around forever, and I've had some nice conversations

with both Ed Thorpe, who's 91 years young, with Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett did it in the 1950s. Ed Thorpe did it in the 70s and 80s. So we're not breaking new ground, but it's how we approach it and what's going on right now that makes it so exciting for me to talk about. So why closed-end funds? And how can investors listening profit from them? So we can screen them.

We meaning even mom and pop or retail investors. And we can find that some of them are actually a 20-point discounts. So what does that mean? What does the discount mean? So you have a basket of things, in this case stocks, but let's just make it easy. Let's say you have a basket and you had, you know, I'm looking at a camera and I'm looking at a cup, okay, and the camera's $100 and the cup's $1. Together there worth $101.

That's net acid value. But that cup and camera inside of a box, and you can't break the box open and take the things out and sell them, you just can buy the box and sell the box. That 101 can go for 90, it can go for 80, and even some crazy cases and go for $70. So we are buying pools of California municipal bonds for 20 or 15 or 14 points below what they are objectively at, what everyone agrees they're at,

and a discount is a great start, but that's not everything, all right? So you start with a discount. You buy things over and over again, and a discount, well, discounts can sit there for 10 years. And what's the benefit of getting something to discount if you can't sell it for fair? So what we do at Saba is we buy up things at minus 16 and we keep going and we keep going. And if it doesn't naturally close, eventually we have a lot of it. And these companies, these close-in funds, they

have a board, they have an annual meeting, they're governed by the SEC on the New York Stock Exchange, and we get so much of it that if the manager will not press a button, because they have a button to press and turn that discount into no discount. And I'll tell you about that in a second. If they don't do the right thing, we will put people on the board, replace their board members and do the right thing. We've done that about six dozen times.

And so we're often sparring with these big managers. I managed five billion. We're sparring right now with Black Rock. They manage nine trillion. Nine trillion. Trillion. Trillion. With a T, Dr. Evil. And so they have nine trillion. There you go. I like that. So, and they manage basically a quarter of the close- and it's this behemoth right in New York. And there's a fund right now, the Blackstone Innovation and Growth Trust, Big Z. It's called Big Z, B-I-G-Z is the ticker.

You can buy a dollar of things that Blackstone thinks are really smart tech investments for 81 cents, by 81 cents in the dollar. You can buy a BlackRock New York Uni Fund, BNY, BlackRock New York, for 86 cents in the dollar. And again, that discount is only so good as if it's gonna be converted. And we buy up enough shares that we're now in both of those, at least in Big Z, a spot where we own something like 18% of the fund. And if we keep going, we will get, a spot where we own something like 18% of the fund.

And if we keep going, we will get to a spot where us, people that want the discount to shut, which really should be everyone, people that are aware, people that are copying us, people that are just happening to be in it before us, where we will vote for someone on the board, the board's supposed to represent the investors, not management, the board of directors is supposed to be working for you, the shareholder, and they compress the button, and what is that button? They can merge it with a mutual fund, with an exchange-traded fund. You have a mutual fund, you wanna get your money back,

you call your broker, he gives you back $0.00 in the dollar, he or she. Mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, you always get in and out at fair. And if you can turn Presto, a closed-end fund into an open-ended fund, discount goes away. And so we've been doing that left and right. We've just, we've had dozens of successful campaigns in the last few years.

We, we want activists of the year. And, and I had the most number of campaigns live right now, which is 64 different campaigns. So we've been busy. But I think for the retail investor, this is an amazing way to pick the thing you want and get in at a discount and let us hopefully, you know, carry you to fair value. Okay, during COVID, there was SPACs. I mean, there were obviously many years before that, but they got really famous in 2020-2021. You saw Chamoth do a bunch of them. We saw

different characters getting into the space. I was getting Bumbardo a different deal flow. What is a special purpose acquisition company? What is a SPAC? Yeah. So SPACs are kind of cousins of closed-in funds. So it's interesting you say that there are boxes that had a certain life to them.

