Yet Another Value Podcast - September 2025 Random Ramblings

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

In this monthly solo episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker tackles four wide-ranging themes: Trump’s suggestion to change SEC reporting from quarterly to semi-annual filings, Elon Musk’s astonishing $1B open market Tesla buy, the potential for alpha from structural market changes, and the fine line between improvement and mindless investing practice. Andrew also shares candid thoughts on investor judgment and the current explosion of meme stocks. Tune in for an honest and reflective breakdown of how macro shifts and investor behavior may be shaping opportunities—and challenges—in today’s market.__________________________________________________________[00:00:00] Intro and episode overview[00:01:00] Trump SEC reporting proposal[00:07:00] Structural market change implications[00:12:00] Earnings and options volatility[00:18:00] Impact on quant/pot shop models[00:21:00] Tesla insider buying analysis[00:27:00] Elon vs. other big buys[00:30:00] Historical outcomes of big buys[00:33:00] Thoughts on self improvement[00:35:00] Judging other investors’ picks[00:37:00] Wrapping up and reflectionsLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

You're about to listen to the yet another value podcast with yours, me, Andrew Walker. Today is September 20th. It is my monthly rambling for the month of September. Obviously, none of this is investing advice. See the disclaimer at the end of the podcast. But I am going to talk about, where's my list of things I'm going to talk about? I'm going to talk about a few things. First, I want to talk about Trump and his proposal to change SEC reporting requirements from quality to semi-annually. Just think about how moderate changes in the game structure could be used to generate alpha. So have that discussion. Then when it's talk about Elon Musk's open market purchase of a billion dollars in Tesla, I don't think people realize

just how unique and how crazy that purchase is. So a little bit on that. Finally, we're going to talk a little bit about improving as an investor. And then I wrap this up with a discussion of stocks that I know people are in who, when I hear people in them, I just, I can't believe that they're serious that they're in them. That was probably the weakest part of the pod, but, you know, it's something that's been on my mind just because we've just been seen, I guess not unique here, but as you see just crazy business models and meme coin and meme stocks explode upwards and wild things on Twitter, I mean, it is truly the season. Short sellers have been desponded, in my opinion, recently.

So I've just been thinking about getting rich off these crazy companies, how you think about investors to that. So anyway, those are the four things we're going to talk about. We're going to get to that podcast in a second, but first, a word from our sponsors. This podcast is sponsored by Portraitanalytics.A.I. Portrait analytics is a whole new way to use AI investing. They've got a unique set of AI tools that will help you discover, research, and monitor new investment ideas with unprecedented depth, including allowing you to automatically screen

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listener said, portrait is simple to use, super fast, and really intuitive. Check out portrait analytics today and see how they can improve your research process. That's portrait analysts at portrait analytics.a.i. All right. Hello and welcome to the get another value podcast with me today. I'm happy to have on myself. It is Saturday, September 20th, the long longtime listeners know that once a month I get on and I just ramble for about 30 minutes and talk about everything I've been thinking about for the past month. I really enjoy it. Hopefully you enjoy it too. We'll get to the ramblings in a second. Well, I guess you know what? I'll tell you what I'm going to ramble about first. First, I want to talk about Trump changing

the, suggesting that the companies change reporting from quarterly to semi-annually. Why? Because I just think it's a lot of fun to talk about and think about. And I think there's some interesting nuggets there. So let's talk about that. I want to talk about the enormous open market purchase that Elon Musk made of Tesla. I want to talk about, as I always do, a little bit of improving and thoughts on improving yourself and kind of learning curves, angles. I want to talk about things that you change your mind on, and then I want to talk about some meme stocks, because you know what, if you're following the markets in September of 2025, it is meme stock and shit coin, shit company season. And it's just, it's just wild out there.

