Yet Another Value Podcast - September 2026 Random Ramblings

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

The 10 year has gone from 4.2% at the start of the year to 4.6% in late August to 5.1% today, and the S&P is still basically touching all time highs. Interest rates are financial gravity, but I wonder if gravity works on a lag. Consumers and allocators are slow to move money from stocks to bonds, and corporates termed out a lot of 3.5% debt in 2021 to 2023 that starts rolling in 2028 to 2031. Today's free cash flow is flattered by that spread. Underneath the index there is already real pain in housing, levered small caps and biotech, and my bottom line is the margin of safety in stocks keeps getting skinnier.From there: why merger arb spreads that looked juicy to anyone who came of age in ZIRP are just the time value of money at 5%, and where the crashes and long bear markets went. We have gone from 1929, 1987 and 1972 to 1974 to a nine month GFC, a two month COVID drawdown and a tariff tantrum that lasted weeks. Is that a stronger market, or a more fragile one waiting for one big break?Then a friend's line that every investor is either overconfident or has imposter syndrome. I am firmly in the imposter camp, which is a problem, because almost every great investor I can name reads as overconfident. Survivorship explains a lot of it: we don't see the overconfident coin flippers who zeroed out, and Archegos is the cautionary tale. I close on mentorship, sparked by Ian Cassel's book Stock Picker and his mentor Skip, and why everyone, Buffett included with Ben Graham, eventually outgrows their mentor.Today's post on Muse and the inertia sell off: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/musings-on-muse-the-inertia-sellMy episode with Ian Cassel on Stock Picker: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/ian-cassel-on-stock-picker-the-bookLast month's rates piece: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/rates-are-screaming-and-stocks-arentThis episode is sponsored by Fiscal.ai: https://fiscal.ai/yav. I'm a paying customer and I connect to Fiscal through its API. Two things I use it for: a huge database of fund letters I can pull up on any name I'm researching, and audited financials where every number in the model links back to the source. Use my link for 15% off their AI connector.Chapters:(00:00) What I'm rambling about this month(01:57) Sponsor: Fiscal.ai(03:30) Two stories: Muse and rates(04:24) Interest rates are financial gravity(07:35) Does gravity work on a lag? The coming debt refi wave(09:17) Index highs, pain underneath: housing, small caps, biotech(11:23) Rates and special situations: merger arb isn't free money anymore(14:22) Where did the crashes and long bear markets go?(18:11) Fed put, fragility, and one big break(19:55) Overconfident investors vs imposter syndrome(23:20) Survivorship: Archegos and Situational Awareness(25:32) Mentors: Ian Cassel's Stock Picker and Skip(27:16) Even Buffett outgrew Ben Graham(30:07) Journaling as a way to keep evolving(30:51) Wrapping upLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.comSee our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

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You're about to listen to yet another value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Today is my monthly random rambling. But before I discuss that, if you are watching on video, you will see me holding up a wire. And why am I holding up a wire? Because this is the wire. It's my microphone, which I forgot to plug in before I started recording. So it picked up on my laptop microphone instead of my audio, which means the sound quality. It's admittedly probably going to be pretty poor.

I will try to fix it in editing, but I'm just disclaiming that out the way. Speaking of disclaimer, a reminder to everyone, nothing on this podcast is investing advice. Always true, but probably particularly true today because I just go, and this is a man who can't remember to plug his microphone in. I'm just rambling for 30 minutes about a bunch of things that have been on my mind. So we're going to get there in one second. Oh, what am I rambling about today? Today I'm starting with talks on the market overall.

Interest rates have been screaming higher for the past, for most of the past year, but especially the past few weeks, and just some thoughts on interest rates are financial gravity and some thoughts on why we're not really seeing gravity starts pull yet and all that sort of stuff. Then we're going to go to some brief discussions on, you know, crashes and bear markets seem to have disappeared over the past 25 or maybe even 40 years? Where have they gone? Why have they gone somewhere? Are the markets more fragile today than they were because of that? Maybe not, maybe not breaking new grounds, but just things that have been on my mind there. A quick discussion of interest rates in special situations, you know, I think a lot of investors, if we grew up in

2010's. You're trained one way and you might not have adjusted for the interest rate environment we are on today. So hit that. Then a discussion of overconfident investors versus imposter investors. I'll discuss that when we get there. And finally, a discussion on mentorship, largely driven by Ian Castle's book, Stock Picker, had some discussion of mentors that's just been in my head. And I love that book. I've been thinking about that. So get those thoughts out on paper. We're going to get to all those random ramblings in one second. But first, a word from our sponsors. Today's podcast is sponsored by Fiscal.A.I.

