Yet Another Value Podcast - April 2026 Random Ramblings

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker shares his April monthly ramblings, covering a range of investing topics top of mind. He examines the recent selloff in SaaS companies and why they may not be as attractive as they appear. Andrew explores the idea of hedging against AI disruption using large-cap tech options, while also questioning how AI and pattern recognition could reshape investing. He reflects on the balance between experience and laziness in decision-making and closes with a personal discussion on the mental challenges of missing major investment opportunities.Check out fiscal.ai here: fiscal.ai/?via=yav______________________________________________________________________[00:00:00] Podcast introduction and monthly ramblings[00:01:02] Call for ratings and subscriptions[00:01:37] Sponsor discussion and product usage[00:02:40] Overview of April discussion topics[00:04:35] SaaS selloff and valuation concerns[00:07:10] AI impact on SaaS demand[00:08:03] Software terminal value concerns[00:08:54] SaaS as difficult investment category[00:10:16] Importance of differentiated investment edge[00:12:09] AI risks to investing careers[00:13:32] Idea of hedging AI exposure[00:14:29] Meta stock option implications[00:15:54] Rationale for big tech hedges[00:17:18] Thoughts on leap options strategy[00:18:33] Pattern recognition in investing[00:20:09] When pattern recognition becomes harmful[00:21:35] Balancing experience versus laziness[00:22:21] AI and pattern recognition limitations[00:23:33] Market adaptation to investor behavior[00:25:08] Potential AI investing weaknesses[00:26:48] Using AI tools in research[00:28:36] Emotional challenges in investing[00:29:18] Missed Avis investment opportunity[00:30:24] Frustration from missed gains[00:31:08] Balancing emotions and discipline[00:32:28] Closing remarks and sign-offLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimerProduction and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

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All right, hello and welcome to the Another Value Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. You're about to listen to my monthly rambling for the month of April. I ramble about five different things. I'm going to ramble a lot about SaaS, which is on everyone's mind. I'm going to ramble about hedging for AI. I'm going to ramble about pattern recognition. When is it lazy?

When is it experienced? When are you getting better? When are you getting worse? I'm going to ramble about AI and patent recognition in LOMs. And good for investors, bad for investors. Will the metagame adopt and start chubbing it down AI's throat? And then finally, I'm going to rant about some frustration I've had, and I'm going to have you be my therapist as I just rant and ramble about a frustrating situation I had last month where I missed what could have been a four-bagger or a 20-bagger, depending on how you would have played it. So I will end with that rant. We'll get there in one second, but first, two disclaimers. First, disclaimer, yeah, disclaimer. Nothing on this podcast. Investing advice to say it all the time, but I just love to remind everyone that. So full disclaimer at the end of the podcast and in the show notes. And second, I leave you. lead and to end with this, but I just say this on the ramblings.

I love the podcast. I love the blog. Ratings, ratings, reviews, subscriptions, all that means so much. Helps the podcast go further, spins the podcast flywheel. So if you could take a second and wherever you're watching or listening, rate, review, all that sort of stuff, subscribe, all that sort of stuff would mean the world. We're going to get there in one second. We're going to get to my ramblings in one second.

But first, we're from our sponsors. Today's podcast is sponsored by Fiscal.aI. Fiscal. DataI offers a first of its kind, real-time fundamental API tracker. Look, why do I mention that? Because I'll admit, I'm a biased source. Fiscal.a.I. is a sponsor. But I mentioned it because I've been using it myself.

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And at the top of every tracker, at the top of every tool I'm building, it's got a little, hey, enter your fiscal.a.ai API code here. And right in there, my fiscal. API API code goes in there. It's got lots of fundamentals, real-time stock prices, all sorts of stuff. So look, I will quit rambling, but you've heard it before. If you are looking into these tools, you need to go look at an API key. And if you're not, if you're just looking for, you know, the kind of standard fundamental tools,

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slash yav. There'll be a link in the show notes to see fiscal.a.i for yourself. And if you talk to them, go ahead and tell them I sent you. All right. Hello. Welcome to yet another value podcast. I am your host, Andrew Walker. It is Monday, April 13th, the stock market just closed.