So closed-in funds go forever for the most part. And SPACs had a couple years to find a flying car company or a biodegradable, you know, a shopping bag company or something really cool like Fabletics or whatever it was that wanted to go public crypto cyber whatever and someone would IPO it you'd have cash sitting in a box and if they could find a company to buy then that cash would be used to buy that company Now there were 600 of them or so two years ago I, I don't know if you know this, but at some point we went from having almost none of them to owning over 6 billion of SPACs.

I owned hundreds of them. Oh, you own it. Is that what you do? I did. They're basically all matured and gone now. So SPACs, what I love about Closin Funds, I loved about SPACs when they started to trade at a discount because there was a point where again, it was cash in a box, like my example with the camera in the cup, and you could buy that cash for basically a 4% discount.

So someone has 200 million, you can go buy it for 170, 180, or something like that. And if they find a great company to merge with, great. And if not, you just get your cash back. And so those are the kind of low risk when I said tortoise versus the hare, that's the tortoise. The hare was in the height of the spack boom when

It would go public at 10 it doesn't know who it's gonna buy It goes to 13 because people are excited. It's soft bank. It's tramauth. It's whatever Well at 13 and they don't even know they're gonna buy could easily go back to 10 I got excited when they went to under 10 right but um, but so good specs I think back then there were almost 700 they were coming fast and furious we would put in for every single deal and I woke up one morning and I'm been once to me. I was the largest investor in the Donald Trump truth social network

I didn't didn't ask for that didn't want it got rid of it got rid of it a little early But you never know what what it would turn into but out of 700 There's now probably under 80 of them and maybe it's a good time for someone who believes in themselves, who believes that there's some interesting private companies. You have a lot less competition, but SPACs have really shrunk and closed-in funds around that time even grew. All right, we talked a bit about the craziness and making money and billions of dollars. Let's say that the real Tarzan gets a endorse endorsement deal, company comes to him like, you know what Tarzan, here's quarter of a million dollars and boom all of a sudden, well as far go bank and bank whatever,

quarter of a million dollars should open his account and he wants to start investing into the stock market. What is someone that's a first-time investor that all of a sudden has a quarter of a million dollars play with, what are their options, decisions, stock prices when they first want to get in? So first, there's a level of how rich or cheap the stock market is compared to how much the companies are earning. And you can think about, is this a good time? Is it not a good time?

You know, that's backward looking, how much it's earning, how much will it earn? Obviously, it's all about what's happening in the economy. We had this inflation problem a year or two ago. I think someone, I think your tarzan example. First, let's let's realize treasury bills, which two years ago were giving you zero, literally like 0.5 or zero, are giving 5% right now, 5 and a quarter. And that is not a bad place to say, okay, let's put some in that. That's our dry powder, because it's not sitting dead. It's sitting on five and a quarter with no risk.

I mean, anyone would want five and a quarter no risk than six with risk. You know, expected six. I don't mean minimum six. So, because that's where the risk comes in. So put some into something ultra safe, like a three month or a T-bill, one month T-bill, keep rolling it.

And then some of it, you should look for things getting back to the kind of interesting touch points you mentioned about investing in things you understand. And trying to find moments where those are at reasonable evaluations, you can buy things at a high valuation and it will go higher. And that's actually a very much a winning strategy. You just look at Nvidia, for example.

Right. and that's actually a very much a winning strategy. You just look at Nvidia, for example. But at least my style is to find things that it discounts. It would be, let's say Tarzan said, I want some munibons because I don't want to pay California taxes. I want to have something that's going to shelter me from taxes on my income. You can find munis where you're getting 4%, so that's 4% after tax, that's pretty good,

tax adjusted, and then you have this discount, and hopefully you can make another, that 85 going 100, by the way, 85 going 100 is not 15, 100 going to 85 is 15, you can all do it in your calculator, 85 going 100 is 15 over 85, right? So that's more like 18%.