Fiscal.A.I is the modern financial data provider for global equities. Look, that's what they have me tell you, but let me tell you how I've been using Fiscal. com. A.I. And I'll remind you, I'm a customer. I paid with my own money to connect to the Fiscal. There's two things that I've really found it useful for. Number one, this is something super unique. They've got a huge database of fund letters, and the fun letters are connected by the API. So whenever I'm researching a company, whether it's researching the company because I'm interested in them, or looking up an event or prepping for a podcast.

The first thing I have my AI do is I say, hey, I'm prepping for a podcast on, I'm prepping for a podcast on HIMS. And the first thing he does is it says, hey, here's all the recent letters on Fiscal.A.I of people talking about HIMS and here's their thesis, here's their bare thesis, all that sort of stuff. So that's the first thing. And that is really unique and that is really fun.

And then the second thing I do is I use it for edited financials, right? I've got my model and I say, hey, I'm looking at HIMS. Go build me model. And it says, sure, I'll build you a model. And every line in that model has a link. So I can see, oh, they're pulling this eBDOT number. They're pulling this segment number. They're pulling this number from three years ago.

I click on it takes me right to Fiscal. com. And it says, hey, here's these company-specific KPIs. Here's these ratios. And I can see exactly where they're getting in, and exactly where they're kind of here. So it is a super-reliable data provider that can connect to your AI. I found it super helpful.

I'm a big fan of the podcast. If you want to try it out, you can use my link at fiscal. A.I.S. YAV to get 15% off their AI connector. That's fiscal.ai slash YAV, and there'll be a link in the show notes. Let's dive in and let's start with, you know, let's just start with some markets talk. So I think as I record this, it is the kind of mid-afternoon on September 24th. As I record this, I think there are two dominant stories in the markets overall for the past couple weeks or whatever, and those two stories would be agentic AI, particularly

muse, which you know is topic of the charts and all the sort of stuff, and it's causing a lot of sell-off on the consumer inertia plays and everything. And I think that's probably the dominant story right now. And I've written that out three times in the past week on the blog. So you know what? I know we're living in an audio past baseball, but you can just go read them, especially my piece that I posted this morning, and I'm dropping my headphones here, especially my piece that I posted this morning on, you know, consumer inertia of the sell-off, the differentiates. between it. I'll just point you to that. The other dominance to read the markets right now and what I'm going to discuss in this podcast is interest rates. And, you know, interest rates are, I don't want to

see screaming higher because we're not in like hyperinflationary or anything. But interest rates have been moving up fast. So, you know, if you look at the 10 year, it was at 4.2% to start the year. It was at 4.6% in late August. And it's at 5.1% now. So, I mean, it has moved up fast. over the past three weeks. And that's the other big story, you know, because interest rates are financial gravity. I think Warren Buffett is the one who said interest rates are to asset prices what gravity is to the apple. So I think that's Warren Buffett. You can correct me if wrong, but interest rates serve as financial gravity. And I've written before about how, you know, in 2011-ish, when we were in the ZERP era, you know, I mean, long-term interest rates were

two-percentish. If you were running a DCS, And I was working for consulting firm to do an valuation work. You'd run a DCF. And you know, you'd look at the stock price in the DCF and you'd say, hey, either there's huge terminal value questions here or we're completely off in all of our modeling or equity prices are wrong, you know, because these companies were borrowing at like 4% and their equities were yielding 10%. And you're like, hey, that's way too high of an equity risk premium.

Or I guess you could say the equity risk premium and blown out. And what happened then was over the next 10 years. I mean, it was boom times for equities and obviously earnings it well or not, but a lot of it was multiple expansion. And I kind of look, you know, right now at the S&P 500 is basically touching all-time highs. The Russell and S&P 500 are up 12 to 13 percent, and the Russell's been a little weak over the past month, partly because of this interest rates. And, you know, I think a lot of the stuff in the S&P 500 are, or in the Russell are more sensitive to interest rates and stuff. But economy's doing well.