I am here for my monthly random ramblings where I just hop on and I start recording. and I talked for about 30 minutes and I ramble about things. You know, I'm in a closet-sized office and all I do all day, 50, 60 hours a week is I sit in here and I think to myself and then I come on here once a month and I ramble out all those things I'm thinking about in this closet. So we'll get to all that in a second. First, a disclaimer to remind everyone that nothing on this podcast is investing device. You should always remember that, but particularly true when this guy who's just locking

this tiny little closet is rambling for about 30 minutes. Just remember, don't listen to me about anything. Full disclaimer at the end of the podcast. There's link in the show notes. All started all that sort of stuff. Second, I do this monthly on my monthly reminder. Try not to flood every podcast with it. But it would mean so much if you could rate, subscribe, review, wherever you're watching or listening to this.

You know, more ratings, more ratings results in more subscribers. More subscribers just creates the flywheel that gets this podcast going. You know, more subscribers means better guests want to come on because there are more people listening to it. It means better advertisers so I can afford to get, you know, like reach out to better guests. Maybe I'll upgrade for me, closet-sized office to a bigger one so that I don't have this echo. I don't know. But it would really mean a lot to me if you enjoy this podcast if you do that.

Okay. Not out the way, again, April 13th, I've got four or five things I want to ramble on. First, I'm going to start with a little bit. Just random thoughts on software as a service. You know, everybody's talking about it. We'll get to that in a second. You don't need me to explain what's going on there. I want to talk about hedges for AI domination.

I will then talk about pattern recognition and just some thoughts I've had. on pattern recognition, the upsides, the downsides of it. And then I'll tie the pattern recognition back into AI and why I wonder if AI is going to have trouble replacing a little bit of humans or maybe why it's going to crush us all. So those are the four things I want to talk about. And then actually, I do have a fifth one. I'll get there just a little frustrating thing if I have time, but I do have to go pick my daughter up in 30 minutes.

So we are on a time. So time's a factor. So let's hop into it. Look, I want to start with SaaS. And I have written several things on SaaS in the SaaS pop-pods recently. I think I talked about it in the last Rimbled. SAS is, you know, anyone you talk to right now, they want to hear about SaaS. And the reason is simple.

All the SaaS that software as a service companies, for those of you who don't know, I guess any of you listen to this podcast, you know, all the SaaS companies have been brutalized. You know, the average, I think the software index is down about 20% so far this year, and you can find names that are down much, much further than that, right? So whenever you talk to an investor, they say, hey, what do you think about SaaS? They want to talk about SaaS. And I've written a ton on it. So I'm certainly contributing to it.

But my answer so far has been, I don't think they're that cheap, to be honest. And, you know, I love, I've used this analogy before. I love being the person running into the fire, right? There's a panic. My instinct is going to the panic and buy. You know, it's a dislocation. I think there's opportunity. I'm not having that instinct with software as a service.

A, I don't think they're that cheap. you know, the stock comp, everyone debates stock comp, but the stock comp is real. And I think for these companies, many of them have fallen so far that the stock comp is going to be an issue. And I think this will, you can hear this pretty easily. You know, if you're a billion dollar company and you spend $100 million per year in stock comp, that's 10% annualized dilution, right? That's a lot. But it's doable if the company's growing all that sort of stuff. But all of a sudden your stock falls, let's just say 90%, right? Now you're a hundred million dollar company paying out $100 million per year in stock comp. That's undoable. You can't dilute your shareholders 50% per year. And by the way,

all those employees who got the stock comp last year, their stocks 90% are underwater. And it's undoable, it's untenable on so many different issues, right? Your employees say, hey, we're mid-level employees. We don't control the stock price. Why should we be underwater on all those things from the years before? Why should we take a pay cut going forward for this? It's untenable for them. It's untenable for the investors because they're going to get diluted like crazy. It just puts the whole company. So, you know, they're not that cheap to me. The stock comp is real. It's going to create other issues going forward. Anyway, you've heard me say all this. You've heard other people say all this. I'm not creating breaking new ground here. The other thing is they don't look that cheap to me.

