Yet Another Value Podcast - July 2026 Random Ramblings

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Investing is a game of arrogance. The base rate when you buy any stock is that it just does the market return, so every position you hold is a bet that you know something the market doesn't. My July ramble is really one question asked five ways: when do you look in the mirror and admit you were wrong? I walk through my three-year rule on a single name (if it has gone nowhere for three years, the problem is probably you, not the market), and the harder version, a value fund that has underperformed for a decade.I use myself as the example. I saw AI inflecting in late 2024 and didn't pull the trigger, because I'm a value and event guy and I didn't see the bet, and a lot of those names then went on a generational run. Was that discipline or a mental block? From there I get into why you're effectively short Nvidia if you don't own it and you're benchmarked to the S&P, the Fundsmith letter walking back its principles as the cautionary tale on both sides, my own April 2025 book (the net-cash biotech and the Nebius trade I sold way too early), and why London increasingly trades like an emerging market: a takeover wave, private value miles above public value, and the frustration of owning cheap names that only move if someone buys the whole company.This episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. Fiscal.ai is a modern financial data provider for global equities, with 20+ years of statements, ratios, filings, segments and KPIs, a web-based terminal, and a self-serve API that plugs real-time fundamental data straight into Claude and ChatGPT. Use fiscal.ai/yav for 15% off.Chapters:(0:00) Intro and episode preview(2:50) Sponsor: fiscal.ai(4:16) Investing is a game of arrogance: beating the base rate(6:18) The three-year rule, and when a whole strategy has underperformed(9:19) Missing the AI trade: discipline, mental block, and the Fundsmith letter(14:42) If you don't own Nvidia, you're short it(16:46) My April 2025 book: Nebius, net-cash biotech, and selling winners too early(21:47) Why London trades like an emerging market: takeouts and dead stocks(27:08) WrapLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.comSee our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimerProduction and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/

All right. Hello, welcome to yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. Today is my monthly random ramblings for the month of July, 2006. I say today, but it's actually yesterday. And then, of course, because I am not a professional podcaster, I botched the intro, so I'm re-recording it today. But I think I've got a fun one. It's just, you know, as I do, in every random rambling, I'll remind you nothing on this podcast, investing device, either disclaimer at the end of the podcast, either disclaimer in the show notes. But, you know, this is just me rambling for 20, 25 minutes. I think it's specifically 23 minutes. in 36 seconds because I recorded yesterday about things that have been on my mind for this month. So to start, we're going to go with the confidence of being an investor. You know, being an active investor. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are an active investor in some way, shape, or form. You know, it is a game of arrogance. Every time you buy a stock, every time we do research, you are saying, I think I am so smart.

I think I understand something so much different than the market that I think I can beat the market and generate off. Right? That's ultimately, I mean, investing is fun. It's interesting. but ultimately the reason you're doing it is generate alpha and beat the market in some way shape or forms. And that is a very arrogant act. So I'm going to talk about that.

And then specifically, like, you know, when is the arrogance deserved? And when do you need to kind of, I talk about looking yourself in the mirror all the time and say, hey, I am wrong. And that could be I am wrong on this stock that I've done a lot of work on and thought I had a differentiated view. When do you need to say, it's not the market? It's me. And then, you know, you can start looking at it is. Or if you're underperforming the market, when do you look at the mirror and say, hey, it's not the market. It's me, you know, is it after a day? No, probably not after day. Is it after 50 years

of underperformance? Yeah, it's probably before 50 years. So there's someplace in between. And, you know, there's all these stories of value investors throwing in the towel at the end of 1999 after underperforming for a few years in dot-com bubble. And if they just hold on a little bit longer, is that a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Is that delusion? So you can talk about that, very much related, talking about evolution as investor. How do you continue to evolve? But while kind of sticking to your principles. Then we're going to go to just a little bit of, you know, again, as an active investor, if you sell a stock and then the stock does really well, how do you measure that?

