Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Business Brew.
Nice to be recording again and releasing episodes.
Thank you for your patience while you waited for my sweet,
sweet voice. And by my sweet, sweet voice, I
mean the insights of my guests and my ability to hopefully ask
decent questions that keep a conversation going.
Anyway, I digress. This episode features Will
Thompson. He returns for the three of our
conversations. I met will a long time ago.
I think it I don't know 2018-2019 at Emmanuel events
idea liked him then still like him now you know kept in not
frequent touch but in touch with Will and he's a great guy.
So I'm happy to feature him nice to see him have some positive
like results. One of the guys that can't comes
on the show no matter what I'm I'm on the outside looking in
cheering for him. So I hope that you all like this
conversation. The last one I think I titled
the real assets are so hot right now.
Turned out to be a pretty good pretty good timing of an
episode. A little early, but that's
that's kind of the MO around these parts.
And I think you'll find some interesting thoughts on copper,
gold, and oil, all of which are on top of mind right now.
So anyway, I hope you enjoy the episode.
I know I enjoyed talking to him and excited to release this one.
All right, Oh, I almost forgot. Disclaimers.
Let's see, what do they say? Everything in this episode is
for entertainment purposes only. Please consult your financial
advisor before making investment decisions.
Do your own due diligence and this episode is brought to you
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that has interviews of analyst and analyst.
So you know, the difference is sometimes you'll get on the
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I have found the transcripts on Trata to be a higher level of
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It looks like it was recorded on the 23rd.
One analyst says. The largest concern for me and
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When you look at growth and disaggregate it on an organic
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Analyst 2 says Constellation's market share, transaction share
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You already know the pitch. If you don't, you should listen
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If that is something that may interest you, it is probably
worth your time. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
back from a brief hiatus with the one and only Will Thompson
for V3, I think. Believe so, yeah.
Last time I titled it I think Real assets are So Hot right Now
and it turned out to be a pretty apropos time.
So we'll see, I think. It was 2024, so you were you
were slightly ahead of the curve.
This is my problem. I'm just 12 months ahead of the
curve. That's, you know, as far as I'm
concerned, that's. Yeah, that's enough to get you
fired. Yeah, that's fair.
Yeah. Oh well, it's enough to get you
fired in a pod shop or something in the in the rest of the world
12 months. I mean, that's, you know,
directly on target. Well, that that worked out by
happenstance, but you want to, you know, you just released your
your year end letter and you had mentioned that you thought that
there was some relevant things to come on the pod.
I did read it. I don't have any like formal,
you know, outline here, so I don't know if you want to sort
of talk about a little bit what you think is relevant and then
we can kind of go through the letter and pick on some
different themes. I I'll here's here's one that I
think is kind of fun when you still when you talked about
wicked problems. OK.
You want to you want to just riff on that and then we can
kind of talk about, you know, specific metals.
And, and I do think it's actually quite, you know, we've
got old Davos thing going on right now and various different
people speaking all, all of we seem to in some regards see that
we've got a lot of difficult problems to solve.
And there are some easy solutions.
And I think, I think the wicked problems concept, which I, I
first ran into, I think in grad school and, and it's like a
social science term like wicked problem, sort of this problem
that it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily have a solution.
It, it has a continuous evolution, right.
So the example I always think of for some reason is, is something
like healthcare, right? Where, you know, the government
thinks, OK, they're going to roll out a solution to
healthcare and roll out the solution to healthcare.
And yeah, it addresses some of the issues, but it creates its
own new issues. And no, it doesn't solve the
problem. It just, it just creates sort of
new problems and solves previous problems.
And so healthcare issues still exist, they're just different
than they were before. And yes, that's, that's sort of
a, a rough overview of what it is.
And, and I, I think we're, we're currently faced with a lot of
these complex interwinding problems that every time we try
and apply a solution, we, we create, you know, sort of a new
set of problems. And one that I sort of talked
about on the letter, I think as perhaps coming to an end.