Stocks are pretty high. and interest rates just keep on ticking up. And I've kind of been wondering if, you know, interest rates are gravity, as Warren Buffett says. But, you know, they're gravity in the same way. If you throw something really high in the air, it keeps going up, up, up, up, and then it slows and slows and slows, and then it comes down. And, you know, eventually the town becomes a plummet. I'm not saying it plummet. But I guess I'm wondering if interest rates work on a little bit of a lag when it comes to the stock market and this longer-term thing I'm talking about, you know?

So I can see a few ways to take. You know, it might take a little bit of time. In the same way, it took people, consumers are not perfect. And that's kind of the consumer inertia trade that muses it. And they don't instantly look at things and say, oh, the dividend yield on the SMP 500 is 4%. The interest rates on bonds are 3%. I need to switch more of my money to equities. It takes a while for that shift to happen.

You know, in the same way, I wonder if it takes a while when yields go off. If it takes a while for people to look and say, oh, my incremental cash goes to bonds. versus equities. I wonder if that's a longer term thing. I don't know, because that does describe a lot of weight to what consumers do, and you know, most of the money is managed by really big asset managers. Maybe that's too much. I don't know. This is my monthly random rambles. I'm just rambling on this. The other way it could work on a longer term lag is corporations were very good in 2000, let's call it 15 to 2022. They really turned out their debt long term. Banks were not as good. You know, that's what happens with Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic and everything.

They had a lot of floating rate exposure. They blew up. But most corporations really laddered out their debt. They went longer to medium term, fixed rate. So when rates started moving, it didn't impact them. But you know, what happens when most corporate debt is on the five to 10 year time horizon? What happens when all that debt that was issued in, let's call it, 21 to 23, starts rolling? call it 28 to 2031. You know, if they're paying 3, 5% on that debt now, they go to

roll it and interest rates all of a sudden are 8 to 10%. And I've been wondering if that has, is one of the reasons the lag effects works, you know, because the free cash flow that they're generated right now is boosted by that interest rate differential. And the market, you know, again, the market is supposed to be a very efficient pace. It should look through that. All this stuff I'm talking about on it being slow to adjust to gravity. It should immediately adjust. You know, interest rates go up and it should say, hey, you know, interest rates from 4.9 to 5%, well, every business is worth, I don't know, would that be 3% less than that. I wonder if it works slower. And in the same way, I wonder if it's not quite incorporating,

hey, the free cash flow that the companies generate today, two years from now, it's actually going to be lower because they're going to refi at a much higher interest rate. I wonder if it takes what offer that's happened. And also there's capital allocations, you know, managers are valuable too. I wonder if they're kind of the wave of refinance. is what happens. That said, look, I did say equities are still touching or near all-time highs. You know, the past month has been pretty rough for the Russell 2000. And you can see it. You know, it's famous. Even with markets at all-time highs, there's always a crash somewhere. Earlier this year with SaaS, right now, I mean, levered small caps have really been hit.

Housing has really been hit. I've got a lot of smart friends who are telling me go look at housing names, you know, it just crossed my decks a couple days ago. Berkshire buys 200 million of Lanar, maybe three days ago or something, you know, Lenar, big home builder trading just above tangible book right at book value. So Berkshire's seeing the pain in housing, you know, now they're, they're huge and $200 million, there's nothing for them, and they've got a lot of cash to park, but a lot of smart investors are saying, hey, you know, a lot of the housing names are starting to look kind of trow and you get a lot of different levers to pull there that could help the housing games out. So housing levered small cap, I think there is a lot of pain. Biotech has come back really hard.

And, you know, if you follow me over the past 18 months, you know, I follow a lot of biotech. So biotech has come down really hard, really fast. I think there's the roasting issues and all sorts stuff there. But even with indexes at all time high, underneath there, there's a lot of pain, you know, the consumer inertia names. There's still some value. Well, I think. struggle to say there's still some value in assets. I think there's opportunity, if you believe it's not going to right. So anyway, you know, my bottom line here would probably be, I don't think stocks are ignoring rates, but it doesn't seem like they've really adjusted to the current rates. Growth is good right now. I think there's a lot of, I've been, this is me being a broken record,

I think there's a lot of volatility on the horizon. And I would say overall, I think the margin of safety in stocks is just skinnier and skinnier as prices remain. elevated, I see lots of looming risk for them, and interest rates continue to tick up. So even if, you know, earnings remain good, I think that financial gravity is, it's going for a one quick other thing on interest rates. You know, I've written about this before, but interest rates does something interesting to special situations. You know, if you announce a merger and the merger is guaranteed to go through and, but you say, hey, it's going to take a year's close, you know, if interest rates are 5% and the merger price is 100, well, then you're going to trade for like, you know, $95.