So I wanted to put some thoughts on that. So I'm going to jump into all that. But before we do, quick disclaimer remind everyone nothing on this podcast and investing advice that's always true particularly true today because yeah i'm just going to ramble for 30 minutes so let's hop into everything uh the first thing i want to start start by talking about is earlier i think it was this week trump tweeted about changing the report changing companies reporting requirements from quarterly to semi-annually and the cc at least seems to be thinking about doing that and why do i want to talk about it look i if you're telling me you're investing in companies for the long term. You've got great compounders. You're buying great AI companies. You're buying great data,

whatever it is. Do I think it matters if companies report quarterly versus semi-annually? No, absolutely not. I will say if you look at the UK, I think it's been really tough where they do semi-annual reporting and then the companies come out with these kind of, to be honest, BS trading updates every quarter where they will selectively disclose stuff. I don't like it. I'd rather companies report quarterly, but I don't think it matters. hugely semi-annually versus quarterlies. However, I do think it's a really interesting thing to change about. Why is that? Because it is a structural change in the market. And it's a moderate structural change. And moderate structural changes can present alpha opportunities. You know,

I like to use sports analogies a lot. In basketball, the three-point line is introduced. And guess what? If you were faster to adopt the three-point line, and I think NBA teams benefit of hindsight were very slow to adopt it. If you were faster to adopt the three-point, line, then your team benefited. And you know, you look in the 2010s, the teams that were pushing the envelope on taking three-pointers where they were getting huge structural advantages in the game. Three-pointers versus quarterly slash semi-annually reporting. Okay, maybe we're being a little bit facetious. But you know what? In the 90s in basketball, they moved the three-point line in by two feet. And I think it really changed a lot of the strategy and everything, too.

And that might be more king. But think about quarterly versus annually. If I told you tomorrow, all companies are going to reporting semi-annually versus quarterly, you could make alpha really fast. Just one way you could do it is if you think about options, option prices tend to be highest right after quarterly earnings. Why? Because there's volatility on earnings. Everybody knows, follow Netflix. The stock is up 10% or down 10% after every earnings. If you're buying an option that includes an earnings release, it's going to be more valuable because there's more volatility giving the quarterly earnings. If you tell me tomorrow that all companies are going to switch from quarters to

semi-annually, you could make alpha by going and selling a bunch of April and October call options. Why? Because right now, those call options have the volatility of, sorry, I said April. I think it would be May and May and November, actually. Because May, you know, most companies report their Q1 earnings in late April. So May options incorporate that Q1 earnings volatility. November options.

Most companies report Q3 earnings in late October, early November. November options include that Q3 earnings volatility. If Q3 and Q1 reporting go away, will the volatility on those options come down? And then the volatility, there's going to be more volatility in the Q2 and Q4 updates because instead of getting, you know, if you think of a company that they report Q1 earnings and they miss or they beat or whatever and they give guidance, well, that takes away some volatility from the Q2 earnings because now you. you know how the things are going. Well, Q2 and Q4 earnings are going to be lit in this scenario,

right? Because now companies might be coming out and giving you, you know, it's six months of information instead of three months of information. So you could make alpha by selling the overpriced at this point options that incorporate the Q1 and Q earnings. So that would be the Mays and November's and buying options that incorporate the, that don't incorporate the heightened volatility of the Q2 and Q4 earning. So that would be kind of, you know, if I'm doing it, most companies report their Q2 earnings in late July, so you probably want August earnings. And then most companies report their full year earnings, you know, somewhere in February to early March, so maybe you want March. But that could be a systematic trade that would generate insane

amounts of alpha if you believed it. And, you know, please go see the full disclaimer. I'm not saying anyone individually should put this on. This is the type of thing that quant shops would do, right? Like they would really monetize that. But it's just an example of, hey, that would be kind of, quote unquote, free alpha that you could systematically make if you really thought and understood how the structure of the market change. You know, the other one I do think is right now around earnings, it's not lost on people that a lot of the pod chops, I think it's a little overwhelmed, but a lot of the pod shops model is figuring, you know, company X is reporting earnings now, we get our position three days in advance of it, we've got the whisper numbers, we've got

views on the quarters and everything, the quarter happens, and there's lots of changing and positioning and stuff. You do wonder if that happens four times year. That's one thing. If that happens two times year, how does that affect the pawn shop model? How does that affect all of us who are trading against them? It's just really interesting to think about. And you could imagine lots of bolt on effects. You know, 20 years ago, there was lots of alpha around index kicks, right? S&P dropped something and there was just all this foresewing. Today, a lot of quant shops make a lot of games off of anticipating the index kicks, right? If they think a stock's going to get booted in June, they start shorting it in April, and they've got up-to-the-minute models of what's likely