So that's, if I could achieve that as an investor, and one year or even two years, you add that to the fore for the tax-free and you got a very nice double-digit yields. I would put some into closed-in funds that are investing in something I believe in, whether it's tax stocks, energy stocks, and the discounts today, you know, I happen to be in your studio today, but the discounts are basically as good as I've ever seen them. Okay, so for the last couple of years, I mean, I've been doing this for 10 years,

but last couple of years, I give the speech. It's called 40, 40, 20. I tell people, crowds around the country, 40% low risk, things that I want to make between five and nine percent for the year, 40% medium risk, things that I'm hoping to make 10 to 30% for the year, and then 20 percent high risk, which I call my shot at glory, where I hope something crazy happens, 200 percent,

500 percent, 1000 percent, but it's called high risk for reason that it might not work out. What is Boaz Weinstein's thoughts on the 40, 40, 20? I really like that framing. I'm sure there's been other framings maybe, of course, but I happen really like that and we so we happened to run two of these closed-in funds on the New York Stock Exchange one of them's the ticker is my initials BRW no accident I wanted to make sure people knew how important it was to me and it it in 2022 You can see it in our investor letter was the number one performing closed-in fund out of 247 in them

So I really care about it. And I kind of adopt a similar 40, 40, 20 in that I have a little bucket for speculative startups. Yeah. And so I think you should be investing in growth. And in some ways, those is not my expertise. I understand people that invest in like early stage artists where you're buying something for $5 or $10,000. If one of those hits eventually it's a basket out or whatever, you know,

you could have a thousand losers and you still have a giant win. And I think investing in tech early stage where you feel you have some access. You're not the, the, the guy getting day-old bread. You're getting something because you're connected to someone that brought you something interesting. But in that 20 of going for it, it really, I think, should be early stage companies. This is actually a pretty good time to invest in them because some of the big investors

like Tiger Global that was writing checks within hours of meeting a company had huge problems in the last couple of years, and so capital is much harder to come by. And so I like that 40, 40, 20 a lot. And we were not particularly known for the 20 in terms of our expertise, but I've been doing it and with pretty good results. One thing about the 20, I'm gonna give you an example of an E-Series company, Enjoy. I don't know if anybody, all right? So I invested in Enjoy when it was,

had a value of 300 million. It was number one market million. It was number one market share. It was a member we were at the World Series, UNI, and it was like on the, it was, they had all the, on the tables. And it had Bruno Mars' taste maker. It had Sean Parker in the round. It had former Surgeon General on the board. What could go wrong? And what could go wrong? And my friend who ran research runs research at Morgan Stanley who who is a tobacco analyst said I would put a chunk of my net worth into cigarettes can be a huge thing so I do it and the company basically gets run into the ground goes

bankrupt. Okay now my friends Jason Mudrick I didn't even know it until after like a year later buys half the company for a hundred million dollars So he buys a bankrupt company for his investors half of it and like five years later sells it to filamores for $3.25 billion. Okay, so you can invest, no, no, I'm so happy for him. I'm so happy for him. I played poker with this guy, like on a heads up poker machine. It's right. His pen house was like $30 million.

Well, I'm not talking about that topic. But what it was, it was crazy. But that shows you, you can invest in the same company. It's all that timing. Let's get back to. I had terrible timing. He had amazing timing. He bought it when it was bankrupt and made

a huge success out of it. After full Morris completely blew it with Jewel. They paid $35 billion for Jewel. $35 billion? Roted to zero. Roted down to zero. What was... Well, they can afford it as FullMorris.

So, and I bought it when it was a real company. He bought it when it was a bankrupt company. I did terrible. He did great. So there's like a little bit of a less in there. And that path dependency, which is a little bit like Butterfly Effect, I'm going to give you one other quick example. How you did on something completely unrelated should not influence some new investment,

but it does. Whether you're feeling poor or you're feeling rich, my first boss, who is just a wonderful, is a wonderful man. Ron Tendomora, when I was at Deutsche Bank, he told me the story, he's a Seattle guy, and he did private investing, and he was pretty rich guy back in the back in the 90s and he lost three quarters of million dollars on some medical company He goes in Seattle to the bottom basement of a color tile Of a color tile store building and the basement is a guy He knew because they were both in the hedge fund world a guy that worked at a firm called D. Shaw Who was starting out a company, and he could about 10% of it for a million dollars,

and that guy is Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos. And he came really close, but he was feeling a little bit, the story of a caracol, he wasn't feeling it, because he had just lost three quarters of a million

and something that was supposed to be great, went to zero. And he told Jeff Bezos, you know, you don't forget these stories, he goes, how are you gonna compete with Barnes and Oval? It he goes, how are you going to compete with Barnes and Oval? It's like, how are you going to do that? It's a very question. Right? A little bit like, right?