How do you think about that? Did, you know, sometimes companies hit lottery tickets? Did you sell a company and they just kind of struck good lightning and hit a lottery ticket? Or do you need to look and say, hey, I might be getting bored and selling before my thesis fully played out. And as I try to do always, I use myself as an example for that. Finally, wrap it up by talking about the London Stock Exchange. which have made lots of jokes about it is in emerging market, but things are getting taken out for huge premiums over there

and just some quick thoughts on my favorite little emerging market and the frustration of investing the market where kind of the only way to get out is getting taken out a big premium. Nice if you're in the companies that get taken out of big premium. Kind of frustrating if you don't. So we'll go there. We'll hop to all that in one second. But first, a word from our sponsors.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Fiscal.aI. Fiscal.a.i is a moderate financial data provider for global equity. In addition to their web-based terminal, Fiscal is one of the leading data connectors for Cloud and ChadGBT. With their self-serve API, you can connect in real-time fundamental data directly to your LOM. And look, I sent it in a podcast before and I'll say it again. They're not just an advertiser. I've been doing lots of cool stuff with Claude and cowork in particular,

building all sorts of awesome tools, and I need an API. So guess what? I signed up with my own money, toss my own credit card down and said, hey, Fiscal.aI, I need you guys to plug in to, of my cloud code for me so I can keep building these tools and ABAS, that's real-time fundamental data and stock prices everything. And that includes more than 20 years of financial statements, ratios, filing, segments, KPI, and all sorts of other things.

Unlike other providers, their data updates within minutes of earnings reports, not days. So whether you want powerful out-of-the-box promo or the real-time AI connector with API, you can use my link at fiscal.a-i-i-slash-YAv. That's fiscal.a-i-slash-y-v to get 15% off. There'll be a record show notes too. All right. Let's dive into the talk about. Okay.

First topic I want to talk about something that's been on my mind, a lot about it. I have some friends who I talk to who have probably heard me ranting or thinking on this a few times. So if they're listening to the podcast, they're probably hearing duplicate or deja vu. But, you know, being an investor is an interesting gain of confidence and betting yourself and kind of arrogance. And what do I mean by that? Look, the base rate when anyone buys a stock is that it is going to do the market performance, right? Investing is technically a zero-sum gain. Everyone who buys or sell, one side's right, one side's wrong.

You can't, you know, everyone can't generate alpha. Any alpha that you take has to be taken from somewhere, right? So for you to generate alpha, someone else has to generate a little bit less. And if you buy a stock, you're saying, I am, you know, the wisdom of the markets, I am smarter than that. I know something the market does it. And what you know can be very different, right? You might know the fundamentals of the business cold and know that the market's missing that.

You might know there's a four seller on the other side. And the reason the stock is puking is because there's a four seller getting margin called or whatever it is. But it's a game in arrogance. It's a game in beating the base rates, right? Because the base rate when you buy a stock is that it kind of generates the market return. So it is a game in arrogance.

And there's two places where I think that is interesting. One, if you are and, Most of the people who listen to this podcast, you know, the random ramblings is a unique episode, which is just me rambling for 30 minutes. But most of the time you listen to this podcast, it's an hour long deep dive into a company or a stock idea. And it's not invested in advice because nothing is. But it is an hour long deep dive into a company, hopefully getting you up to speed on the

fundamentals, up to speed on the opportunity, up to speed on why the guest, who is generally a professional investor thinks that this company, as I like to ask, presents a risk-adjusted alpha opportunity. So if you're listening to that, it's because you're looking for, you know, what you're trying to beat the market. You're trying to find alpha. When do you as an arrogant person who thinks they can beat the base rate, when do you say, hey, enough is enough?

You know, and is it, and I'll talk about that in the individual stock point in a second. Well, it can be an individual stock, right? I've mentioned, and I'll come back to this later, but I've mentioned I've increasingly kind of come to the three-year rule, right? If you invest in a company and it's been three years and the stock has kind of gone nowhere, It's time to really look in the mirror and say, hey, is it me or is it the market? And the answer, I hate to say it, but if it's been three years, the answer is probably you. And we'll talk about why that fails in a second.