And that is if it's guaranteed to go through. Now, nothing is ever guaranteed. So you're going to trade, you know, a little bit below that 95 to adjust for, hey, the, you know, there's, it's only a 99% as it happens. And by the way, you know, why should we, if company asks is buying company why, like it's not like the U.S. government. So there's going to be some corporate liquidity and all this sort of discounts for it. right, but this would have to 5%. You know, I I think it's interesting. The environment you're raised in is a lot of times how you think about things. So I still see people, a deal will get announced, and, you know, in

2015, when interest rates are 2%, deal gets announced and the stock will trade, you know, if the deal is 100, the stock's going to trade at 98 or 99. It's going to like basically trade right up to that deal, especially a really safe deal, because interest rates were basically zero. So

there wasn't a lot of time value of money. You know, today I get hit by, especially generalists, I think, especially generalists, I get hit up by a lot of them and, you know, the deal comes at 100. They'll be like, oh, the stock's trading at 94. Isn't this an opportunity? And kind of like, hey, I don't think it's an opportunity, you know, like there is the risk of the deal break. So you've got to factor that into kind of your Kelly criteria and your upside

and everything. And then you've just got to discount that, that hundred back to the present day. And once you do that, it looks like this deal is trading. Yeah, 90. 25% implied. And again, I find it more generalist than specialist event investors or I think the pod shops are pretty good at pricing their cost of capital because they're drawing down. But it's just funny, you know, you come of age in 2015 and there's an assumption. The assumptions that you make are kind of how you invest. And if you came up age and the 2010-2020 ratio

was kind of like, hey, capital is free. Time value is low. that's as interesting to take up, that assumption is different. And it's just interesting to think about, you know, I think about, and we're going to talk mentors later, but, you know, when Warren Buffett has launched his partnership, the two most important men in his life, his dad and Ben Graham are both saying, hey, now is probably not the right time. The Dow's never gone above this number. And Buffett launches anyway because, A, what does he hear what the market does? He's Warren Buffett. He's going to beat the pants off it. And B, you know, he thinks they're kind of living in a different world. You know, it's been 20 years. The earnings have grown and everything. But that's an assumption that kind of they had come up with and growing with and a market thing they've done. And interest rates are similar. So anyway, those are my two things.

Let's go to something else I'm talking about. Oh, market related. So, you know, just something I've been thinking about. Crashes and long bear markets. Where did they go? You know, crashes. You read history and you see these big crash days. You know, you think about.

Black Monday in 1987 where the markets are down like 25% of a day. You think about the 1929 crash that leads to the Great Depression, right? Where I think against stocks were down like 33% or something in a day. Big crash is like that. And then when you read history books, you hear about these long bare markets that are just brutal, you know, the Great Depression. I mean, markets are in a bare market for 10, 15 years in the Great Depression. Okay, that's one thing. But, you know, you read about the late 60s to early 80s, the markets go zero. There's this brutal bear market from like 1970 to 1974. Like, Buffett's talking about being, I think the Buffett quote is an oversex man and a

herring because everything's so cheap in 1974. And he's selling stocks at five times earnings to buy stocks at four times earnings and all this sort of stuff. These long, long drawdowns, right? And I've just been thinking a little bit. you know, there was a little bit of a bear market from, let's call it, 2000 to 2002 with the dot-com bubble, but a lot of that was the uninflating of dot-com elevated multiples, and actually a lot of the kind of more value-warning stuff does really well in 2002, and I've talked about this. You know,

a lot of the kind of legends value invested today, their bones are really made from 2000, 2005, one of the markets not doing anything, and all these value stocks are just ripping, and they've kind of lived off that for 20-plus years. You know, fast-for-to-day, you know, you have, of the global financial crisis, that kind of, you know, the market peaks in October of 2007, I want to say, it bleeds down a little bit as bears turns and everything happens. But, you know, the peak of the GFC is, let's call it July of 2008 till March of 2009. So that's about nine months, right? Since then, you have COVID, but the COVID correction in 2020 lasts for maybe two months.