Blackbuster and Netflix, and he almost pulled the trigger and he didn't. And then he would have been trapped, you know, in these private investments, you're not getting out of that. No. He's going to ride it to being one of the richest men in the world. And he didn't pull, he didn't do it. And that path dependency, and I don't exactly know what the lesson is in it, but in hearing that story,

that there is a butterfly effect, and for you to make a ton of money, you also have to have been in a spot, to not be emotional, to not be risk averse, and it gets a little bit back to the dry powder question, and also to be able to say, look, I'm in it, I'm not gonna put my eggs in one basket, so I'm gonna lose half as much on that last one, so I can do 10 and not five. Because if I only, if I only get

myself enough money to be right on five of these, these 20% bucket things that you're talking about, you could go over for five and then you're out of the game, right? But if you have 10, you know, the ninth could be the basket. Yeah. So that's the thing I often tell people is not often I always tell people is I'd rather them invest a lot less and do it over and over and over and over over the course of time. Because you cannot make good decisions and investments with emotions.

And if you put too much money in something and it goes up, you think you're a genius and you might sell it. It goes down 25%, you want to jump off a building and you sell it. But if you think that Apple will still be here in five years, what does it matter if it goes up or down 20% this week? Yeah, and then down 8% up 12% who cares if you think Apple is gonna still be here in five 10 years and 15 years and 20 years

Why would you sell Apple and people making emotional decisions because if they put in a hundred K out of the hundred K They have saved up and it goes to one 18 like oh man. I'm a genius. They sell it But if they put in 20 K and it goes 20 K to 23 They're happy, but they're not going to go run to the bank, you know, and immediately have to go sell it. And vice versa, if it goes down, they're not going to do the same thing either. I call it a visceral reaction. If it goes up too much or down too much, if it's a reaction, if you have too much money lying around, it's panic and you have to sell something. And too often I hear these stories of someone that like, yeah, invested in Amazon and I sold it and I bought back

in and I sold back out. Like, why would I ever sell Amazon? Why? Do I not think Amazon's gonna be cool tomorrow and next year and the year after is Jeff Bezos gonna stop? I mean, he's young. Mark Zuckerberg gonna stop? He's a baby compared to like these Brazilian other companies. I just don't, from my investment perspective, I try to keep as simple as possible for people like,

if you believe that Apple and Netflix and Google and Facebook are forward or Walmart and the places you buy from are still gonna be here in five years, 10 years, 15 or 20 years, why would you sell? And the market's gonna give you opportunities. Look at Facebook, look at Meta a year ago. A year ago.

It felt like 70%. And whatever they were blowing on VR and whatnot, it's just, it's the same-ish company and the market has a tendency to over-react to two-bad quarters. That's actually a great example. I made the mistake you, I had an analyst who called it, who said, $100 a share, it's unbelievable. My average ex it was $140 and now it's like back to $300 or $210. I actually don't even know because I stopped looking at it, but, but if you're following these

companies you're going to get a chance to buy in at Amazon at some point at a big down move and, again, back to the dry powder, you got to do it because that's when people are selling or grayscale bitcoins, right? That's a good example. Like people were selling at minus 45% a year ago. You had Bitcoin at a 45 discount now It's converging on zero discount a little bit like our closed-in fun story So fast I think try to send you any questions I'm the question I was just saying the whole time

It's just saying how much knowledge about the stock market and Investments is just as endless like if we ask you about snakes, I mean you could talk to you all day I love it though, man. I love to learn and You know, I met some snakes where I work I bet I bet I was asking this question like out of all the animals in the world snakes lines Tagged on bears which one what animal you most scared of and he always says humans To truth the snakes on Wall Street Those are the biggest pythons out there what animal you most scared of and he always says humans to true this next whole street right yeah those are the biggest pythons out there okay so in

the third segment I like to talk about charity but a little bit of twist because I want to add some gaming into it since we met at a charity poker tournament which I got second place in just channel Elizabeth so fresh that's a good person to lose to well it's it's good for the charity and for the brand, because obviously she's very famous. So it was fun. We get down to heads up. There's like three, four hundred people there.