But I will see a lot of the big losses I've had as a investor has been a company. You know, I buy it and say, hey, this is a really good company. I'm buying it like 15 times earnings. And then a year later, I say, hey, probably wasn't as good as I thought, but now it's a 10 times earning. So the price is better. And then, you know, a year later, hey, I'm a year later, hey, I'm a year later, I'm I don't even think this is a good company. It's an okay company, but it's six times earnings in their buying back stock.

So, boy, look at that free cashier year. And then, you know, you're like, hey, this is a restructuring player. And, you know, you started out as a great company. It's kind of a camera restructuring play. Like, I'm going off time. But whether you're looking at the individual company and you're saying the arrogance to buy the individual company, when do you say, hey, I was wrong? And it's hard because, yes, we as investors, as thinkers, we want to have open minds and all

this sort of stuff. But you were arrogant. You were a belief. You saw something that market was. missing. When is the market just, you know, if it was at 10 and it goes to eight, when is that just the dips of the market versus, hey, the market is telling you something or what you saw wasn't there? Very difficult. But the other reason I mentioned this is, you know, I get a lot of investor letters and I'll see some investor letters and the person will say, hey, you know, the fund has been

running for 15, 20 years and the S&P is up 10% annualized over those 20 years and we're up 8% annualized. we're up 2% annualized, we're down 10% annualized, whatever it is. When do you as an investor look and say, hey, I'm doing something wrong. I was arrogant to launch this and I shouldn't be doing this. Or I need to look in the mirror and reassess the process. And it's interesting, you know, like, again, 20 years is telling you something, but you launch arrogantly and maybe say, hey, I mean, I believe this about myself, right? I'm always learning.

I'm a better, I've said it so many times on the podcast. I'm better investors today than I was. just yesterday, but particularly two years ago, five years ago, I'll go read some of the stuff. I wrote five years ago and be like, what was this guy thinking? You know, and hopefully I'm continuing to get better. So even, you know, if you launched and you said, hey, arrogantly, I think I didn't beat the market. Maybe you didn't beat the market over the past 10 years, but you've still got that arrogance streak in you. You're a much better investor now.

Maybe the next 10 are different. I don't know the answer. There are two places I kind of want to pull that I think are related to that. And number one, you know, if you're an investor and you're doing it professionally, or even if you're doing it in your PA, right? You're doing it because hopefully you enjoy the process, but you want to beat the market, right? And now my question is, if you underperform,

when is it time to look in the mirror and say this process needs to evolve, right? And I was thinking this because you'll see so many letters. And I try not to call, I never call anyone out. I try not to like call, I try to bring this back to me. But so I'll use myself, right? I think about late last year, I saw pretty clearly that AI was inflecting and accelerating.

And you can look at the blog, right? I was talking about and I was saying, hey, this is really starting to change my workflows. I saw that and I didn't pull the trade on any AI trades, right? And I think part of that was me saying this is outside of my wheelhouse. And I think part of that was me saying, hey, I'm a value guy. I'm an event guy. And I don't see the value.

I don't see the event here, right? And a lot of the AI stocks went on a generational run on the heels of that, right? So I'm using myself, not someone else, but we can broaden out someone else. You know, you'll see these letters where people will write 10 years in a row and they'll say, the markets are up, right? The S&P was up 15% this year and we're up 10%, but we're sticking to our value investing principles. When is it time to look and say, hey, these principles that we've been investing on are

they serving us, right? Are they, do we need to change them? Do we need to throw them out the window entirely? And by the way, how many times? times have you heard of the value investor who stuck to their principles and threw them out at the window, you know, in late 1999, early 2000 and got their face ripped off on internet stocks. And, oh, again, I try not to call people out, but I think a lot of people have been referencing the Chris Hone.