And, and, you know, having laid the foundation for a series of
problems we're now confronted with is, you know, central
bank's management of interest rates over the past, you know,
whatever since 2008, let's say, you know, it's created a weird
misallocations of capital. One of the things it's done is,
you know, it's, it's made it very difficult, very hard to
build any sort of quote, UN quote real assets here in the
United States with the cost of capital, things of that nature
and wow. How is that a how's that a
central bank issue and not like more of a permitting issue?
It's, I mean, it's absolutely a permitting issue also, but I
think it's multifaceted. I mean, it's very, so take for
example, I, I got asked to, or where my fund got asked to, to
look into whether we could provide a cost overrun facility
for a mine that's being built. And this cost overrun facility
is basically the mines got their project financing squared away.
But the project financing guy said, you know, in case you guys
run over on costs, we'd like you to go out and get, you know,
this facility that'll be undrawn and then trigger if you run over
cost. And so I'm, I say, OK, you know,
that that's interesting, that's highly idiosyncratic, that's,
you know, out of left field that that might work in my full, you
know, and so I start looking into these things and, you know,
the cost overrun facility, if it's drawn, I might be able to
get, you know, 1718%, you know. That's real money.
Last I checked, that's almost credit card interest rates.
Yeah. I mean, it's a it's that's
unaffordable forever. I mean there's no one who can
can handle that. And the project financing is
quite expensive also. And then you look at, you know,
what banks are willing to really lend to and mining projects, for
example, are really hard to get financing for you just you just
can't do it at a rate that then is cost effective.
And the rates don't necessarily represent the real risk either.
So you know that permitting is absolutely an issue.
It's absolutely a challenge, but it isn't the only challenge.
Yeah, I would think the banks would be like, why don't you
build the mine and once it's cash flowing will refi you out.
Meanwhile, the person that wants to build the mines like, no, I
actually need the capital to get the mine started.
If I had the equity, I wouldn't have this issue.
Yes. And maybe you go to private
credit or something, right. But yeah, absolutely expensive
paper. And and I mean the mining
industries come up with ways around it, you know, with
streams and royalties and stuff like that, but that is very
expensive capital also. And so while, you know, someone
like I don't catch EPT and you know, those guys can go out and
borrow money and and get financed with a project that all
the value is in some terminal component that we have no idea
when it is, where it is, if it'll ever materialize,
etcetera. But the you know, the the
forecasted period, right, You know that that we can really
talk about that's all of his losses.
Those guys can go out and get money.
But mining firms can you want to build a new aluminum smelter or
something in the United States, good law.
And so you've got these weird, these weird situations that crop
up and addressing them will create a new series of problems.
And I think that we're at perhaps a turning point maybe
with, with regards to some of these problems where we're
taking the problems from the last 15 years, we're going to
try and solve them now and, and, and those solutions will create
their own set of problems, right?
And our problems started with, you know, whether it be
permitting or central banks OR, you know, globalization, maybe,
you know, those, those good things for some people created
bad outcomes for others and a whole different series of
problems, right? And so problems tend to be, you
know, they never go away. It's just morph and change.
It's like risk, right? You people talk about reducing
their risk. Well, very rarely do you
actually reduce risk, especially in the world finance, right?
It just gets shipped around to somebody else's.
But there there's very little in the way of full risk reduction.
It's just distribution that that changes.
Yeah, yeah. It's my the story I tell myself.
I don't know if it's true or not, but is in an effort to sort
of reduce pollution and whatnot. We offshored a lot of The Dirty
stuff and then, you know, are not really willing for one
reason or another to fund it. And I think that one reason or
another is probably that all the all the sexy growing things have
been outperforming for so long that people's money is like,
well, why would I allocate to mine on on average?
Yeah, yeah. Right.
And then, you know, you got the private mag 7 that you can
allocate to and all you're going to do, all you're going to see
is your statement go up until it doesn't.
But and and and the. Solution to client The solution
to climate change is the perfect example of a a wicked problem.
We applied a solution, created all kinds of other things.
So what? Happened there for.
For people. That don't follow this.