to be included, deleted, all this sort of stuff. You could imagine lots of ways, like moderate structural things like this could create a lot of alpha for someone who's thinking about it. So I just wanted to mention it and think about it. I think it's been a little under-discussed that, yes, if you're a value investor, if you're doing long-term investing, if you're not doing like crazy quantity of models. It probably doesn't matter for the long term, but it could matter for game selection and where you can pick up alpha and things that are mispriced. I could imagine lots of ways it could do that. I'll just give one more example. If you get more volatility around earnings, that could be, even if you're not trading earnings, that could be a lot more opportunity

to buy stocks. A company comes out and instead of Q1 earnings, they miss, they come out in Q2 earnings. It's the first time they've heard and they miss badly and they have their date, their guidance badly. If that's a company you really like, this stock is probably more likely to overshoot to the downside. So even if you're not playing the quarterly earnings game, you could imagine how it changes, hey, you know, it's more important for me to wait for a company to report earnings because if they slightly miss, I'm going to get my shot to buy really good companies because they're more likely to overshoot to the downside. So I just wanted to mention that. I think it's really fun to think about. I'm not saying I'm doing anything there. I don't know

if the change is going to be implemented, all that sort of stuff. But anytime you have a structural change, I do think it's useful to think about and to start incorporated and thinking, hey, how can I use the structural change to my advantage? I've kind of laid up the ways I think I would probably use it, particularly the maybe a little more tri-powder waiting for more volatility around earnings. But I think that's very interesting to think about. Let me move on to the second thing I want to talk about. Now, if you read the blog, I'm recording this September 20th.

I'm actively working on a blog post that I'm probably going to put up September 22nd, so might duplicate the blog a little bit, might not. Who knows? I'll include a link to the blog and the show if you want to go read it. But Elon Musk bought a billion dollars of Tesla on the open market last week. I think he technically did it September 12th and filed the form for September 15th. And I was a little surprised. You know, everybody mentioned, I saw lots of mentions, CNBC covered.

Everyone covered it's Elon, it's Tesla. It's a huge, it's a billion dollar buy, really nice round number of work there. A lot of coverage of it. just saying, hey, this signals Elon's bullishness, all this sort of stuff. And that's probably true, you know, the old adage, insiders buy for, insider sell for a lot of reasons, but they only buy for one reason. They think the stock's going up. And, you know, say what you will. I think a lot of insiders started to understand that, hey, we buy a token amount of stock and it signals competence in the business and gets our investors off or back.

So, you know, I'm pretty dismissive when I see, oh, CEO who's making $4 million per year buys $4,000 of stock on the open market. A billion dollars is a really big number, and it is curious, you know, in the wake of Elon's worth so much money, is a billion dollars a token amount to Elon or not? I don't fully know the answer. But, you know, still, it's a billion dollars. It's a big purchase. So all that kind of got covered.

What I was surprised by was I don't think people understand quite the scope of how big this is, right? I spent a lot of time following insider purchases. And my favorite way to use insider purchases now is actually not looking at individual company insider purchases, though I do think those are important and useful signals and all that type of stuff. I've actually come to have really good success, to be honest with you. I wish I had leaned harder into it, and I'm going to lean harder into it. It's one of the reasons I've been thinking about Elon Musk following sector-wide transactions. So what do I mean by that?

I'm not looking, hey, you know, is the CEO at Bank X, is their stock down and he's buying the bank stock? That's nice. But in mid-2020, in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank failing and First Republic getting taken over by J.P. Morgan, all the regional banks got crushed. They were all trading below book value. And I was very bullish on banks when all this happened. I've got the post to prove it. I wish I had been more so bullish banks.

And one of the reason I was bullish on bank was just across the board, across the spectrum. You could throw a dart at any regional bank, and you would find directors buying all. on the open market, the CEO buying on the open market. And often these weren't in enormous, enormous sizes. You know, we weren't talking about a CEO going and buying out a billion dollars of stock, but you were talking about directors by, you know, multiple directors buying a full year worth of their board's fee on the, in the open market.

For a lot of them, for the first time ever making insider purchases, CEOs putting, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars here. So you were seeing it across the board. And I've come to believe that type of across the board insider buying is really, really interesting. And I can really only point to two places where it's happened for me, and both of them have been great success. Maybe it's end of two, but one was Banks in mid-2023, and the other would be busted biotex, which I was pounding the table on earlier this year. Again, and I'm not too to my own horn. I'll be happy to throw my nose and the myriad

amounts of mistakes I've made in the past. But I do think those are interesting a signal. So, Anyway, I follow these closely because of those signals. And what I think is getting underreported on Elon Musk is just the pure size of this. I cannot find another insider transaction that comes anywhere close to the size. And part of that is just because there aren't a lot of people with a billion dollars lying around, and there aren't a lot of companies that can take a billion dollars of insider buying on the open market. But, you know, the closest I could find, and by the way, the SEC's website is not easy to track on this. But if I just look, the closest I could find would be Dustin Muscovitz at Asana.