The only way they look cheap is if you say, hey, they were trading for 100 last year and they're trading for 40 now, yet looks cheap on a chart. Doesn't look that cheap to me fundamentally. And I don't know about the terminal back, right? And I keep saying, and you're starting to hear more and more people say it, the tools that you are using with AI, right? now are the worst that they will ever be. These tools are increasing in getting better in an exponential rate. And the thing that really drove home to me was there was a company I was looking at and unfortunately was invested in. And when I started looking at them in, let's say October, I talked to a few of their customers. They're like, hey, AI is great for this company, right?

It is great. We're using this company's offerings more and more. AI is an accelerant. AI, it's an accelerant for their product. It makes us want their product more. and the investment went way against me, and I caught up with the same people. I'm like, oh, yeah, AI has gotten so much better. We don't even use that company anymore. We use the AI tools. So that's just something that's really ingrained in my brain. And the terminal value of software, because it's all codes and contracts, it is zero.

So when the business goes away, there's no hard assets left that you can kind of, you know, if you have a office building, the terminal value might not be zero because you can convert it to residential or whatever. Not the case with software. The terminal value is zero. it's actually probably negative because you have to break the leases, you have to fire everyone, all that sort of stuff. So I don't think I'm breaking ground there. Don't like I'm breaking around on the terminal value.

So that's why I've passed. But somebody, I very rarely read the comments on podcasts, if you honest with you, the podcast can be a scary place. And I just find it's a lot more negative than positive. If people want to get at me, they can always, you know, go slide into my DMs or email me. But there was one comment that popped into my feed and somebody was coming on a payment stock episode that I did recently. And they said, look, this sounds really interesting, but this is a

seven-foot bar. Why would I try to step over a seven-foot bar? Like, let's just go find something easier. And I just thought that was so astute. That's kind of how I feel about software. You know, all of us can go break our brain trying to find all these. And there's going to be some huge winners in software. I guarantee you there are some software stocks that are down 70% over the past year right now that are going to be five factors over the next five years. I also guarantee you there's some software stuff, you know, Chegg was a, this is the online business that you could go. College students would ask questions and it would give them answer stuff.

That was a compounder biggest in this. And AI zero to doubt in like two years, right? New York rounds to zero. There are going to be a lot of SaaS companies that I think AI zero is out. So I would just, to me, it is software is a seven foot bar. There's going to be some winners. I think there's going to be a heck of a lot of losers. Unless you tell me you have really specialized expertise or

real specialized insight. Most of the people I talk to are generic value investors. I mean that with all the love of the world, you know, they're generalists. Unless you have really deep insight, you've talked to all these customers, you have a real unique reason why AI will not displace these despite this fact that's getting exponentially better. I just think there are better opportunities elsewhere. So I will fall into the, hey, let's discuss software.

Let's all this. I just don't think it's worth it for your generic, you know, one to three billion, 500 million in market cap software company, unless you've got a real edge there. I just don't think it's worth it. And I will also say, I don't think your edge is, hey, all the other ones trade at, once you add in stock comp, they trade at 50p, this is one that actually trades at 6xp, all the other comps trade at 3x revenue. This one trades at 1x revenue.

I don't think valuations like that is your edge because, again, the terminal value is zero. I think your edge is really like, hey, all of the other comps are going to get this place, but here's X, Y, and Z reason why this specific software company will not be displaced by AI or something along those lines. So, look, I'm going to do more SaaS conversations because I am trying to get smarter. There are also, you know, SaaS might be getting blown up, but there might be something, you know, one town over that's getting killed as well.

That's interesting. So I'm going to keep studying it. I want to, there can be events. There will be events. I'm going to be ready. You know, I find increasingly a lot of investages. one of the reasons the podcast works for me is you do work on companies, right? And these are companies smart investors, and I'll tell you, most of the companies are things that I'm not going to invest in.