It's like late January to everything bottoms in late March. You have the tariff tantrum in 2025, but that's less than a month. And I guess what I'm wondering is, hey, the crashes have gone. Maybe that's because markets are better. We've got circuit breakers, the Fed liquidity. People know that Fed will provide liquidity. Why aren't we seen those long, drawn-out recessions in bear markets anymore? I don't have an answer, you know.

Maybe we were just living in a great world and we've got lucky. and the economy overall has been good. I know a lot of people on both the crashes and the long drought would point to the Fed over indexing and over-engineering the markets and providing too much support. Perhaps people might say, hey, the reason we don't have the long-drawn bear markets anymore is because of structural changes.

If you think about the 70s, you've got lots of autos and lots of steel, and those are really cyclical. So you're going to have a long bear market when the economy suffers, whereas today you've got lots of really capital-light business. You know, whether it's the tech companies before they went on the hyperscalor boom or whether you're talking, you know, McDonald's is all franchised at this point or anything. Maybe it's more capital light, a little more recession resistant. So I'm sure there's a little bit of all of those, but it's just interesting to feel like we've got a whole generation, multiple generations now of investors who have not invested through anything more than kind of a quick couple month drawdown. And I don't know why the bear markets have disappeared.

And I think about that in terms of what happens if we ever do run into a really big bear market. I think it has everything I say it. I think it's really interesting to think about. And I think the other side is if you like anti-fragile type thing, if we do have, and I realize I'm starting to sound a little bit like a camera, but when you say, hey, the market's been over-engineered by the Fed, the economy, you know, the moment we start to have a recession, fiscal support, Fed support, all this sort of stuff. The moment the market has a dip, you get the Fed put.

Well, what happens in a fragile system? Like, when you have all that support, it actually becomes more and more fragile, and you can have bigger breaks, right? So it's something that becomes more and more fragile. We'll have a bigger break where something that's anti-fragile. They have lots of little small breaks, but that actually makes stronger over time. I have wondered, and there's other things contributing to this, you know, zero-day options, everything.

I have wondered if the market is like, we're prone for one day we wake up and this market's down just like it opens down 5% and by the afternoon, you know, wire after wire after wire is getting tripped and you're down like 20% or something. I don't know. Look, I'm not claiming to be an expert on market structure. It's just something I've been thinking about. And, you know, it all ties together with the market structure, the rising interest rates, the lack of huge recessions.

Hey, maybe the reason we haven't had a long drawn out bear market is because if the last one was kind of ends in the early 80s, you know, since then we've had that whole back The whole market backdrop from the 80s till, call it, 2022, is interest rates are coming down, right? Or they stay very low. Now interest rates are rising a little bit. So maybe the answer is, hey, Andrew, the reason we haven't had a sustained bear market is because interest rates can be coming down. And we're about to have a lot of long bear markets because even if stocks go higher over the long term, you know, they can really sell out. And one of the reasons they saw out is that financial gravity starts acting on them. Okay. That was a long-winded talk about

markets. Let me go to just investing things. I've been talking about general investor things. I was having a dinner. I was going to say beer, but I don't drink. So I was having dinner with a friend. And he said, look, there's two types of investor. And every investor falls into one of these two types. There's investors who are overconfident. And there are investors who have imposter syndrome. I can't tell you how much I've been thinking about that line. And, you know, every time I catch up with a friend, I'm like, is this guy, does he have imposter syndrome? Or is he overconfident? And let me just be clear.

When I say imposter syndrome, I don't mean like, you know, imposter. And they, oh, my God, he's pretending to be someone else. He's going to, no, I just mean, you know, the imposter syndrome everybody thinks about where in your head you say, oh, my gosh, I, I'm not really, I'm not as good. Like, I've got a lot of self-thought and stuff. So anyway, I've been thinking about where investors fall to that. And I will tell you right now, I know I'm very handsome man on a podcast. maybe you think otherwise, but I am firmly, firmly in the imposter camp. In my head, I'm still an

18-year-old reading and SEC filing. And a lot of times when I'm kind of pulling the trigger on a trade, I have to remind myself, like, hey, you've done a lot of work on it. You are the expert. There's not some secret expert out there who knows everything and can tell you, oh, like, this is the real tricks thing. Like, you hopefully have some confidence in yourself. Hopefully you are at the bleeding edge and you've done a lot of work and you've got to have faith in yourself and do this, but I have to remind myself that all the time. So, anyway, I've got imposter syndrome is what I think. And if you think I'm overconfident, then maybe I am,

but I don't think I've got imposter syndrome. The thing I've been thinking about is the great investors. I was just thinking of a list of the great investors, and it's hard for me to think of one who isn't overconfident or at least overconfident in some way. And maybe that doesn't speak well for me who thinks he has imposter syndrome. But, you know, empathy, why would I say all the great investors, all the investors with great track records are overconfident? And the one who came to my, like the first one who comes to mine always is Buffett.