The ticker there is ASAN. He bought 350 million of Asana stock in 2022. Now, that was directly from the company. So even that was not on the open market. Now, Dustin, if you go and look at Asana, again, the ticker is ASAN, that is a very interesting history because I actually believe he has made the most aggressive insider purchasing of all time. He did that $350 million slug directly from the company.

but he also filed a bunch of 10B plans to buy stock on the open market at Asana. I believe from late 2021 until the end of 2022, he bought a billion dollars of stock on the open market, including multiple 100 million open market slugs. So I think that's the largest insider buy of all time before Elon. That one's interesting because the stock's been a disaster. So I think that's interesting. But so that's one, right? You kind of get through a year's worth of a 10B5 buying on the open market.

kind of get to a billion dollars, including a 350 million slug directly from the company. The only other one that I could find that even rivals this size is Berkshire buying three billion of oxy stock on the open market in early 2022. That was one four and four. They bought three billion of oxy stock. They actually bought more than that. You know, people remember Buffett used to there was like, I think it was $60 per share or $55 per share.

I think he had like kind of a limit. And if it went below that, Berkshire would be. make huge, huge purchases of Oxy. I think they probably bought six or seven billion of Oxy on the open market back in 2022. Now, why is that interested? It's not a direct comparable because Berkshire is a financial buyer, not an insider, right? They're only filing a four and four because they own more than 10%. That's the only other one of similar size that I can find, but it was through a four and four. So that's, I don't think that's a comparable like Elon buying. It's not an insider, but that's the only other one.

If we were talking form four, just like straight insider binds, Dustin Moskavit, Asana would do it. Harold Hamm bought 200 million of CLR at the depths of COVID in 2000, June, July, 2020, late June, early July 2020. That was $200 million across a couple of 50 million slugs around that time frame. Outside of those, there's Jamie Diamond, bought 26 million of JP Morgan on the open market in early, in early 2016, Tomin Fertitta, who is not an insider at Wynn, but he does in over 10%,

and he's a gaming CEO. He bought, I think he's got the largest insider purchase of 2025 before Elon. It was 27 million of Winstock in late March, early early April of this year. And then, yeah, I mean, aside from that, that's it. So look, I just listed these guys, right? Like the biggest ones are 25 million. There's 100, one or two, 50 to 100 million. But I think it shows just the pure scope.

Like, this is insane. And I don't think it got talked about enough. You know, it kind of be like if Walt Chamberlain came and scored a 180 points in today's NBA, right? Where the top NBA score might get 50 to 60. You'd be like, what? Like, it's so much higher than anyone else is scoring. Like, teams aren't scoring this much and the man dropped something. I've just never seen anything in the scope.

So I think that's interesting, just the size I think has been underreported. But here's the other interesting thing. You know, most of the reporting centered on this is a bullish signal from Elon Musk. And it is. He dropped a billion dollars of company, a billion dollars of his own money on the company. People don't do that if they're bearish. But the other interesting thing is the history of these types of open market insider buys is actually really, really poor. And, you know, the first one I'd mentioned is Asana.

You know, Dustin starts buying Asana, and the stock price is closer to $100,000. hundred dollars per share, then, you know, I think he starts buying in the 80s. Asana today, I'm pulling it up as you and I speak, Asana today is trading for, let's see, it's trading for $14 per share. I mean, this has been some of the, it has been some of the worst capital allocation of all time. It's been a disaster. The other ones don't look great. Now, Jamie Diamond buys JP Morgan. That does very well. Tillman for Titta, his purchase of win, looks like it's doing pretty well. I'd say it's early, but it looks like he timed it well. It's doing pretty well. But again, he's not really an insider, so I don't know how to think about that.

Berkshire, the $3 billion of purchases of Oxy. Oxi hasn't done that well since the Oxy stock is about flat since early 2022. It's underperformed the S&P 500, and you know, you can say, oh, it was oil and gas. There was a lot of macro stuff that happened since then. Yes, you're correct, but go pull up the largest oil and gas stock since when Berkshire was buying Oxy back in 2000. 22. Exxon's about in line with the S&P 500. Chevron, all these guys, Oxy's been a huge lacquard.