They're just not in my wheelhouse. They're not in what I consider my skill set. But a lot of times I'll do work on a company. And then 18 months later, the company will run into some issue where they'll have an interesting merger or they'll have an interesting event. Say, hey, I'm starting with a big backlog of notes. I can just go re-listen to the podcast that I did for and pick it up to speed. And I can go review all my notes. and I've read this. So, you know, I'm trying to do the work and be ready.

Even if I'm telling you, I'm probably not buying any SaaS stocks right now. I want to do work on the tangential things. I want to do work on SaaS companies. I want to be ready when, if and when something falls in 20 loss. Okay. Speaking, soft transition to AI, one thing I have been thinking about a lot recently, you know, as you can probably tell, my portfolio does not really have a lot of AI exposure. And one thing I worry about as an investor, and as, as somebody who, you know, I'd love to get paid. Obviously, I am the most handsome podcast, finance podcast host in the world.

I realize what an oxymoron that is. I'd love to get paid for my looks. I'd love to get paid for my stunning personality. Unfortunately, I largely, you know, as an investor, I'd largely get paid for kind of your brain. And that is why AI is so scary, right? Because AI is the first time ever where you're looking and saying, hey, this is a tool that displaces people's brains, right?

You say, hey, I talk to a lawyer. go ask them how many juniors they're hiring. They'll say, hey, we're still hiring subjuniors if they work into their firm, but we don't need as many because AI is like the ultimate junior, right? And if AI, if it's starting at the bottom, replacing juniors, eventually it's going to replace seniors. So AI is very scary for me on two levels. It's scary for my portfolio because I don't have a lot of exposure to it,

perhaps to my chagrin in 2024, 2025, perhaps to my benefit if AI ever slows down. It's also scary for me on a personal level because I am very worried about AI replacing fundamental investors at some point as quantitative, you know, just computers replace a lot of quantitative investors and indexing has pushed out active investors. I'm worried that in three, five years, I want to say years, but maybe it's a month the ways it's accelerating all of the awful book are captured by AI, right? So, and we can talk about ways that would happen. But I have been thinking like, hey, should it either your portfolio or you personally, I don't know, I don't really run a PA, I invest through my portfolio,

but I'm just, you know, kind of throwing things out there. I'm not making, I never make investing invests. I'm just thinking, should everyone have a hedge for AI? And I think the hedge for AI would be, you go out and you buy leaps on, I specifically thought you buy, you put a small percentage of your portfolio in leaps in Microsoft, meta, Amazon, and Google. And the reason I, I'll tell you the reason I chose those in a second, but one of the reasons I would think about it was I just did this post on meta, which, you know, the stock, let's just make the numbers easy. The stock is treating it at 600, and they gave all of their top rest stock options that the lowest best was, let's just call it 1,200 to make the math easy. That said the stock will double in five years for the stock option, the best. And these are options, not PSU.

So, you know, if your stock goes to 1201 in five years, that's a very nice return for the stock. A double in five years is a pretty nice return, not legendary, but it's quite good. It sucks if you're an option. The option is basically worth zero, right? So if you say, hey, the option struck at 1,200 for five years from now, you're saying we think the option is going, we think the stock is going much, much higher. And the highest end options, again, these options expire in five years are 3,000.

So that's saying the stock has five X just for the options to be in the money, right? Which is saying we see a path to the stock being $4,000, $5,000, a $10 trillion-plus market gap. So I was kind of thinking about the leaps and connections. to that meta thing, right? Because you buy the leaps, and I think the AI acceleration is almost upon us, right? So if those meta options start playing out, then you're going to see the acceleration start happening. And I think the farthest out meta options, you can, leaps, you can get are December, 2008. So yes, unfortunately, we can't buy leaps out to January

2013 to match when the meta options would expire. But, you know, if you think the acceleration would start happening and get reflected. I think it happens in the next 18 months. So, you know, kind of two and a half of your options, which are the furthest out meta options, kind of capture that. Anyway, back to the hedging. The meta thing is why I thought about that because the leaves let you recreate that.

