We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP 109 : Questions from the Audience (Business Podcast)

Episode Date: October 23, 2016

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN: If Warren Buffet can achieve a 50% return on $1 Million dollars. The importance of catalysts in value investing. Preston and Stig’s thoughts on home ownerships an...d REITs as investments. If you should invest in foreign bonds. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. George Soros’ book, The Alchemy of Finance – Read reviews of this book. Our Executive Summary of George Soros Book. Tobias Carlisle’s book, Deep Value – Read reviews of this book. NEW TO THE SHOW? Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.  SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: SimpleMining AnchorWatch Human Rights Foundation Onramp Superhero Leadership Unchained Vanta Shopify   HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

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Starting point is 00:00:00 We study billionaires, and this is episode 109 of The Investors Podcast. Broadcasting from Bel Air, Maryland. This is the Investors Podcast. They'll read the books and summarize the lessons. They'll test the waters and tell you when it's cold. They'll give you actionable investing strategies. Your host, Preston Pish, and Stig Broderson. Hey, hey, hey, how's everybody doing out there?
Starting point is 00:00:31 there, this is Preston Pish, and I'm your host for The Investors Podcast, and as usual, I'm accompanied by my co-host, Stig Broterson out in Seoul, South Korea. And today, these are the episodes that Stig and I like to do, right, Stig? Oh, I love them. So what we're going to do is instead of reading a book or having a guest on the show, Stig and I have been really bad at playing the questions from our audience. So what we're going to do today is we're going to play some questions from the audience, and it's just going to be an entire episode of questions. we can kind of get caught up here with some of the folks from our audience. And so for everybody that we're answering your question on the show, you're going to get a free sign copy of our book,
Starting point is 00:01:09 the Warren Buffett Accounting Book, and we will send that in the mail to you for free. So if you want to ask your question and get it played on our show, go to AskTheInvesters.com, and you can record your questions there. So Stig, who's our first question? That is from Chris, and he has a great question about Warren Buffett. All right, so let's play this question from Chris. Hi, Preston and Stig.
Starting point is 00:01:29 This is Chris over in England. Firstly, thank you so much for a fascinating work you do on the podcast. My question concerns a quote from Warren Buffett in 1999, where he essentially said he could guarantee returns of 50% their year on $1 million. Given one tenant the value investing is not known exactly when value will be realized. How do you interpret his comments? Thanks a lot. All right, Chris.
Starting point is 00:01:54 What a fantastic question, because I've heard this one a lot, and it's one that I think about a lot, because getting those kind of returns is definitely not something that's easy to do. So since this is a hard question, I'm going to throw it over to stick first. So I really love this quote. And I was actually looking up exactly what Barn Buffett said, just to be sure that I weren't really just taking something out of context. And this was what you were saying.
Starting point is 00:02:19 If I was running $1 million today or $10 million for that matter, I'd be fully invested. And I just need to add something here because this was 1999. and this was not the time to be fully invested. So that's also something to think about. Anyway, he goes on and saying, anyone who says that size doesn't hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I've ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It's a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on one million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that. So that was Warren Buffett said.
Starting point is 00:03:00 And it's really interesting to look at his track record because he actually had good reason to say so. And this was really back in his early 20s. So that was in the 1950s. This was prior to when he actually created the partnership. So that was back when he was trading for his own account. He was actually making around 60% per year. Now, the one thing that he did was that he was really taking a someone active role. And I'm not necessarily saying an active role in terms of going into boards. He did that later. And he also made great returns from that. But it was not like I was just sitting back home with my computer. Well, they weren't really having computers back then and just selecting a few stocks and that was just it. I mean, he did a ton of work getting into these companies to get these returns. I think if you gave him like a million bucks, he would probably both be enlisted but also in unlisted stocks. So that's another thing. It is possible to get that time of returns.