So Berkshire, you know, Buffett's the smartest guy in every room he walks into. He's a legend. He's the goat. But the Oxy purchases don't exactly cover him in glory, right? So I think the history of these huge insider purchases is not just mixed. I think it's actually kind of negative. It's not great.

I'll give you one more. Patrick soon. I want to say, Schem. who run us all the Nance. He bought the LA Times, and these are all the, a lot of biotech firms. Back in 2020, right when the, right when Harold Ham is doing the purchase of CLR, Patrick puts $45 million into NK is the ticker at the time. I think it's Nat Nance.

It's one of his Nance. It's Nant K. West is what it trades on in the open market. He puts $45 million into them. Now, this is through a private placement, but I think it's a really interesting private placement because if you go back and read the filings, he puts money into Nant at about $12 per share, and alongside his $12 per share offering, the company goes and does a public offering that prices at $9 per share. So he puts money into the company at this big premium, a 30% premium to where the public

equity offering goes off, and it's $45 million. So it's huge. Company's been a disaster since then. So again, I don't know. I don't know how this turns out for anyone, but I was just surprised. I'd never, you know, I saw lots of people say, hey, this is Elon's biggest insider buy of Tesla ever, which is 100% true. He's done a little bit of insider buying of Tesla in the past, but if you look, it's normally been alongside equity offerings, and it's much smaller than this.

This is huge. It's orders of magnitude bigger than anything he's ever done, but it's also orders of magnitude bigger than anything else I can find in the public markets. So I just think that size is really interesting. And then, you know, I saw a lot of bears who got real quiet when Elon bought a billion dollars of stock on the open market. So a lot of bulls who got real excited and probably greatly show so. This is a really good signal value. But I think if you look at the history of these big purchases, it's actually CEOs who are kind of getting high on their own supply. Now, again, that's not to say that this can't turn out well. If I go look at the Jamie, the Jamie Diamond J.P. Morgan's purchase. J.P. Morgan's almost 7x with dividends

reinvested since he made that purchase in 2016. The indices are up 3x, right? If I go back I mentioned Harold Ham. That's a really interesting one. Founder, CLR, depths of COVID, late June, early July 2020. He buys 200 million of CLR for about $17 per share. He would take CLR private a few years later. I think it was late 2022 at like 70, mid to low 70s per share. So, you know, he kind of set his own marks on both sides, but he's got a four to five background of sand. So not seeing it's all disaster, but the history of these, you know, you think about the NK investment I mentioned, you think about the Muscovitz investment. You think about the Muscovitz investment. You think about the Berkshire, big four and fours don't always mean super bullish stuff for people. So I'll have a post on that, but I just thought it was really interesting. I wanted to point that up. Let me switch rapidly here. Let me go to improvement. And, you know, I've been writing and talking a lot about improvement and improving and investing.

The Art and Foken podcast, number 333, we got just absolute rate for views from people really enjoyed us talking about that. One of the reasons I talk so much about improving is because I'm trying to improve, right? And I'll just give you one thing. Like, I worry, it's very easy to do mindless practice. I'll give you an example. You know, I look at a few things in my life. One, grade school.

I played a lot of golf with my dad, and that was awesome. We probably went to the driving range three to four times a week. I probably played a full 18 holes with my dad once a week, and we probably walked not holes once or twice a week. So that's a decent bit of practice. And to be honest, I just wasn't that good. I just wasn't that good. And I look back at the amount of time I was putting in grade school into doing this. And it was mainly time, I think, to spend with my dad. But, you know, I look at the amount of time I put into it. I'm like, damn, you were pretty damn bad for how much time you put into it. You know, I think like, I'm not saying I needed to be a scratch golfer, but I was in sixth

eighth grade. I'm not saying I need to be a scratch golfer, but, you know, my peers were much better than me, and I think I was spending as much, if not more time at the driving range than them. Or I look at, in high school, I probably played an average amount of video games versus my peers. But I kind of look at it and say, man, if you were playing an average amount of video games in high school and college versus your peers, you know, probably should have been better than I was, to be honest at these games. And I just look at and say, hey, this was mindless practice. This was mindless time. Like, even if you thought you were getting better when you were going to the driving range theater for times for week, you weren't really getting better. I think it was mindless. So I'm pointing this out as a personal

failing of myself, right? I can look at the pure amount of time you put on something and the pure amount of times, like, kind of I just think of it as spinning my wheels, but it's not actually improving and getting better. It's just like mindless time. So that's one of the reasons I've thought so much about improving and getting better always, but particularly recently, because I spend a lot of effort and investing, working on this, doing the product. And I want to make sure that the time I spend investing, is driving towards something, it's getting better, it's not mindless. What do I mention all this? A, I like to grant, I like to talk.