And then I think you would do Microsoft meta, Amazon, and Google. And the reason I chose all those was Microsoft has the investment in Open AI, and their stock has come down quite a bit with the SaaS thing. So you almost get like two ways to win, right? AI takes over Microsoft has Azure. They have Open AI. and they've got a bunch of smart engineers. And if AI doesn't take over, hey, maybe, you know, you get a little bit of SaaS back.

I chose meta because you align with those meta, those meta options that were just granted. And they just rolled out their AI tool, which, you know, appears to be a competitor. I chose Amazon because they have AWS. They have the, you know, they've been talking up their competitor to Nvidia, custom chips and all that. So I chose them. And then I chose Google because, you know, they have the AI play. They've got, I believe they have been investing in Throbic. I can't remember that for sure.

But they've got, Google has like little AI exposure themselves. plus GCP. So you choose those four. You put a small piece of your portfolio in leaps, and you say, hey, AI goes to the moon and bankrupts everything else. I've got that hedge there. AI kills off fundamental investing. I've got that hedge there. I don't know about it, but it's something I've been thinking about, tooying with, again, not investing advice, but it's something I've been thinking about. I'll probably write an article on it at some point just to try to get a little bit of firmer thoughts. But, you know, I think people listen to this and they want to think about random things, and this is my most random rambling, and I have a feeling it's the thing people

are going to respond the most on. So I wanted to throw it out there as kind of an interesting thought, interesting hedge, interesting trade, all that sort of stuff. Oh, and the last thing I'll say, you know, I think when I look at these leaps, one of the things you love about leaps, and for those who don't know, leaps are elongated call options, right? One of the nice things about leaps is they give you leverage on the upside, as any options do. Most people like leaps with low volatility, because, you know, think about GameStop at the height of Meenania. The options were insanely expensive. Volatility increases the expense of the option.

Low volatility would be something like, you know, your local utility company is going to have very low low. The meta, Microsoft, Amazon, their options kind of have like a high 30s fall. If you look at the leaps, I believe, I kind of looked at them over the weekend, which is not low. But I would say it's probably not that high for these things that have, exposure to AI where there is a chance you just tip into a winner-take-all or, you know, five winners take most.

You know, when meta's being bets that says, we're going to pay our execs if the stock at minimum doubles and we're kind of underwriting more than that, when the ball is at 40 and you've got this kind of world-changing event, potential investment that all these are exposed to in one way you should perform, it actually kind of feels too low to me, to be honest with you. So just another thought. Let's jump to my next thing. And I'm going to tie this back to AI at the end, but this is something I've been meaning to talk about for a while. Pattern recognition.

I think one of the reasons investors get better as they get older, allegedly, quote unquote, I hope that's happening with me, is they have, you build up a bunch of patterns, right? So you see a company and they announce good earnings and the stock goes up less than you think. And when you're young, you might say, this is a buying opportunity. And when you're older, you might say, hmm, maybe I need to look at the 10-Q a little bit more. Maybe there's something in the cash flow statement that was wrong. Or, you know, you see a company that makes a big merger and they come out and they put out big synergy targets. And when you're younger, you say, oh, this is a buy.

This is incredible. This is the merge for the ages. And when you're older, you say, ooh, mergers can be scary. Let me dig into this. And there's more and more. You know, we talk patterns all the time. You see a spinoff that gets puked up. When you're older, you say, oh, I've seen spinoffs get puked up two or three times before.

that's a buy signal and more and more of them, right? So I think one reason as you get older as an investor you get better is you have this pattern recognition to build on. And you can you could apply it to macro as well, right? It's one thing to say, hey, I like to buy stocks when they're down. It's another thing to go through a real panic and to kind of feel what it's like to manage a portfolio on that and trade through that and all that type of sort of stuff. So that's one reason investors get better over time.