Starting point is 00:03:56 I think that if you look at returns of many small businesses, that's probably what you get. But you don't include all the time that the owners put into those called 50% return. So that's another thing you also need to think of. Now, I'm just kind of piggyback in on Stig's comment here, but my impression, and it's no way of knowing this, but hypothetically speaking, I would guess that Buffett would just own an operational business. He wouldn't be necessarily a stock picker at that point. I think that he would want to completely outright own that million dollar business in order to get those kind of returns. Right, Stig? Yeah, because, Prest, I was thinking about his, and that was probably when he was like 12 or whatever,
Starting point is 00:04:38 when he was setting up pinball machines in barbershops. I can't remember the numbers. We did that on one of the books, but it was something like he was making like a, I don't know, 200% return a week or something like that. But he was also, I mean, driving around time sending these machines up. So you only look at the capital outlay and what he gets back, and that's not the right equation, I guess. I think that that's where maybe a lot of people misunderstand this quote is people think that he could take that million dollars and invested in the stock market and get a 60% return. And I don't think that that's what he's saying here at all.
Starting point is 00:05:11 I think what he's saying is I can run a business well enough to get a 60% return on a million bucks that I would be controlling and that I would be managing. And I think that's really important for people to understand because everyone automatically thinks that he's just a stock investor, stock investor. But I think maybe Buffett's greatest strength is that he's a business owner and thinks like a business owner first. And then he thinks, okay, here's some retained earnings that I made from my operational business. And I don't have necessarily something that I find that would be giving me a high return. So let me invest that in the market. And then let me see what else I can do to add to my operational business. I think that's really his mindset.
Starting point is 00:05:52 So awesome question. Really enjoyed that question a lot. All right, Stig. So who's up next? That is Ross, and he has a question about catalysts. Hey, Preston, Stig. This is Ross from London. First off, I want to say, big fan of your podcasts,
Starting point is 00:06:09 keep up the great work, educating listeners about the merits of value investing. I've been a value investor for years myself, and it's great that more and more people are interested in it. So my question relates to catalysts. In particular, I'd be interested to hear your view on whether you think catalysts are an important part of value investing. There are certain value investors such as Monish Pabri who think that value creates its own catalyst, whereas other value investors believe that in order to crystallize the value within the opportunity you see, you might need something like a change of management, a restructuring of the company,
Starting point is 00:06:54 etc. In order for the market to recognize the value that you see and for the shares to correspondently move, I'm really interested to your views. Keep up the great work. Thanks. All right, Ross, good question. This is something that I think really kind of plays into a couple different things. The first one is George Soros's book comes to mind whenever you first mentioned this,
Starting point is 00:07:18 the alchemy of finance, where you get into this idea that sometimes because a business is doing well, it can even perform better because they have more access to more capital. Maybe a business that would represent this idea would be a Tesla. And it also works in the opposite direction. When a company is getting punished, it's going to get punished more. We're currently seeing that happening with Deutsche Bank, where Deutsche Bank is doing poorly. Everyone has concerns about them being solvent and now they're access to capital from bond buyers to everybody else. The yields are going up because no one wants to supply the capital and potentially get bailed into the common stock if they would go under. And so you see that kind of playing out and it compounds and becomes
Starting point is 00:08:00 worse just because of the psychological piece to these. So I would tell you this is really difficult question to answer well simply because it's really situational dependent. But I do agree with Soros' thesis in his book there. And just so everyone knows, we have an executive summary for that book if you guys are interested in reading it. In fact, we'll make a link in our show notes to it if you guys are interested in checking it out. As far as going beyond that, when you're talking about a deep value pick, you know, if you
Starting point is 00:08:29 go to Toby Carlisle's book, which in my opinion is probably one of the best books ever written on value investing. And I know I'm biased because I'm friends with Toby, but I'm being serious. I've read a lot of books on value investing. I think Toby's is phenomenal. And in his book, what he really kind of demonstrates is that catalyst or no catalyst, when you get into this deep value selection and you're doing it across the basket of stocks, call it 20 different stocks that you use that same criteria for, over time it has proven that it beats the market. And so in that scenario, you're not really waiting for any type of catalyst, a change in management or anything like that. You're not waiting for any of it.