And sometimes I think when I say stuff out loud, it makes more sense than when I'm writing it, which might suggest some failures as a writer. But the reason I mentioned all now is someone pointed to, I was talking to someone, and they pointed me to an old Todd Combe, Ted Westler interview when they had been at Berkshire for a year or two. And one of them comes out and says, look, I'm in my mid-50s and joining Berkshire and working with Buffett for the past year or two, however long it has been. This has been the steepest learning curve of my career. Like, I'm learning so much, but it's been really difficult and it's evolved a lot of work. And I thought that was really interesting. You know, I am more late 30s

than mid-30s at this point. But I don't consider myself a finished product by any means. But, you know, I would say I think of the learning curve and the work curve. And I think it was harder earlier than it is now. It makes me excited that there's still that much more to learn. I truly believe that. But it got me thinking, like, what about joining Berkshire and joining Buffett, was it that pushed the learning curve so high? Like, what were they doing? What specifically was it?

Was it the depth of Buffett's questions? Was there something else? Like, what was it? How can I model it? how can I repeat it? How can I use it to get myself better? I have no good answers there. Like literally none. I will say, you know, and I can use the podcast for this as well. I would suspect one of the things is the depth of questions. But I also think it's a fine line. I've never talked about it in person. But there's also a fine line that I find myself,

maybe I tiptoe around too much, but what is pushing and what is learning versus how do you do it without being a completely condescending, no-it-all butthole. Again, I don't know the answer there, but it's one thing I've really been thinking about, like, hey, how can I push myself to get better? How can I push the people who I talk to a lot to get better? How can I do the latter without being a complete butthole who, you know, people might get better if you yell at them a lot, but you're just a butthole if you do that. Like, how do you in a way that's collaborative, that's encouraged?

Like, when I look at Berkshire, it does seem like a very collaborative environment that people do seem to like being there. how do you push each other but in a way that everyone feels like they're getting better and they feel like they're they feel happy about it so a lot of stuff that it has been on my mind on improvement there I'm always open to suggestions if you tell me hey Andrew this is something that I do in my investment process that makes me a lot better of investor that I feel like to help me improve I'm open to it I will tell you for me personally I think the thing that helps me improve I think I improve the most when I am writing the most when I

thinking the most when I'm putting stuff publicly up. One reason I like these ramblings, prepping for them helps me clarify my thoughts, help me deems my thought. I tell people all the time, I've been writing the blog for, let's call it 10 years. I go back and read the stuff I read, wrote not just 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago. I'm embarrassed a lot of times. And I'm kind of happy about that, you know, not happy to even embarrass, but I'm happy that I think the person who is writing, thinking would be doing this today, would write something better, would do something better, would be better, would think about this better. I feel the same way with a lot of my investments as well.

So, you know, always trying to improve, always trying to get better. Podcasts, I mean, the first podcast I did, I'm just so embarrassed by. But I think I'm still getting better at that. So I'm trying to get better. I'm always open to it. I was not brambling there. I think you can see that. Last thing I wanted to mention two last things.

You know what? Let's save stuff you change your mind on because I'm going to go back to the Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett well. I can save that for next month. I'll leave you a little tease, stuff you change your mind on. I'll leave you a little tease for next month because we're running long. Let me start. I want to end with the last thing. And that's shit co stocks, meme stocks, whatever you want to call them, right?

There are a lot of them out there. And the reason they're on my mind right now is if you are paying attention to the markets in September of 2025, it is shitco stock season. I mean, these things are just going parabolic. I know short sellers have been borderline despondent recently and probably with good reason. If you are a company with no revenue, a bad business model, or maybe no business model, a high short interest, and this last part's very important, and I don't own you, because if you've got the first three and I own your stock, I guarantee you've been getting killed, but if you've got the combination of the three and I don't own you, your stock has been a rocket ship recently.