On the counter, I know that kind of my least favorite. investor I talked to are older investors, let's say, who probably have just a few more grades than me. But when you talk to them, I think they rely on patterns as a crutch, right? And I'll give you an example. I talked to one investor who's been doing this for 25 or 30 years, and we talked about two stocks. And the first stock, we talked about, he said, oh, this stock reminds me a lot of my experience investing in, let me anonymize it to no one can pick up on it. Procter and Gamble back in 2001. You know, they leaving category, the growth had stalled,

they had these great brands, all this sort of stuff. And everybody was obsessed with tech companies. And then, you know, Procter & Gamble, the tech company spell, and Procter & Gamble, you got a great dividend, the great brands, all this sort of stuff. And you could break this up, and it was trading for a fraction of break of value. And we made a killing on that.

It's like, oh, you know, that, okay, that makes sense. And so let's just say we were talking about, I don't know, choose your company. I thought it was a little bit weird. Let's say we were talking about Home Builder. And he mentioned Procter. I was like, that feels a little bit weird. But okay, I see what you're saying. Some of the part story, nobody cares.

Homebuilders did actually be weird to say good brands. But that's her stuff. And then we switched and we were talking about, let's go talk about a software as a service company, right? Talking about a software as service company. And we talked a little bit and said, oh, you know, this software as a service company reminds me of investing in Procter and Gamble back in 2001. I was like, okay, this guy is just, you know, he's a man with a, he's got a hammer and everything's a nail to him, right? He's living in the past. everything is a 20-year-old investment.

Everything is this. So the one thing I've been thinking about is when is pattern recognition helpful? You know, you see something and say, oh, I've seen something like this before. This triggers for me. It's great. Versus when is it hurtful? When are you not turning anymore? When are you not evolving?

When are you this guy who's literally 25 years ago now, actually, because he was referring to practice and Gamble back in 2001. 25 years ago, I had this successful investment. I'm going to compare everything to this successful investment, you know? So when is it good, when is it bad? When are you using it to kind of identify opportunity and risk versus when are you being lazy and using it as a crutch? I can't remember if I ever wrote this book, but I was going to write a post at one time to talk about how pattern recognition is what makes you better as an investor. And the past couple months, I mean, I've just talked to so many investors to come with these patterns.

I'm like, man, that's not pattern recognition. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm being too dismissive of their pattern. But just something I've thought about. Like, where's the line between laziness and experience and using it? And let's apply this to AI. You know, again, if you think about what I said about using leaps as hedges for AI, using leaps on Microsoft and meta and Amazon or Google, options are risky,

not investing in advice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you think about that, the reason I'm worried about that is because I'm worried. You know, every time technology has come more and more out. active investors have gotten pushed out. I think the markets have gotten even more difficult. It's been hard to generate alpha. I know there's a disbues on that, but I've talked about this before. We can talk about this again.

You know, AI, LLM, large learning model. If I had a large language model, large learning model, I can remember. But what it does is it predicts, right? And how does it predicts? It uses past patterns to predict. So I am wondering if AI is going to replicate investor because it's so good at this pattern recognition, right? You could imagine that.

Or if the market is a competitive place, the thing is companies and investors respond to how other investors and companies are acting. And I'll give you an example. In the 2010s, companies get very good at giving investors what they want. So in the 2010s, companies realize that investors are just indiscriminately buying spinoffs, right? And in my opinion, companies started spinning off. the crappiest of the businesses that they had, and they were spending these things off

and getting great bids and great multiples on them. And I think they were actually doing their shareholders a real service by spinning these businesses off and giving their investors a chance to dump their bags on event-driven investors before the businesses cladged or at multiples that were kind of unbelievable. You know, you can look at in the late 60s, conglomerates.

Every investor wanted to bid up growth in conglomerates and issuing stock to buy and create earnings growth. That gets bid up. 2025, that's, you know, micro strategy trades at like two and a half times nav. The first couple of Dats come out and they trade for huge premiums. So what does the market does? It starts pumping Dats until they kill the whole DAT game, right?