He's the goat. And, you know, at first I was like, oh, Buffett, you know, he's down home. He's humble. He lives in Omaha. He's kind of posture syndrome. Go read the snippet. Read Buffett in his 20s and 30s what he's doing and what he's saying to companies. The man is an overconfident personified.

Now, and so I was wondering, why are all the greats overconfident? And I think one answer could be, hey, Andrew, they're the greats. They're not overconfident. They're just properly confident. And probably with Buffett, that's the case, right? He's great. He knows it. He's confident.

But, you know, there are other people who are revered. I would put them more in the overconfident camp. And even with Buffett, you know, when you read the snowball, it's interesting how many times, you know, one thing flips the other way. salmon brothers. You know, one thing's, Geico, he says, I just wrote a check into Geico that could be the end of me.

Like, how many times one thing flips the other way? John Lone's got a ton of these if you read cable cowboy and all these things. One thing flips the other way, and instead of them being legends with huge, huge great track records, they zero out, right?

So, yes, he's the goat, but I've been thinking about the overconfidence thing. And why are all the greats overconfident, in my opinion, or they have traits of the overconfidence? And I think there's a, I think the obvious answer is survivorship, right? You, we're all coin flipping monkeys in one sense. And if you, an overconfident coin flipping monkey is going to do, they're going to tend towards

concentration and leverage or both. And that means high variance. So, you know, all the greats who are overconfident, they're on the great list, well, we don't see the survivorship bias of all the overconfident people who zeroed out. And, you know, actually, I think you can even see some of the over-confident people who zero out because they're over-competent, because they are concentrated, you know. I think you would point to Bolang with Archgos, right? Concentrated levered bets, keep going up, up, pop, they keep eyeing on the way up. I kind of don't know what the exit strategy there was, but look, it goes from killer category returns to basically zero overnight, right?

situational awareness over the summer. Great call with the concentrated AI thesis, and they just keep betting and betting and pressing the best, and eventually, basically, it doesn't go to zero because I understand they still have a good track record and everything, but it comes pretty close to going to zero. They get unwound, and if the anthropics, they kind of been going crazy.

I mean, the public book is pretty much destroyed. Anyway, those are just two examples, but I think it does speak nicely to, hey, the overconfidence, you know, there is a graveyard of people who aren't overconfident who aren't there. The other thing is, I have thought, like, the grades, you have to raise money at some point, and it is possible to overconfidence. The overconfidence is very helpful in fundraising, too. Investors and LPs and everything want to invest in the people who are overconfident. So maybe you can't get an incredible following in a couple of the grades without, a decent bit of money. And maybe the overconfidence also helps with the money too. So

yeah, you know, I don't know. And look, there are counters, their pushes, but it's just my friend mentioned overconfident versus imposter. And my first thought was, I'm an imposter. And then I started trying to think of how many grades are imposter. So like, oh, oh, oh, that ain't good. Last thing I've been thinking about. And then I'll wrap it up because I'm probably close to my self-imposed time limit here. Look, I had Ian Castle on to talk about his book, Stock Picker, a couple weeks ago, you could hear it in the podcast. You know, I've had people on with books. Some of them I really like, you can hear it on the podcast.

I really, really liked Dean's books and it really got a lot of the wheels in my head's turning. And one of the chapters, he talks about his mentor. I think his mentor's name was Skip. And he talks about Skip teaching him a lot. And then eventually him and Skip drift apart because if I remember correctly, he says, hey, I was growing and evolving as investor and Skip was kind of staying the same, right? And he doesn't say this in a bad way.

He's not saying like he doesn't like Skip as a person, all this sort of stuff that Skip, if you read the book Skip has his flawless. But he just saying, look, Skip had his style. He stuck to his style and I was kind of growing my own style. So they start to drift apart a little bit. And it just got me thinking a little bit of, you know, anyone who has a mentor, your mentor is always going to start out as like kind of the most impressive person in the world to you, or very impressive.