Starting point is 00:09:10 It's completely passive. Based on that, I guess you're not really waiting for that catalyst of a management change to occur in order to make the selection and still be able to beat the market. So I would tell you, I think that that definitely plays into it. But I think that if you're exercising an approach where you have a basket of picks that you're kind of using the same methodology for in order to make the selection, I guess you could maybe say that you don't necessarily have to pinpoint when that catalyst actually occurs. So I'm curious to hear what Stig has to say on this one.
Starting point is 00:09:42 I think the discussion about catalyst is so interesting because there really no right answer to this. And even Graham was asked about it and he weren't really sure how to address it. He just said that he could have served that if we only look at value in itself intrinsic value as a catalyst. He would say he observed that 18 months was a somewhat good estimate in terms of when that reversion to the intrinsic value would happen, but he also said it was extremely volatile and it couldn't guarantee that it would happen for a long, long time. So I think it's hard, and even the smartest people have been talking about this. And I think one of the most common misperceptions is that we often talk about positive catalysts. So we talk about a great earnings report.
Starting point is 00:10:26 We talk about a merger or an activist investor. We haven't really been talking too much about negative catalysts. And I think that there might be something there for a lot of value investors because when something comes out there and it's really, really ugly, something that just recently happened and we are recording this 3 October is, for instance, the entire situation with Wells Fargo. And I'm not the one to say that it's not as bad as it sounds or whatever it is. But whenever you hear a story like that, you just see the stock being crushed. And what you also see is that you see a recovery sometimes later. And hey, time will tell whether or not that's right. But you hear Wells Fargo, you hear Dutchie Bank. Basically, what I'm trying to say here
Starting point is 00:11:12 is that you often see that there's a great buying opportunity if you can filter out the noise. And again, I'm not saying that you should just pour him all your money into bank stocks right now. That's definitely not what I'm saying. But it's just saying that if you can really look into the core of the problem, negative catalysts, very, very often a very, very interesting buying opportunity. So really to answer your question, I think it's important, but I would definitely agree with Preston in terms of if you're not able to look at that and if you are looking at value, which is the most common catalyst to think of, you need to have a basket of goods.
Starting point is 00:11:50 Otherwise, you'll probably just ending up being very, very stressed about your approach. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world. many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to survive currency collapse, using AI to expose human rights abuses, and building technology under censorship and authoritarian pressures. These aren't abstract ideas. These are tools real people are using right now.
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Starting point is 00:16:06 Yeah. And I think that last point is really important because if you're doing this for an individual company, okay, and let's say you're not distributing your risk across the basket and you're really relying on some single event to occur in order to basically change the trend or change the direction like a change in management. or whatever it might be. For like Deutsche Bank, you know, maybe the Department of Justice is now going to take their original $15 billion fine
Starting point is 00:16:33 and they're going to change it to $5 billion or whatever it might be. If you're waiting for that event to occur, you're really getting into this idea of what I've heard people call it as binary investing, where if one event happens, then you're going to win. And if the other event doesn't happen, then you're going to lose. And I think when you put it yourself in that situation, you actually create such a stressful situation for yourself over the long haul because you're dependent on something that's going to occur and you have no idea or you have no control over how that's actually going to happen. And that's where I think it really doesn't really become fun for people when you're not enjoying the process when you're investing like that. So just some things to think about. All right. So who's up next thing? That is Jeff and his question about real estate.