So I can imagine a world where LLMs, as they start investing, as it, they start pattern recognition and companies and investors stuff it down their throats, right? LOMs say, hey, historically, you can imagine all sorts of ways and I'm sure that they're going to be, like, I know quants don't just do, hey, we buy momentum. I know they do thousands of factors. But I certainly could imagine where as AI gets more and more into investing, especially as it starts taking over and kicking humans out, I could imagine where companies are saying, hey, we're, we're, you know, if we start increasing our dividend, we get a much bigger bid than we used to. And companies, even companies in distress start doing dividend games where they're paying

out dividends because their stocks get bit up with dividend growth. And they can issue equity. putting into the dividends, and they're trading way about fundamental value because AIs have pattern recognition with dividend growth, right? You could imagine a lot more ways that could happen, but I wonder if AIs will not replace investor because it's actually such a good pattern recognizer that companies and investors start stuffing patterns down its through. Maybe I'm telling myself a story. I mean, AI is really good. Maybe it's so deep and so sophisticated in the patterns. maybe me applying my lazy investor pattern recognition logic to AI is just silly, right? Second way that AI could miss.

I've mentioned this before, but I do think the future of fundamental investing is you need stuff outside of filings, right? Whether it is going to conferences and doing checks and saying, oh, my God, you know, when I talk to people on a call, it's one thing, but when you see it in a conference, and that is something that's very, difficult for AI to do. Or you could just imagine the old, hey, I met the CEO, I shook, shook his hands. He has a firm handshake and he looks you in the eye when you talk to him. And this is the type of guy who wouldn't screw me. So, you know, AI says that company, it's 50, 50, it's a fraud or not. And then there are investors who say, oh, well, you know, I met this guy and met this wife. They're living in a shack. They have no money. People think it's a fraud because he's stealing from his from his customers. And there's just no way that's true because the man left so frugally. So this is a

90% it's not a fraud, 10% is fraud. So those are two ways I could see AI kind of not killing everyone, right? Number one, it's so good at pattern recognition. People stop patterns down its throat, and it actually ends up underperforming, and investors pick up quicker than that. Or number two, hey, there's still lots of outfits to be generated kind of outside the filings and things that AI still can't do. And let me say this.

I spend an increasing amount of time. I love anybody who's got AI tips and tools. I've been spending so much time this year, so much more time on AI using it for summaries. And I was, I'm very scared, right? I've been very hesitant to use it for summarize this earnings call, summarize this meeting, summarize this transcript, summarize this tender offer, summarize this 10K. I've been very scared to you that. And my core names, I'm still not really doing that with it.

But increasingly, I'm trying to get better at, hey, you know, this isn't a company in my core coverage, but this is a company that's a competitor or, you know, this is a company that's a supplier or a non-critical supplier, whatever it is. You know, it's kind of the tertiary company. Summise everything that's it's doing and tell me it. And then if there's something I need, I'll go read it myself. So I'm trying to do that. And once you get comfortable doing it, now there is some risk. Do you get too comfortable, right? But once you get comfortable doing it, I feel like a man on, I feel like you get the limitless drug because all of a sudden you're, you're reviewing so much more stuff and ingesting so much more information. So I'm not an AI skeptic by any means. I am using it like crazy.

The tools I'm building, the tools for identifying types of setups I like. The companies, I mean, it's just crazy. So I'm not saying AI is worthless. I think it's so, so good. I'm just thinking about it from an investing perspective. You know, once it starts getting into a metagame where people adapt and change and pay off structures change, I wonder if it's kind of studying a historical trend, actually get to stop down. We're almost at 30 minutes. I'm going to have to go pick up my daughter in a second. But I will mention one last thing because it's been on my mind and these ramblings are supposed to be therapy for me. So you are my therapist and I thank you for that. One thing that is difficult as an investor is dealing with frustration. The frustration of selling a stock at 10 and having

it run to 30 or the frustration of thinking you should sell a stock at 10, holding it and having it run to or the frustration of looking at the stock and saying, this looks really interesting, I think it's going to work and passing on it and having to go from 10 to 30. It's really effing hard, man. It messes with you and it causes you to lose sleep. One, I personally have been losing sleep on. I'm looking, so I did a post on March 16th. So that was less than a month ago, right?