And I'm so excited because my first time there I want to get to show off and like, yeah, I'm at the final table, right? Get down to two of us. It's like one or two in the morning, which I didn't expect. And I'm heads up versus channel Elizabeth, one of my first crushes on, you know, from the movies, right? And we're in a very specific movie. Very specific role she has. Yes. was a channel is with one of my first crushes on you know from the movies right and

it's a very specific movie yes very specific role she has so I learned a lot about life during that movie so we're playing heads up and we're going back and forth and I get ace king and she has ace eight it's not that I'm bitter that she hit an eight right I mean so so she wins the charity poker right? I mean, so, er, so she went to the charity poker tournament and I actually realized like, it was great for the charity, right? The branding, the marketing for them was what we were there for,

but it made me addicted. I've never missed it since then. I fly in every year to see you, our friend Casey, and to play poker and like to try to get back there. I made it back one more time, and I still have not won that thing yet.

I got fourth. All right, so, why, first of all, the question is, why is charity important for people individually for them and their families or for their businesses? Why should they be involved in charity in some fashion? Yeah. So I don't think you have to give to charity because you feel it's an obligation if you have extra money,

because it's doing the right thing, because it's what's expected of you. I think actually it's not bad to realize because it's what's expected to be. I think actually, it's not bad to realize that it also makes you feel good and you can do it for that, let's call it selfish reason because it makes you feel good to help people. Of course, the earlier things I said are true as well. And the charity that you got American-pied by a Shannon Elizabeth was, is for promoting charter schools, the charter school system, which has been shown very recently in some pretty robust studies to be outperforming for at least in

New York for a black and brown kid significantly over the public school system. It gives parents choice and all that. So something that I went to public school and I really believe in. So I think it's just, it's like investing, like Tara's Emma saying, like it's endless, the number of things you can do, the ways you can approach it, you could say, I don't know what to do, let me give it to the American Red Cross or to whatever, because they'll know what to do with it. And I have a bit of a different approach, but I think that there are ways to find situations where you can basically multiply your impact, or you can find a situation that's

very personal to you. I heard you time out a little bit and maybe think of some of my own examples where you can do something like super micro and I think that in some ways that as a human that brings you closer to the you know to actually the doing of it. I don't mean giving food in a soup kitchen. That's beautiful. But I mean, like, finding an individual that needs help and maybe changing their life. And, uh, and, uh, Do you have stories like that?

Do you have an actual scenario? Um, so I was reading the New York Times one day, uh, and I was a really good chess player when I was a kid. I was a master, uh, and I read about a boy who was not that great, but he had one like state championship in New York. I mean, sounds like he's great, great, but he had one like state championship in New York I mean sounds like he's great right but he had one like all right his rating was not yet that great and and New York Times

Journalist wrote about how He was homeless his dad was doing two uberships and they were homeless from Nigeria this boy Tani T.A. and I and and there was a Kickstarter and in Nigeria, this boy Tani, T.A. and I, and there was a Kickstarter. And I just, the story just resonated that the dad is trying so hard and the boy actually is quite good. And it was compelling to me. And so I put in a, I put in 10k in the Kickstarter. At the end of all that, they had raised like $250,000. As one does, I sorted like who else gave, you want to know who what club you're in and I was so shocked Like there was one other don't donation exactly mine. I don't think we're

Destin to meet but she should meet Annie because he never met her is Kamiya Cabayo. Okay, so she also gave him 10k right so so the so the fast forward three four years The dad is now a real estate broker. They're not homeless. The boy is the number one kid in America 13 and under. Whoa. Okay. And like there's a book. What does life affect to that? It's crazy. Right. Now, I don't think my 10k changed that, but you think about comparing that to like giving to like your university. Sure. That sits there and it just grows and grows and grows and then they waste it or they do whatever with it or you know, or they put it to good use, but it's so much you don't feel that impact. And so that was for me something.