Starting point is 00:17:22 Oh, boy. Okay, so Jeff, and he's got a question about real estate, and here it comes. Hey, Preston and Stig, this is Jeff from Central PA. Being that it is such a large aspect of most people's lives, I'm really curious what your thoughts are on homeownership as an investment. Any other ideas you have about REITs, real estate investment trust, or just investment properties in general when you're considering sort of of wealth accumulation and short and long-term investing strategies, be really appreciated as well.
Starting point is 00:17:58 Thank you for everything you guys do and all the great information you share. Jeff, so I like your question a lot because I think everybody out there wants to talk about this subject, but I have a feeling I'm not going to make any friends with my response. So this is my opinion on real estate. we have these interest rates and these interest rates have been going down for 35 years and when that happens the value of everything
Starting point is 00:18:31 from stock prices to real estate to whatever go up and now we're at a point where interest rates where's the 10 year treasury stick do you know like 1.7% or yeah I don't know something like that something like that that's really low and it could go lower. And how much lower it could go?
Starting point is 00:18:54 It might not go lower. It might start going up. I don't know. But I do know this. There is an enormous amount of pressure for central banks to try to continue to push those interest rates as low as they can possibly go. And as long as that happens, I think you're going to continue to see real estate hold its current price, especially for single homes, for just like the individual person who has a house,
Starting point is 00:19:23 I think that you're going to continue to see these prices hold. The price of the house is more dependent on long-term interest rates like the 30-year treasury. I think you're going to see the Fed and central banks around the world continue to try to push down long-term interest rates, which is going to be favorable for people that own real estate in the sense that you're going to basically continue to have the price of your house protected. Where this gets really concerning for me is when that trend reverses itself. And you see interest rates start to go up. I think that there is going to be a very difficult time for people owning a house if that happens.
Starting point is 00:20:06 Now, with all of that said, and the fact that I painted that there could be this bad scenario that would play out. And I have no idea if that's going to happen this year, five years from now. I really have no idea what to tell you. And I think if somebody does tell you that they know, run away from that person as fast as you can because they're probably full of it. And so let's go down this path a little bit. Let's say that we get in a position where interest rates start coming up. I think the Fed is in such a tricky situation that if they allow that to happen, they're going to see some major issues in the real estate. market. And so I think they're going to fight that as hard and as aggressive as they possibly can.
Starting point is 00:20:50 And I have no idea what that's going to look like. But I will tell you this. I think it's concerning. Now, the person who really needs to be concerned when we talk about this scenario that could potentially play out is the person who owns the equity of the house. Okay. So let's say that you own a house. And let's say that you own 20% equity of the house. And the best, bank owns all the rest. The bank in that scenario, in that scenario, would be the one that would really take a major hit on the 80% of the equity that they would be holding. You as only a 20% equity holder probably wouldn't get hit nearly as bad. And the reason why is because you borrowed at a certain rate. Now, we're getting into whether you have a fixed loan, you have a variable
Starting point is 00:21:39 interest rate loan, but I'm assuming that you have a fixed rate loan. If you have a fixed rate loan and you were able to lock in the interest rate right now and interest rates go up, the bank gets crushed in that scenario, especially if you own a small portion of the equity. So you've got to figure out where you stand in all of this. Do I have a majority of the equity? Because if you do, the value your house might go down if interest rates go up. And that would be bad for you because you might want to pick out loans against that or whatever.
Starting point is 00:22:10 I don't know what you'd want to do. but I think that that's a concern. So those are my opinions. And I know that that really doesn't help people because there's no timeline to whenever any of this could potentially happen. But I will tell you this, rates are getting low. And I don't know how much lower they can go before this trend, this long 35-year trend in reverse itself.