On, I said, hey, Avis, the ticker's car, C-A-R. I'm reading the post right now. I'm saying, hey, it's had this really aggressive buying from Pentwater, who I really respect. It's this really aggressive buying from Pentwater. This seems really interesting. The stock has been trading at 95. It seems really interesting, but, you know, I've gotten burned in rental cars before. Rental cars is a really difficult business.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, as we're talking about, let's just, we're going to go do this in real time. April 13th, market close. Avis's stock is $371 per share. So that's a four-backer. in less than a month that I said, hey, this looks interesting and I missed. And, you know, I even said, if you looked, I said, hey, pentwater has been buying there, between pet water and cars larger shareholders, 60% of the stock is locked up. 50% of cars free float is sold short. There's the potential for a short

squeeze here. Guess what you got? When you go from 95 to 360, 370, whatever it is, a little bit of a short squeeze going on. And, you know, it's just, I shouldn't be spending, any mental time on it, but investing in a frustrating game. And I will tell you what, a four-bagger inside of a month, even if you're going to do it in small size, it will boost anyone's portfolio, right? And when I start throwing, hey, I think this could be a short squeeze, guess how I would have played it. Would have, should have could have, and again, these are risky, played it with options, right? You would have should have could have, but you would have played it with options that, hey, I think there's a short squeeze, there's a potential short squeeze bearing played with options.

So guess what, it probably would have been a four-bag or probably would have a 20-bagger. And just, I mean, just saying it, I keep, you know, on one hand, I keep saying, hey, Andrew, you didn't really have, you got a gut, you had a gut and a hunch. And you didn't, you know, you can't just speculate on things, right? And I keep telling myself and saying, hey, you need to give yourself the grace to forgive yourself for, you look at a lot of shit. I look at tons of stuff. You need to give yourself the grace that you can't swing at everything. Forgive yourself for that. But another hand, I'm like, damn, you know what? I would have liked a 20 bagger over the past month. Anybody who would not have liked the 20 bagger over the past month can, they can stop listening, they can send me their info on the best if you wouldn't have one to 20 back over the past month. So yeah, look, I have no answers. I don't even know where I'm going with this. Just, you know, this is my monthly ramplings. And it is the type of thing when you invest.

It is just investing is such a mental game. And sometimes when I've lost that and tried to turn myself into a robot, it's actually probably when I've performed the worst. You have to accept it. I think you have to deal with it. and you obviously can't tear yourself up or throw yourself. But you have to think about these things. And I think if you turn yourself into a robot and ignore them,

then I don't think you start thinking deeply about these stuff. And that's just been my experience. So there's this fine line to tread where you're like, you're upset and you're trying to do better and you're trying to learn, but you're also not letting it tear you apart. And now I have no clue where I'm going with this. Anyway, this has been my monthly, I'm ending it there. We're just doing a fast end on me just rambling about my psychology.

I'm ending it there. This has been my monthly ramblings for the month of April. Again, if you subscribe, follow, rate, review, five stars only, please. It would just mean so much to me because I love this podcast. I love my blog. There are some things they give me life. I think they make me a better investor. I enjoy them so much.

But the way I can do them more, I can focus on them more, get more out of them. And if I get more out of them, you will get more of them, you will get more out of them, is more subscribers, more followers, more readers, all that sort of stuff. So you rating, subscribe reviewing really helps. that. I appreciate you listening to my ramblings. I will be back in May with another random rambling, and we have some, I say this every month, but we have some great, great podcast guests and some really interesting ideas. I'm really excited for them coming up, so I think you will enjoy those, and I look forward to talking to you then. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast

should be considered an investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial advisor. Thanks.