And I'm not going to name any of the stocks, but I'm sure. everyone knows many of them and can point to some of them and all that sort of so. Anyway, I mentioned that because there are some that are controversial where I understand both sides of the controversy, right? I could see the bull case. I could see the bear case. I'm not involved. There are some where I can see the bullcase and I'm involved. There are somewhere I can see the bear case and I'm probably not involved because I'm just not going to sort of shook this up. But there are some of these controversial ones where it's clear to me the bulls are just insane.

And you would normally associate that with, I hate to use retail, but you know, you think about some of the retail stocks that went bankrupt and had these cult followings behind them and stuff. I normally associate that with retail. But there's one or two or seven that when I look at them, it's just so clear to me that the technology is, you know, a bunch of smoke and mirrors. And the company is just completely unserious. they are just hitting the ATM and insiders are selling nonstop and all this sort of stuff.

And the stocks have screamed higher. You know, they're a 5x, a 10x, a 20x, whatever it is. But I'll have people reach out to me and talk to me or I'll talk to my friends and they'll be invested in them. And it doesn't even have to be those. There are some controlled companies where I think the management teams are clearly bad actors or their assets suck. And I'll talk to people and they'll love them.

And anyway, what I'm driving at is, there are companies and stocks where when I talk to, I think they're so clearly bad ideas that sometimes when I hear people along them, I'm just like, hey, I don't know. Like, I just take the person less seriously. And I don't know if I'm like, you know, everybody does, I'd hate to be judged by what I do on my worst day. I'd love to be judged by what I do on my best day. But I'd hate if somebody, you know, like in the moment. rush hour traffic. I don't know, whatever. I did something uncharacteristic. I hate if people looked at that one moment and apply that to the entire time of my life, right? I probably shouldn't be judging one investor, even if they're a concentrated investor based on this one investment that

I don't understand that for a lot of them have worked up really, really well, right? But when I look at that, when I look at being longed these companies, I'm just like, I don't know how you can be a serious investor and be longed this. And I don't know where I'm going with that. But, you know, I'll talk to these people and I just I don't get it and I don't know how much like if you are long if you're a concentrating investor in long 10 companies and nine of them you know you and I can have a good discussion on and I'm having good you know we've got good points and I'm learning a lot from you and then the 10th you say hey I'm long this you know pot of magic beans because I think the magic beans actually sprout a giant bean stock that grows to the sky and then we'll go up to the sky

and we'll live with the giants and get rich off their riches forever and I'm just like no this is just like a pot of magic beans that are actually just beans that are being sold to you and all the red flags around this, you know, the insider selling, the insider selling the ATM issuance, all these red flags, the shady accounting, all this, like you just ignore it all because the magic beans will grow into a bean suck. I don't know how to think about that when I'm talking to other investors and when I'm doing work. So anyway, it's on my mind because some of these like, you know, we're almost on with Q3. You're going to start getting Q3 letters or you can go on Twitter and you can find people taking these crazy victory laps.

You know, retail people who went YOLO long and choose your AI winner right before the Fed cut and now they've made 100 X their money in, you know, 24 hours. And I guess good for them. Yeah, I wish I had done that. But, you know, I'm more thinking about the serious people who have made five-baggers this year on these companies or who continue to pitch these companies that have, are controlled codes and aren't getting this. But how do you judge somebody when they've got like one, one to me, error of a market?

mission that's just so glaring and so poor. I don't know. Maybe it's a value of understanding on my end, but it's something I've been thinking about and it's going to get more. I think I'm going to be thinking about a lot further as, you know, I get hit with people who say, hey, I'm up 400% this year because I was long pot of magic beans that went up quite a bit. You know, how do you think about them as investor? And it's one of the reasons art folk and I hate to bring it back to that conversation. We talked about a lot about how do you disaggregate someone's track record? And I think it's just really interesting. Okay, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble. I am rambling. This has been a lot of fun for me. It is September 20th. I am looking forward. I think we've got a great set of

podcasts coming up for you. I'm looking forward to those. I'm looking forward to getting my post up on Elon's open market purchase. I'll include a link in the show notes. As always, you can reach out. Love to chat. Love to swap thoughts. Love to have you help me improve as a podcast or as an investor, all that sort of stuff. But I really enjoy doing these. I thank you for listening. And I am looking forward to chatting next month. 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.