And then over time, they're always going to get less impressed. As you get to know them, you realize they're human, they have their flaws. And then, you know, when you're day one analyst, you don't have a lot of skills or you don't have a lot of knowledge and they have seemingly decades and just oceans and oceans of knowledge and experience. And then you start to gain those. So, you know, if they have 20 years of experience and you have zero, they have literally infinite more experience. And then after five years, they've got 25, you've got five, they've got five times more experience. And, you know, some of those experiences in different market. So you're, the knowledge gap closed, the skill gap closes, all this sort of stuff.

Anyway, why, oh, I mentioned Buffett and Ben Graham earlier, you know, Graham is Buffett's mentor, but Graham is like literally a legend. He finds value investing, but Buffett eventually moves on for Graham. So if Graham, you know, if Buffett can move on from like literally the founder of the value investing thing and find, not that he finds him on, not that he finds him on, not that he finds unknowledgeable, but if Buffett evolves in solid move on from Ben Graham, who is like one of the smartest people in the world and has all these interests and stuff, and Buffett evolves from them, like everyone's going to evolve from their mentor. Oh, side note, you know, one of the reasons Buffett moves on from Graham, I think Graham gives

a late talk in the 70s, right before he dies, where he says, I'm no longer a fan of elaborate security analysis. I like simple rules applied across the whole market. And if you think about that, that's kind of factor invested in constants. And he was always quant, you know, he was trying to buy stuff at net net, but simple rules applied across the whole market. Like, that's the beginning of factor investing. So not only does he follow value investing in the styles and everything investing, but he's like early on the factor investing scene if you believe that.

So I think that's really interesting. Anyway, why am I seeing all this? Well, I have been thinking, like, as you kind of, as people naturally kind of move on from their mentors and everything. And again, if Buffett does it, everyone will do it at some point. is it because the mentor is failing to evolve? You know, that's how Ian framed in this book. Skip is stuck in his kind of the way he does things and he ends evolving and finding new things.

Is it because the mentor's not evolving? Or is it because maybe they're taking, is it because you're evolving faster? I, you know, I'm just curious and thinking about that. And, you know, I will say one thing with mentors, again, you come to mentors most of the time because they, you're early in your career and they know. more. And I think one thing with mentors, it's easy to grab a mentor who is on the overconfidence side because, you know, they're kind of often wrong, never in doubt is something that pops to mind. And that never and doubt thing can really attract you to someone make you want to be,

make you want them to be your mentor or make you want to follow their footsteps. And maybe as you consider them, you realize that they are never in doubt, but they are often wrong. And maybe that's why you start evolving. Also, you know, there are a lot of, of people who have mentors and off wrong never end out, you know, overconfidence. They're doing great when they're 40, but it's, they just had a couple of coin flips come up their way. And then when they're 45 or 50, the coin flips go the other way. And then you have huge drawdowns and stuff. And maybe that's one reason that mentees like start to evolve because they say, oh, this person's been taking on a lot of risks and those risks haven't come to roost,

but they might be about to or they might be coming to first. So anyway, I don't have answers to any of that. I will tell you one thing that I'm working on evolving. It's funny because a lot of mentors and a lot of people I talk to have been pushing for it and I'm off and on with it, but I'm trying to do better is, I mean, the blog serves as a journal for me in a lot of ways, but trying to write down more stuff and trying to journal a little bit more, especially with like market thoughts, like, hey, here's what I'm thinking about markets. Here's the just where I am headspace, where I'm thinking about, where I'm thinking about portfolio, all that sort of stuff. that's one way I'm trying to do that

and that way I can go like especially with chat GPT and I don't have to go for you my notes I can just have chat GPD compare how I'm feeling today versus a few years ago you know kind of thinking about the journaling and everything and continue to evolve and push myself and all that sort of stuff

oh anyway that's it that's it so I'm going to wrap my monthly September ramblings up there got some really fun podcast in the pipeline can't wait to share those with you as always appreciate you. Listen to me, just ramble randomly for 30-ish minutes into a microphone. Can't wait to talk to you soon. Can't wait for those podcasts. And I will see you in the next month with some more ramblids.

A quick disclaimer. Nothing on this podcast should be considered 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.