It was Chris Hone? I can't remember who the fund Smith letter. I'm so sorry. The Fund Smith letter. I'm sorry, Chrisone. The Fund Smith letter where they said, hey, we've been underperforming for the past few years because we've been sticking to our hardcore value investing principles. and we're going to start being responsive to the market, right?

The market cares about momentum or growth, whatever it is. We're going to start incorporating that. And they got dumped on in a lot of places. And if I'm giving my priorities, I would probably say rightly so. But I think it's interesting, right? These are people trying to evolve, trying to, and they're saying, hey, this is how the market is, the game is played today. And we're going to start trying to play towards that game.

When were the value investing principles holding them back versus when are they just throwing their principles out the window to cheat some momentum? humorously. I think it's a really interesting question. Again, I think it's some of the stuff that, yeah, I haven't read the letter in about two weeks. So I'm kind of doing this for memory and on the spot because this is me rambling. But I think some of the stuff they talked about was a little bit chasing the near term performance. But I do think it's, you know, if you, if you're reading one of these letters and it's a fund who's been calling everything overvalued for the past 12 years and they've been buying, you know, legacy and nothing's working, you know,

At one point, 12 years is a long time. At what point is the time to look at yourself, say, hey, you know, meta in late 2022, generational and cheap. Hey, guess what? I will tell you that Netflix in 2015, 2016, was crazy cheap. And, you know, a lot of us, that's around the time. I think John Malone said Netflix has gone past escape velocity. You know, they've kind of gone out the trash fear.

Nobody's catching them. You could have looked at that and you would have done great if you bought Netflix, particularly if you shortened legacy media companies against them. Everybody likes to say, hey, you know, Mike Runnard Sandusk, when they, Sandusk, when they spun out in March or April of 2025, they spun out at like 0.5 times next year's earnings because they're going to earn so much this year, right? That's really effing cheap. Now, no one knew they were going to earn it at the time, but the stock's been an absolute scrimper. But it is worth saying, like, hey, and now to bring back to myself, missing these aga high trades, is it because, you know,

I need to look myself in the mirror and say, yeah, they might not have fit into my wheelhouse, but these things were very cheap and the numbers were inflecting. And could you, did you have a mental block, Andrew? Did you have a mental block that prevented you from looking at these things because they didn't fit your neat and tidy bow of, hey, this is a spinoff trading at four times cash flow, buy, by, buy. But, you know, if you had done the work, you could have seen the inflection. Maybe you could have put, I don't, I tell people, I don't like to build extensive models

because I think people can get, I found myself, you know, you get so caught up in the model and so caught up of focusing on the model that you kind of miss the forest for the trees and it looks great on the model and the business is falling apart. And you're like, I'm buying it 20 times cash, a 20% free cash flow. It's like, yeah, but the cash was all gone because the business is falling apart every which way. But, you know, maybe I had done a little bit of modeling work. I could have said, hey, you know, I'm seeing an inflection. Maybe I could have talked to some customers who were saying unlimited man, we can't get filled. Apple, you know, there was the story of Apple just, going, I think it was going to Micron and Micron was having a meeting and they were debating internally, hey, you know, we say 100% price increase for three years of supply and then they'll kind of negotiate it down to 50%. And they went and said 100% price increase for the next three years and Apple just signed on the dotted line instantly. That's very on Apple-like, right? Maybe you could have seen that story and seen the inflection, seeing the modeling. So, you know, breaking through evolving your process, when is my fixation on the cash flow holding me back versus seemed opportunity? And if I'm evolving from that fixation,

is that me chasing the momentum, chasing the thing that's worked in the recent past, or is that me evolving and improving? I don't know, but it's my random rambling. So I get to throw out everything that I'm thinking about to you, and look, we can talk about it. You can reach out to me, we can have a discussion.