Can you, can you bring us to where we are in the climate
change sort of policy response and or what happened over the
last couple years? So I guess I so let's say 2010
to 2019, we had a slow ramp of increasing policies, whether
they be in China, United States, Japan, Europe, etcetera, all
pushing the energy system and the energy stack towards
increasing renewables on the grid. 2020 to you know, kind of
like last year, the year before 2024-2025 that policy ramp
really accelerated quite dramatic and there was
significant growth in government sort of incentives, government
money etcetera to push the entire energy stack further and
further into renewables and away from hydrocarbons, away from
coal, etcetera and in some places away from nuclear, which
which is a very European story, although a little bit in Japan
as well. Donald Trump comes along last
year and we've had a very hard sort of break where not only was
there a bit of a building concern in the last few years,
the Biden administration that that perhaps we were pushing
this renewable sort of solution to the climate change problem a
little too hard and too fast. But that perhaps it actually
wasn't. You know, solar and wind perhaps
weren't the, as I call it, sort of universal solution that they
were originally sort of claim to be.
And when I say universal solution, I mean, sort of this
idea that everything could just be run on solar, wind with
batteries and that it was a universal solution that
addressed all energy problems that, you know, a lot of us were
skeptical of that from the beginning.
From my perspective, wind and solar were always very similar
to oil and natural gas in that you are harvesting a natural
resource. When you're harvesting a natural
resource where it is becomes critical to the return, right.
So you know, you can put solar up in Germany, for example, and
they did and you can put solar in Nevada.
But the effectiveness of both those things and the
profitability are going to be completely different.
And what what's happened over time and, and the break again
came last year was that a lot of that misplaced, a lot of those
misplaced assets became the poster trauma of, of what was
happening. And so with the Trump
administration, you know, they've repealed a lot of the
benefits, if you will, that the government had extended that had
encouraged people to go into wind and solar and, and now, you
know, made sort of a hard right turn and, and are trying to push
oil and natural gas further. Europe has not made that sort of
that turn, but there have been there has been definitely a
recognition that perhaps they need a more comprehensive
solution. And so that's why you saw the
Prime Minister of Germany say, I think a week ago or something
talking about how I mean for. Lack of better term boneheaded
it was to turn off their entire fleet of nuclear power plants.
They did it like, I don't know, I think it took a decade, but
but that's pretty quick in the grand scheme of things and
especially when it's like the. Greenest energy?
Yeah, well. Yeah, especially when it's like
there is that. Too and and.
All that time and energy spent on building renewables while
they turned off the news with power plant meant that, you
know, in reality they just replaced clean with with other
clean energy. And so, you know, where we stand
now is in my mind. You know, the pendulum in the
United States is probably what swung too far the one side, the
pendulum in Europe maybe hasn't swung away from renewables being
universal solution enough yet, but it's probably approaching
more of a middle ground over there that is here in the United
States. Now that being said, there are
areas in renewables that are still doing pretty well rooftop
solar and some of the rooftop solar companies are still doing
pretty decently, you know, behind meter solar.
So industrial or you know, not not quite industrial scale, but
you know, maybe a facility of manufacturing facility that's
got a big roof, for example, you know, that type of thing.
Those guys are still doing OK. I think community scale solar,
which you know, fits somewhere in between.
There is suffering a great deal. Then offer wind and wind has
obviously been on shore and offshore.
Donald Trump. Yeah.
It's got a somewhat irrational dislike event in my mind.
It's expensive, don't get me wrong.
I, you know, but it, it has its benefits in a portfolio of
energy sources. And then in China, though, you
know, trying to views it, and I'm, I've been saying this for a
while, they're pushed for EVs and they're pushed for
renewables, has got nothing to do with the environment
whatsoever. They could care less.
It is all a geostrategic concern.
They have no oil. They've got a lot of coal, but
they have no oil and they have very little in the way of
natural gas. So anything that uses oil or
natural gas, they want to be very specific and sort of
deliberate about because they don't want to have to rely on,
say, imports from the United States.
So their push into EVs and into solar makes a ton of sense from
a resource perspective. So they will continue to do it
regardless of of the environmental sort of side.
So that's sort of where where it stands.
It's odd. To me that that that they don't
have any oil just given the size of the country, but.
Yeah, I don't, I haven't really thought about that.