Starting point is 00:22:33 So the last thing I want to talk about is the REITs. So if you take real estate property and you have a commercial, let's say you have a big commercial apartment complex or something like that. When you buy this as an individual investor, oftentimes you can get some decent capitalization rates for this. Like, I don't know, a 10% rate, okay, which would give you a 10% yield based off of the cash flows and the price that you get it for. So the cap rate is what you're paying attention to as an individual real estate investor, which the cap rates are decent. I don't know if they're fantastic or what, but let's just call them decent. When you take that real estate property and you mince it up into a bunch of tiny little
Starting point is 00:23:14 pieces and then you sell all those little pieces on the open market, now what you've done is you've taken a property, let's call the value of the property $10 million if you were buying it as an individual person. When you have a $10 million property and you're selling that to another person or another company, the price is not as competitive in order to be bid up. So that's why you able to get a higher yield on it. But when you take a bunch of properties and you mince them up in the microscopic pieces and you sell those on the open market, now you got everyone in their kid's sister that has the availability to bid up the price of these shares of the real estate. So I think you're already paying a very high price with very little yield when you're talking
Starting point is 00:24:03 about REITs, and my concern going back to what I originally said about the individual houses is true for commercial real estate as well. So if you see interest rates start to reverse themselves and go up, I think that if you own REITs, I think it could be a really bad situation, and here's the reasons why. Number one, the value of the property itself goes down. Number two, real estate has an enormous CAPEX capital expenditures in an environment where interest rates go up and you have inflation, your CAPEX eats you alive. And that's why I am a very big bear on REITs. I do not like REITs at all right now, specifically, because of where interest rates are at and which is the direction that I think they might go in the next 30 years.
Starting point is 00:24:48 So that's why I'm not a real big fan of REITs. But I would love for people that are listening to this, either hit us up on the forum, hit us up on Twitter or whatever. Tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me why you don't like my analysis because I would love to hear it. I'd love to maybe talk about that on a subsequent show and throw that out there for people to, you know, let the community hear some different thoughts on this. So I know that was really long. I'm sorry, Stig. He's always so patient with me. Thank you, Stig.
Starting point is 00:25:16 Go ahead, buddy. Yeah, so I'm not too crazy about real estate and investment for a lot of reasons. One of them is kind of like a big picture again. So let me start with a big picture in terms of looking at the capital appreciation. which is something people think about a lot. So now I'm really talking, you know, the homeowner. And if you look at it like in the long run, I think we'd even talk to Doc McCormick about this.
Starting point is 00:25:40 And he said we're something around inflation. If you look away from inflation, there was almost like no return at all. And I think this was also something Schiller actually proved some time ago. So another thing, and this is really not an investment thing, this is really interesting, is that I read a book about this, about the concept about my,
Starting point is 00:25:59 and happiness related to real estate. It actually also shows that if you buy real estate up to a certain level, you actually don't gain anything in your heaven in terms of spending more money on that home. I just think that was a really interesting observation. One of the reasons for this, there are quite a few, but I just want to highlight one is that whenever you buy something that is more expensive and you think that makes you happier, you would move into a more expensive neighborhood. And the extra happiness you get from the extra few, features you have in that house, they are completely deluded about you can look at your neighbors, and they have the same things. So it actually doesn't make you any heavier in the end.