Oh, just briefly on this. You know, the other thing is, I was having this discussion with a friend who we were just grabbing coffee. You know, Invidia is 7.5% of the S&P 500. And whether you like it or not as a active investor, you're probably getting benchmarked against the S&P 500. Even if you say, I can't tell you how many times to say, I don't own anything in the SP 500,

you always kind of get benchmarked to SP 500. But maybe 7.5% of the SDP 500. So if you don't own NVIDIA and you're getting benchmarked to the S&P 500, you're technically short in video, right? That's kind of how it works. InVIDIA goes up and you're starting from behind April. And video goes down and it's beneficial. And that's why a lot of value investors who invests in low cash flow businesses, that's why a lot

of them, their peak out performance was like 2000, 2004, because all the internet companies had grown so big. They were such big parts of indexes as all of those fell apart. None of the value investors owned them. They own great cash flow in businesses that actually went up. So the indices are down 20%. And all these guys are up

20%. And boom, that's clear. But, you know, just worth thinking about, hey, if you're an active investor by not having any AI exposure, you can say, I don't invest in that stuff, right? I am the value guy. I don't invest in any of that stuff. Well, two things. That means you're short them.

one and two, again, just coming back to it. Should we have our minds open to that? And I used Nvidia, but if you start adding all the AI and everything, it's a big piece of an index. And if you're saying, I'm not going to invest in that. You know, I wish I had the past six months, but you're actually short, a huge piece in index. And how do you start thinking about that?

How do you start? And you can say, hey, I might be benchmarking instances, but I invest in different stuff. That's all true, but you are short that and you kind of have to come to grips. And it's something I've been thinking about, like, do I mean to be, quote, unquote, actively short these by not having this exposure. I think it's very interesting thought. Let me turn to something related. I was doing some work, and I saw, again, I like to bring everything back to myself,

so you know that I'm like talking about things that I'm thinking about. And so, you know, I honestly, with very rare exceptions, I try not to dunk on anyone on this podcast. And every now and then, somebody would be like, hey, you said that. Did you mean that about me? I'd be like, bro, in a Dandreifer way, I don't think about you at all. I'm not trying to dunk on anyone with very few exceptions. I was looking at a portfolio of mine and doing some work.

And the portfolio had some just, oh God, it's hard to say. It had some just absolute bangers in it, right? And the portfolio was from around April 2025. If you've been following the blog, you know, I got really invested in net cash biotex then. And I had a pretty quick trigger as they traded up. And a lot of the bangers were net cash biotechs that had a lot of success in phase three. For instance, this was actually a little before April 2008. I used to have a huge position in cure because for a while, cure was one of the only biotex trading well below cash value.

And they also had some other assets in there. And cure for those who don't know, they posted a surprising results that suggest their drug might have a lot of success curing Huntington's disease. And the stock, you know, when they announced that, the stock went from. five, six, whatever, to it peaked at like 60. There was some drama, but right now I was treating at 40. And, you know, I was looking at that and I said, hey, I had this big position. Here's one. I had a big position there.

And I sold it for, you know, I did okay, bought it for undernet cash and kind of sold it around cash. Did okay? Wish I had held that, right? Several, several stocks like that. And then there were some other stocks that have done really well. To be blunt, better than my portfolio. And some of these, yeah, I'll name one.

I'll name one. Nebius. Nebius did this was the former Yandex. Yandex is like the Russian Google. They get sanctioned. They enlist. They're on the NASDAQ. They unlist.

And, you know, they've been, the stock's been frozen for 18 months. And they do this huge reboot and all this sort of stuff. And I was like, oh, this is catnip for Andrew, right? So I bought the stock. I think my cost base was like 18, 19. And I probably sold the last of the stock in the high 20s. Great trade, right? Nope.

Stock said, you know, that was 15 months ago I sold. Stocks at 230 today, right? So, again, I'm not breaking new ground when I say, hey, guess what? My portfolio has not kept up with a 30 to 230 in 15 months, right? So a few like that. Look at that and say, okay, a lot of the stuff I sold, and I had pretty good positions of these, has done better than what my portfolio is. I need to look at myself.