But they have one big field been in production since like the 60s
or the 50s and 60s. But my understanding is it, it's
petering out and I don't know, it never was all that great to
begin with. Perhaps so, but they got a lot
of other things. I mean the United States is
remarkably luck in our resource endowment just in terms of the
spread. There are admittedly things that
we don't have in necessarily the most economic concentrations or
necessarily enough deposits of, but in probably frankly kind of
almost have a little bit of everything.
It's really quite unique. Not sure besides for Canada,
which is kind of AI mean from a geological perspective, just a
continuation. I'm not really sure anyone else
has, you know, quite as comprehensive a resource
endowment as we do. I mean, Europe certainly
doesn't, China certainly doesn't, India doesn't,
Australia maybe actually not and Argentina being Brazil, possibly
so, but but it's it's pretty unique.
Yeah, it's. I don't know, it's I was talking
to a buddy who works as a gas blender and we were just talking
about how cheap gas is, but how strong the cracks are.
And I just kind of wonder for refiners the cracks.
I just kind of wonder if, I mean, obviously Trump getting
elected and drill baby drill has taken over the lexicon or the
ethos or whatever, but some of it is like the prices that
people are paying as a consequence of the policies.
I think you know it reduces the. I don't fill.
Up my car and feel that same pain and be like, oh man, you
know, maybe an EV does make sense.
Which when gas was at $5 a gallon I was thinking, I kind of
wonder if if this is an my tinfoil hat thing, Thinks maybe
after the midterms we see oil prices go a little bit higher,
but who knows. Yeah, I think that I'm skeptical
of oil prices here where they are, or I should say, I don't
know, 6060, four, $65 a barrel. Those aren't great prices for
adding new production. They're not impossible prices,
but there's definitely, there's definitely a challenge at this
price in keeping up with demand because demand growth, You know
that, that, that was one of the other parts of say the, the
climate change, right, was that oil demand would fall off the
edge of a Cliff as we ramp renewables and specifically EVs.
And, and that just hasn't proven to be the case.
And in fact, no oil demand has accelerated in some regards.
I think I say it in my letter, I mean we need what is it 6.9
million barrels per day of new production every year just to
keep up with the decline rate of existing fields plus the growth
of about 1.4 million barrels per day that say they expect in
2026, you know, roaring, you know sort of economic situation
that 1.4 might be 2.5 and at these prices you don't have a
lot of. So someone like ExxonMobil who,
you know, has done just a spectacular job of turning on
these giant oil and natural gas fields in Guyana, right?
They don't have a pipeline of projects like that.
You know, they're doing a couple 100,000 barrels per day right
now. You know, they're going to turn
on their last couple of Guyana fields this year.
And then the cupboards drop. And incentivizing them to go out
and find more is, you know, it's not $6064 a barrel because first
you have the exploration to do and then you have the
development to do. And it's also like a 10 year
process if it's a big field like that.
The frackers those guys are, are now sort of going out into
Argentina and out into the rest of the world looking for other
opportunities to duplicate what they do in Texas.
But, you know, they they haven't necessarily found it yet.
And Oh, yeah, by the way, the supply chains that enable them
to so effectively crack wells in Texas don't exist in a, you
know, a place like Argentina. And so I think, I think I read
Harold Hamm, who was the CEO of, I don't remember which company
he was CEO of, but Harold Hamm is one of the original sort of
frackers. He says 50% more expensive to do
in RGT. So you know what they produce at
$50 a barrel here in the United States.
You know, this current price is not going to cut it down there
for expanding the, the fracking fields they've got there, which
is in the area called the Velocum where they're dead cow
fool. So I, I think the incentive
price is, is quite a bit higher. And, and I tend to echo your,
your sort of thought that maybe after the midterms we see a rise
in the oil price. I think that'll be less to do
with politics and more to do with the fact that the
second-half of the year, you know, people are going to start
positioning for 20272028 within oil markets.
And 2027 and 2028 are years that are very much passed the the
turning on of fields that were sanctioned immediately after
COVID. And, and those big projects,
they're just there are there isn't a pipeline.
Yeah. It's.
Interesting. I like the reading your letter
that you you tend to or have a bias maybe towards being
skeptical of the current oil price.
You also seem a little bit skeptical of the current gold
price. Neither one of those positions
is particularly sexy at the moment, Right?