Starting point is 00:26:38 So I kind of think that was, if you look away from the fact that it's like if it's safe to live in the neighborhood or like noisy neighbors and some of these things, actually the quality, if you want to call it like four or five bedrooms, whatever it is, it's really no, makes no difference. Another thing in terms of, oh, you're paying money to yourself, especially considering that you might not have any capital appreciation, is that. that's still a good business. It's actually not. If you really crush the numbers, it's actually not a good business to pay to yourself, which is, as Preston mentioned, typically the bank anyway. Also, because you need to factor in the amount of time, you usually need to spend having
Starting point is 00:27:12 your own home compared to renting. There are more paperwork. If you have a house, there's also like the gardener or you need to pay the gardener, whatever it is. So actually, across the board, there is no, like, economic reason to do that. There might be a lot of other emotional reasons to do that, but no. So sorry for this, unpopular answer. Another thing I would like to talk about in terms of reads. So that was another thing I would also like to address. In general, people would look at reads for a few different reasons. One of them is that they are somewhat uncorrelated. At least that is the reputation that they have. I don't necessarily fully agree with that, but I can definitely see why in terms of it's not really a stock, it's not really a bond, because it's real estate. But
Starting point is 00:27:57 Preston was also talking about cap rates before. It is so that if the assets in general are overvalued, if stocks are overvalued, if bonds are overvalued, you know, it doesn't take long for the investors to realize if they have an asset class like reeds, the money will flow into that, which will basically just punish the cap rates. So that's another thing to consider. Unfortunately, there's like no hidden asset class that just gives you like a tremendous better term compared to risk right now. Another thing is also that in general, they will pay out a lot in dividend, not necessarily in absolute terms, but in relative terms to whatever they're making. So if you're an income investor, it might be a good idea in general to look into REITs, but it's not always the best virulical in terms of maximizing your returns. I mean, that was more a general observation, and not so much like specifically what is good in the current environment. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
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Starting point is 00:32:21 paying a fat dividend, sometimes you got to really dig into whether it's a sustainable dividend because I see a lot of people that'll throw a reed pick at me and I kind of dig into the numbers and I look at the historical and you can really see that they're not going to be able to sustain the market price. You're getting paid a 4% dividend that's not sustainable. So you paid $20 for the reet and by the time you get out of it, you sell it for $16. And everything that you lost in, the market price of it was what you gained on the dividends. So it was a completely flat. purchase. So I would warn people on that as well. I'll go ahead, Stig. Yeah, definitely. And another thing to think about is that REITs are regulated different, that common stock. So Preston would talk
Starting point is 00:33:01 about the sustainable dividend payment. A lot of these reads are regulated in terms of the need to pay a given amount of the cash in dividend. So that's another thing to think about. It's not as flexible as a common stock that can just say, well, we're facing some headwind here. We'll just stop doing that because we really need to accumulate cash. I really like apartment buildings if you're going to them outright and own it completely for yourself and really kind of own all the equity yourself, especially if it's more of a lower income apartment complex, simply because I think that moving forward, if interest rates do go up, and for me, that's the worst case scenario. When you're assessing the risk of doing this, that's the risk as far as I'm concerned.
Starting point is 00:33:41 So if you'd buy this and you'd obviously be leveraged, you could lock in a pretty decent interest rate right now. If it's lower income, I think that your ability to maintain the occupancy rate and keep people renting the actual apartments and not have a low vacancy, I think that that would probably work out well for you. And especially because I think when you look at some of the cap rates on these, they're fairly high compared to where interest rates are. I want to say some of them, this is completely dependent on the area where you live. But I mean, some cap rates might be 7 to 12 percent depending on where you live. So I think there's decent money to be made there, especially if the apartment that's being rented is for a lower income. You run
Starting point is 00:34:21 into more issues and more troubles, if you will, with as far as the maintenance and stuff. But I think that that might not be a bad purchase, even though I'm very negative on a lot of the other things that I had mentioned earlier. Perfect. All right, Stig. So what's our next question? It's a question from Konig, Chen, and it's about bonds in Brazil. So I don't think we ever done that before, Preston.
Starting point is 00:34:45 I'm sure my guidance will be just awesome. Hi, Preston, Stig. First, I would like to thank you for the wonderful podcast and the resources online. My question has to do with inflation between countries. And for this, I'll tell you about my own example. So right now, I can buy a treasury bill in Brazil for about 13% yield per year. And let's say I buy this today. And next year, I decide to liquidate it and transfer it to the U.S.
Starting point is 00:35:17 And let's say with fees and after the exchange rate, I'll have about 10%. And since the inflation rate in the United States is not as large as in Brazil, and I'm also assuming that I spend everything in the U.S., will I have effectively beat inflation? Thank you. All right. So Stig is the expert for everything in Brazil. Oh, thank you for saying that. But I really like this Christian, and I like this because it's about foreign bonds.