And then of course, you often get to meet that person. And I have a recent story from being in Israel, meeting an ex hostage, where you can get really personal with it, and meeting Tani, and I didn't meet him for years. And then I brought him to a school in Bushwick where there's a firm on the investing side that works with this school and that I'm very impressed with. And so they asked, can you come?

And I said, I can do better than me coming. I can bring Tanny. Did you actually play chess at them? So first he told his life story. They had mapped out his book onto these sheets on the wall. And then he played the kids, and then, and then yeah, they asked me to play him a game. And?

Well, he's number one kid in America under 13. He's higher rated than me. I'm kind of over the hill, but something weird happened. I brought the tarzan in me, and then I had this weird moment where I'm like, but these kids, he's their age and they kind of idolize him, they've read a book about him, what do I do? And I did not throw the game, I ended up beating Tanny, which was a weird, I don't know what the right thing to do

is, you can tell me. Playing full steam is the right thing to do. Same thing, people talk about with their kids, you always see the videos, the kids trying to throw a basketball on a big brother, swatze it, the same thing with wrestling Same thing, like people talk about with their kids, like you always see the videos like the kid trying to throw basketball on Big brother swats it like the same thing with wrestling and everything in between like a lot of our society got soft on Thinking it's we need to cuddle them. We I need to feel the loss so that I get better If I don't feel the loss or feel the pain I'm not gonna go train or practice why would I practice and train if I'm it's okay if I get a seven-placed trophy

Anyways, all different subject. Okay, so I'm glad that you fought hard in that game, and obviously it's hard to beat someone that's that good at chess. Just one of those games that it's like, actually I'll tell you a fun story. Phil Ivey, to me, is the number one poker player in history. Oftentimes in most sports, there's like, is it LeBron or Michael Jordan? Is it this person or this person?

In poker, it's just Phil Ivey. He's just the number one. There's no question about it. Cash games, online tournaments, and everything is just for liby. He's just the number one. There's no question about it. Cash games, online tournaments, and everything between. He's taking some money off me. I bet. So he had a charity poker event at the Golden Nugget Casino. I will never forget many, many years ago.

And there was a grand master there. You probably know who's, I don't know, the name of the top of my head, you probably know him. And he has got one of the highest ratings in the planet. And the gimmick was, you go to his table, says chessboard, and he says, you choose an amount to donate, you pick any spot on the board. If I don't checkmate you in that spot, you win. And they had this crazy prize.

If I ran with the prize, it was crazy. And you're like, wait, can I just commit like commit like chest suicide and like die over here or get stuck over here? And I asked him that flat out like I'm trying to like basically know I'm gonna lose but I can I lose somewhere else on the board. He's like, sure you could try. I played 11 times at a thousand dollars each. And I tried everything not to lose in those spots and he beat me every single time. That was the biggest sucker But I'm embarrassed to you Dan. I don't even understand because he could he the only way you would not lose on the square That he want he said you're gonna lose on you'd have to beat him

No way yep. Yep. So that's really what those odds looked like and it's okay I knew I was gonna lose because I was doing for charity, but I didn't think it was like I thought I could commit Chess suicide. No, they don't they don't need to do that. You could you could reside. Actually, that would have been a really good trick because you can reside and that is a legal move. Resign move one. Yeah, actually, that would have been awesome. Okay, on the poker side of things, there's actually a strategy called kill fill. And kill fill strategy. There's a book about this is if you are outwitted or outskilled by your

opponents, let's say you're playing against a guy like Phil Ivey, which is the kind of the main name of the kill Phil book, is you just go all in. Whenever you have X amount of hands and it tells you like Ace King, Ace Queen, Ace Jack, Ace 10, pocket eights, pocket nines, pocket tens, they give you a range of hands and your job is just to go all in. No matter what they do, no matter what's happening, no matter what position, just go all in. Why? Well, for the most part it's hard for the fill in this example to have a hand, right? There's 169 hand combinations in poker and there's only X amount that are good enough to call and all in bet. Second part is if they, you know, must