And I'm struggling with it, right? Did I sell because I mentioned Nebius? The four selling happened. I was buying because I was like, hey, I'm buying kind of like, at cash. And I know a lot of very smart people who thought the sum of the parts was much, much higher. Nebius, for those who don't know, I'm not going to go through it. They had, the real reason they've gone up is they've pivoted into a neocloud model, but they had some investments in kind of interesting growthy plays. And some people smarter than me, obviously were saying,

hey, the way I was valuing them was much lower than they were valuing them. And I think they've been kind of proven right. Right. So they would have said, hey, Andrew, you're still on 30. You're still way below some of the parts and forget all the free upside optionality of the NeoCloud. You know, but I'm kind of looking at the net cash drugs. I bought a lot of these for 60% of cash and sold them at 100 to 110% of cash or maybe 90% of cash.

And a lot of them have worked because phase two trials, phase three trials came up heads instead of tails, right? It's successful instead of fail. So I'm just struggling. You know, I'm looking and I'm saying, hey, Andrew, are you turning through the portfolio too fast? Or are you getting impatient and not letting these

thesis is play out. Or contrary, are you kind of like, you know, there is something to, hey, the money that is yours to be made, the situation you were here to invest in has kind of played out. And maybe I'm not counterfactually hard enough, right? There are certainly stocks I've done sold that are down, but maybe I'm not counterfactually hard enough. The trial could have been a failure, all this sort of stuff. But it's just something I've been thinking a lot about, right? Hey, you, I think you'd be a bad investor if you didn't. If you looked and said, hey, these, a serious, because I run pretty concentrated, a serious handful of your stocks from a year ago, two years ago, have done really well over the past two years better than the stocks you've

owned. What's the break in the process? Was this good process? Was this some issue with you? And it's just something I have been thinking about. And look, that's also, there is probably also an element of bull markets that, right? The past, since the early April tariff delays, stocks are up a lot. Maybe these stocks I had had excess risk. Like a lot of the stocks I'm comping to them. I was and am still big in net cash biotex, right? So I'm comping if I'm doing Nebius, which has a lot of cash, but it morphs into kind of an AI play. And we live in the world where the AI play works really well. There's a world where the AI play didn't work out well. And maybe the net cash stuff, which has done pretty well. It does pretty well in all worlds or

most of all worlds. And maybe the AI play only plays well on this one. So just something I've been debating and I'm not breaking new ground by saying this, right? I think all all investors are evolving, but something that's been on my mind this month. And I thought I'd share it with you. And I think that goes well back to the earlier things I was talking about, the arrogance of being an investor and being an active investor. Let me go quickly to the London Stock Exchange. If you listen to the podcast regularly, anytime somebody comes on and pictures a London stock, I say, I joke that it's an emerging market. And I just wanted to quickly. mentioned it because literally this week, I believe, there was a company, Mighty that got taken over.

It's MTO over in London, and they got taken over for a big premium. And I saw a news article that said, the headline quote is, we're going to run out. And what they're saying is, we're going to run out of London listed firms because Mighty, and I'm looking at the article as I speak, is the 11th one billion pound plus takeover from the FTSE so far this year. And it's interesting, right? Because what's happening is London is so devastated as a stock market and all this sort of stuff that you're having private equity firms come in and they're paying big premiums, right? EasyJet, which is a low budget airline, got taken out by Apollo, I believe, for like a gosh, I can't even remember.