Starting point is 00:35:51 And we see these high yields out there for foreign bonds. And we were thinking, okay, the 10-year treasury in the U.S., that's 1.7, why don't I just go ahead and get like 13% Brazil? And it's kind of risk to where I actually have when I do that. So first of all, we know to define a few things. So if you're talking about a coupon rate of 13%, that's one thing. So basically that means that if you buy a bond of, say, a unit of 100 and it's 13%, you will get 13 or whatever that unit you would get back. Now, so this is my next question.
Starting point is 00:36:24 Whenever you see that 13%, is that the yield to maturity, or is it just the coupon rate? Before I use the example of 100, are you paying like 95 for that? Are you paying 105? What are you really paying for that bond to get that 13%. But let's just assume that you have a yield of maturity of 13%. So is that a good investment? Now, usually when you buy something in another country, you would have to buy in that currency. I know there are American instruments, but in the event that you will have to buy this Brazilian Real,
Starting point is 00:36:55 you also need to factor the inflation in, as you also talked about. Now, the inflation right now in Brazil is 9%. So if you're getting 13% in Brazilian Real, you can expect that to be diluted by 9%. So it's not that interesting anymore because now you're going to be. going to 4%. Before we had 13 and 9% inflation, you have 4. Then you also mentioned a few other things. You need to convert the currencies. That's also going to be expensive. There's also commissions, so that's another expense. And you still incur a lot of risk at the same time. Because we don't know what will happen in a year. Like, okay, right now the inflation is like 9%
Starting point is 00:37:34 and you might sell it in a year and get those 4% deducting the fees or whatever it is. And you might still think it's a good investment. That's true. But you don't know what what happened to the interest rate in Brazil. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen to the interest rate in the US, and I can assure you I have no clue about the interest rate in Brazil. So, depending on what happens to that, the bond might not be worth that much if you want to sell it in a year or two because the interest rate changed. So I don't know if I'm the Brazilian bond expert. I guess I'm really trying to say I'm not the Brazilian bond expert. I'm just saying, like there are quite a few things you need to be completely sure of before you do that.
Starting point is 00:38:12 One thing you can be sure of, though, is that it will be expensive to go in and out in that market. Will not, you will get a good return in that market? I don't know. But in terms of fees, commissions, you do incur a lot of risk too. That's another thing. And now Preston is smirking because he's the deputy in the Brazilian bonds department here on the investors podcast.
Starting point is 00:38:32 As your deputy, sir, you did a fine job, let me tell you. No, I don't really have anything else to add. I think you hit all the high points that you have an inflation in the country that you're actually holding the security. I think that your comment on the yield to maturity versus the coupon was a very important highlight that I think a lot of people don't understand. So yeah, you knocked that out of the ballpark, Stig. Spoken like a true deputy. I think that's all we have, right, Stig? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:39:03 All right. Awesome questions, guys. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for sending your questions. in. All right. So thank you guys so much. If you guys want to get your question played on the air, go to Ask the Investors.com. For everybody that sent their question in, they'll get a free signed copy of our book, the Warren Buffett accounting book. And you also get Stig's free course, his video course that he made for the intelligent investor. Very difficult book to read.
Starting point is 00:39:26 And Stig completely made it simple. It's a paid course that we have on our website. But for everybody that got their question played today, they're going to get that course completely for free. Tico's chapter by chapter teaching. everything in video format. Guys, that was all we have we had for this week's episode. We'll see each other again next week. Thanks for listening to The Investors Podcast. To listen to more shows or access to the tools discussed on the show, be sure to visit
Starting point is 00:39:51 www.w.w.com. Submit your questions or request a guest appearance to the Investors podcast by going to www.com. If your question is answered during the show, you will receive a free autographed copy of the Warren Buffett Accounting Book. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This material is copyrighted by the TIP Network and must have written approval before a commercial application.

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