stop the curse to call, they then have to beat you. And so you still have a good shot at them, you know, losing to you. In chess, there's nothing you can do. There's some interesting stuff that's been done where you, you say I'm going to play you two games. At the same time, one of them is white, one of them is black, and you're the world champion, you're not going to beat me. So you're white, you go first, world champion moves out as kingpawn two squares. Now you're on board too. You just copy the World Champion. You make his move, okay? And then you make your move. And then, and so, so whatever he does, whatever he does, you do on the other board. Now that, that, that, that sounds like it works and there's been like stories based on it actually doesn't work for a complicated

reason involving check and whatever. And won't go into it. In chess, there basically is no luck. There is bluffing a little bit because sometimes something's a little so foggy. Six moves ahead. Six moves ahead and it's like you can and if a great player makes a move the opponent might think probably it works and they're so you could do like kind of semi-bluffs but the game basically the one of the most appealing things about it is there is no lock, whereas I've been filled Ivy in a hand, and I've been filled home with an hand.

Over the first of time. Over the first of time, I'm gonna be the big loser. Yeah. Okay. Also on the charity side, why do you like this charity in particular when you go to the hedge fund charity poker tournament? Are there other charities that you like? Like how do you decide what you're willing to put your time

and sometimes your name on because you're actually on the advisory board for that charity? Like, when you decide this is a charity I'm going to support? Yeah, so like, it's nice to do something local so you can feel that effect even if it's something big. My monides talked about the highest, the different levels of charity, like giving to someone you know is not

as honorable, it's all honorable. It's not as high a level as giving to somebody you don't know, giving to somebody in your town is not as good as someone in another town because the more distant it is, the least you have to benefit from it. And I've been interested in having a mix, a little bit like your 40, 40, 20, some higher risk things, some things that are very specific to something I care about. And then the Gotham really struck an herb because, again, public school kids, I've given to other public schools. The one I went to, Stavison or various others.

But in New York, there is one charity called Robinhood that raises a nine-figure amount basically every year. It's the number one charity in New York and it mostly gives to poverty and they have special, every year special, for different topics. But one good example I think for you about Multiplier Effect. Sometimes you see a situation, it's a little bit distressed and you can say how can I fix that and make two parties happy. So maybe like six, seven years ago after Hamilton, you know, the musical had been and the creator of Hamilton went to a Lin-Mail Miranda, went to a New York City public school.

So it was already impossible to get tickets and but a lot of people had seen it, it had been out for like six months, nine months, and Robinhood thought, let's work with Hamilton. Let's we'll be able to raise tons of money. Let's have a Robinhood Hamilton night, and they said it like six months later. And so, and they put tickets, let's say, at $3,000 a ticket, and they were gonna sell

like whatever it is, a thousand tickets, and make an incredible amount of money for however many the the theater holds 800 people, credit amount of money for the charity. the problem they ran into is by then they're really well-heeled donors had all seen Hamilton and the cast had just changed so it was no longer the you know what is the name Lamar Odom and not Lamar Odom no not the basketball player Lamar well anyway well you know Otis anyway beautiful voice so that's definitely close to his name, but not his name.

But Lin-Manuel was not performing. And so they couldn't sell the tickets. What are they going to do? They have this night coming up. They're like still a thousand, sorry, it's only like a third sold. And so I took the number one performing charter school in America called Success Academy that have a few hundred teachers. And my wife and I had endowed a school in Benzenurst. I'm from Brooklyn, Benzenurst, Brooklyn, one in Harlem. And we thought, okay, let's buy the tickets, donate them to the teachers. And you

kind of get you fill the house. And we got like these gigantic letters from like, you know, dozens and dozens of teachers. Basically none of them had seen it because it was super expensive. They were on teacher salary. So it was like a way of doing something nice for instead of just giving the money, solving a problem and making two parties happy. And so you can look at that as a creative opportunity or you could look at sometimes where you can create a matching gift and matching. There's a thing about matching where someone says, oh, I give a dollar and I get two for that impact where sometimes doing things as matches get someone else to do things as matches

and then it's three or four dollars. And so I think there are ways to be creative with charity and feel good about it and actually create extra value versus just kind of dumping off some money to, you know, to your university. Final question. I asked this to celebrities and athletes for years and I've never asked someone in the hedge fund or investing category. At the end of the day, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years from now, when Boaz Weinstein passes on, do you leave your kids billions of dollars? Well, I don't kids billions of dollars?