If I was a professional podcaster, I would have looked up the premium, but they got taken out for a big premium. Mighty gets taken out for a big premium. All these things are getting taken out for big premiums, which suggests private market value is. much higher than public market value, right? And there's two interesting things there. A, that we are going to run out of firms, we are going to run out of companies, public companies. It's interesting because all of these are trading at such low valuations

given such big premiums. And you would think, like, kind of from a supply and demand point, if you're about to run out of companies, you know, one of the reasons people talk about Australia trading at a structural premium is because they've got a lot of pension funds that are forced to put money into the stock market. And there are only so many companies and the pension funds are always having cash.

inflows, so they like kind of structurally boost the, boost the multiples because you've got this structural buyer, just kind of demand exceeds supply. Heck, S&P 500. One of the reasons I know a lot of people think that S&P 500 multiple expands over time is because people save, wealth grows, people save, they put it into the S&P 500 and the index just buys. And as you get bigger, the index is forced to buy more of you. It's just from a supply demand perspective, it is kind of interesting. Hey, hey, you've got this just beaten down stock market.

where companies are getting taken out for huge premiums, and the remaining companies don't seem to be getting much of a boost. Like at some point, it seems like the kind of demand should be overwhelming supply, because supply is drinking show quickly. So that's interesting. But the other side of it is, you know, I just huge premiums, private values much higher than public values.

It's really interesting, right? But I said the FTS-250, 11 takeovers and 11 takeouts. That's still only like 4 to 5% of the 250, right? 11 divided by 250. If you are an active manager, and let's say you're running concentrated, you're running 10 stocks, right? It's not only possible. It's not only possible.

It's probable that you weren't long any of these big premium takeout stocks. And the reason I mentioned that is because my, again, bringing it back to me, my experience of London, I've got like three to four London stocks in my portfolio. I think it was four, and I sold one of them out of frustration. my stocks go nowhere, go, nowhere, go, nowhere, go nowhere. It's just interesting. Like, if you were an active manager in London, your portfolio is doing terrible unless you were one of these companies that got them taken out.

And, you know, it's tough because you can go and say, hey, private market values are so much higher. Look at this. Look at these things. Look at the takeouts. Look at the work I'm doing. Look at the comps, whatever you want. But when you've got something that's a market that's broken like this and the only way

to get premiums, to get the stock up, is to get these takeouts. It sounds great in theory, but in practice, like, hey, I'm underperforming constantly despite knowing that the private market value is so much higher. What's the solution? F, I have no clue what the solution is, but I think it's really interesting to think about. You know, there was a line somebody said to me on, like, every investor wants to be invested in an inefficient market until they're actually invested in an efficient market. And then they kind of, you know, they come and they say, hey, look, I found this great value

and they buy it and a year later like, hey, it's even better value now, but it hasn't gone up. The stock isn't doing anything. And then, you know, probably the old-timers say, welcome to the party, pal or something like that. But it's just interesting when you've got, and I'm not saying every stock on London exchanges listed, but go run through them. You'll be able to find some pretty interesting values pretty quickly, I would suspect. It's interesting when you say, hey, the only thing that can work, make these things work is a takeout. And guess what? a lot of these firms insider ownership is low. So inside ownership is very low. They,

they're low to sell. If they do, they're all going to lose their pensions. They're going to lose their salaries. They're all going to lose their board fees. So, you know, for me, what I've kind of started saying is you look and you say, every day, you look and say, this thing is so cheap. But then you start wondering, hey, is management ever going to do the right thing? And they will say, we're doing the right thing. We're growing our intrinsic value every day. But from a shareer, you're saying, hey, the stock is going nowhere. The right thing, the only way will ever get value is a private equity selling. And, you know, it starts to weigh on you. You say, hey, if they don't sell, I'll never go anywhere.

So do I need, you know, it's a great case for activism, obviously, but what can I do? Should I just go elsewhere? Do I want to play the luck of the coin flip that I have one of the five percent of the companies that are going to get taken over? Do I want to rest of my value investing principles? Do I want to evolve, as I talked about earlier? So I don't know. Anyway, we're at about 30 minutes. I'm probably going to wrap it up here.

Look, this has been my random ramblings for the month of July. It is July 22nd, as I randomly ramble. got some good podcasts coming up. I hope you guys are having a great summer. Looking forward to talking to you. I don't know what I'm going to ramble on, but I'll ramble again for 30 minutes in August. And until then, we've got some great podcasts coming up.

We'll talk 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.