Well, I don't have billions of dollars. So we will. We will. We'll do that in a year's from now. You will. I think it's, I think it's, it's finding great to do that. But only when they reach a certain age. And with some maybe some direction about how it's going to be, how it's going to be spent.

You know, there's this, there's this reminder I have of the impact for me on that question and charity of something about Warren Buffett that, that probably, you know, people, a younger generation don't even know, which was, you know, Gray's investor of all time, according to many people, he becomes a multi-multibillionaire. He was around the level of Bill Gates, and he was giving no money away. Bill Gates was already giving Bill Gates dollars away. And it kind of became a thing. Like on 60 minutes, he said, why are you not giving any money away? And he said, I'm going to only give my son $100 million if I recall. And all this is going to go to help society, poverty, this and that. But since I am able to earn a higher return than everyone else, why don't we make it the

biggest impossible? And then it can do the most good. That kind of, he kind of got away with that. Later, he then gave Dumb Duff a chunk of it to Gates. Yeah. But I listened to one of my investing heroes, Guy name Seth Clark, and speak about this. He just crushed him. He did a mic drop. Well, he would, Buffett wasn't there, but he talked about this. He did basically a mic drop, and it was checkmate. He said well, he, what Buffett wasn't there, but he talked about this, and he did basically a mic drop, and I said, it was checkmate. It was, he said, okay, so Warren

Buffett's compounding his investments at 10% a year instead of seven. He's better than everyone else, and three compounded over 20 years. I mean, a huge chunk difference. And that's his whole argument, right? He's compounding at 10. And at the end, there's going to be this big pile, and then he's going to do good with it. What makes him think poverty's not compounding at 14? You know, and you're going to take that out 10 years, poverty compounding, and all the pain that gets compounded. And I'm like, boom, that's it.

That's it. It's slowing down. Buffet was wrong. Like, I mean, it's just so clear. And so you should be giving throughout your life. And so I hope not to be in that spot because I'll have given away a chunk way before or near the end. Wow. Well, thank you for flying to Los Angeles, not for us, but 10% for us. Hopefully we can

have you back out here where we'll bring the RV Motorhome out to see you in New York, maybe during the hedge fund trade poker tournament next time I got them all. But as we do this here, as you guys know, the money Monday is the whole point of this and why the podcast is number one for I think it's 41 weeks in a row now thanks to you guys and we're coming up on our one year anniversary Is people need to have these discussions? We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money And I think in Tarzan things and maybe boasts thinks that it's rude to not have these discussions and understand about credit and finance and What is a FICO score and what is taxes and what do you do with investments and loans and salaries and all the things that we have to talk about because it's real life There's nothing rude about talking about real life situations and I think it's really important

I'm glad you guys are sharing it. I think that if you can continue to help us It's liking commenting subscribing share with your friends continue to help us. It's liking, commenting, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Continue to listen to the podcast. You can also go to the moneymundays.com. We do a weekly coaching call every Monday at four o'clock, where we deep dive on questions on Zoom. We can actually answer questions for you guys. Check out Sabah Capital.

They're obviously one of the number one. I think it's number one. It depends on the year. It's right in the year. Last year, number one closed in front out of the 274. Did I remember that right? Close. Close to 27.. Remember that right? Close. Close to 27.

Really close. It's fascinating. Some of the things might be complicated for you. If you heard words like derivatives or shorting or things like that, Google those words. Understand the terms again. Whether you're going to be a stockbroker or a trader one day, that part's irrelevant.

It's interesting to hear these things and hear these topics. And I'm really excited to have someone with this career. to be here to answer those questions and give you those topics. But just Google those types of terms, understand them, do your research, check out things that you might be interested in investing into. And we will see you guys next Monday on The Money Monday. you