Everybody likes gold and no one likes oil, I thought.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my, my so no one
likes oil. It's absolutely true.
My skepticism about gold, I don't know if it's it's an
outright skepticism about the gold price more of AI have no
idea how to value a gold company withhold moving the way it is so
well then you. Just put it at 10,000 an ounce
and value it there. 10,000 an ounce, everything is a freaking
awesome buy. We're going to 10,000 an ounce.
But I, I don't, you know, when I invest in a gold miner, I don't
I wanted to make money at spot less 25% or less 30% right,
because come on, he's moved that one.
I mean, we've just seen oh move. I mean, it moved up, but you
know, it, it they can move dramatics.
And so where, how do you, you know, what price do you put in
for a long term price? And obviously, you know, you
want to use multiple premises, but, you know, right now, with
the way it's moving, I don't know if 3500 should be the sort
of average price I end up with or should it be 4000 or should
it be 3000? I mean, we could see a reversal.
Everyone's like, oh, well, it can't happen.
But, you know, because the geopolitical set up, the
debasement trade, everyone coming out in the dollar.
OK, sure. It looks gold.
It looks perfect. I mean, I I don't see where the
crack is, but if I don't see where the crack is, I'm I can't
make the case or to go the other direction.
I'm really concerned that it will go the other direction
because it's just too perfect. That's how it felt after the GFC
and then it it sort of it had a good run.
I don't know if it was like till 2010 or 2011 or whatever it was,
but. I remember everybody.
Talking about gold back there. And then I, I guess what's
different this time is there's much more fiscal policy than
there was then. Yeah.
And I guess we're more. Decoupling than we were then
yeah, the. The we were running in in the
direction of coupling. Now we're definitely running in
the opposite direction. The central banks are definitely
that whole sort of again, debasement feed, get out, get
away from the US Diversifying the other places is definitely,
you know, central bank buying of gold is definitely a tailwind
that has how much of this move it's responsible for when it's
responsible for a big, big piece of it and it's definitely
responsible for the early innings of of this move.
So when you were, when you were buying gold miners what like 2
years ago or so, the idea was OK, look the price is pretty on
demanding and a 25 to 30% lower than here.
I'm still pretty comfortable with the with the return of the
investment. But today, now that gold has
gone up so much, is it, is it a matter of not knowing how far
how to like, I don't want to say not knowing how to stress it,
because that's not what I actually mean.
But is it just that the range of outcomes you perceive to be much
wider to the downside than it was previously?
Yes, yeah. It's the range of outcomes that.
Yeah, it's very much the range of outcomes and the inability to
comfortably sort of put probabilities on those outcomes.
I mean, the idea that gold can pull back the 3500, it's just
not like that's not a crazy idea.
And so and I just don't know, I don't know how to go about
putting odds on that at the moment.
But I'd also say is that all the gold miners have also run and so
the price you're buying in at you need to be much more.
I don't like to have to be precise about my commodity.
I like to have to be roughly accurate.
Gold is going to go up. That's about as accurate or or
as as specific and precise in my gold outlook as I want to be.
Gold is going up right now. When I look at gold miners and,
and valuations, you know, moving the needle 250 dollars, 300,
$400.00 an ounce makes a, a big difference to the valuation and
whether you know that price is a fair price to buy in.
And so I find that with commodity prices, when they're
very high relative to recent history, you have to be very
precise in your outlook in order to make money.
Because the price you buy in at with commodity producers in
particular I think is absolutely the most critical barrier.
Because you know, like, look, if, if you're buying a consumer
goods company or something, you can buy it at a good, you know,
you can buy a good company at a good price very rarely.
And, and then you can hold it right.
And let time work for you and, and let them, you know, take
advantage of pricing power or take advantage of, you know,
TikTok mean that results in some too.
Just, you know, being the, the, you know, the, the hottest thing
in the market and stuff like that.
You can't really do that with, with mining firms so much.
We're natural resources producers.
You have to buy them really well and buying them really well
because nothing that occurs after that buy is, you know,
getting bailed out ends up either being giant macro story
about the commodity price movement.
And the last thing you want to be is in my opinion is tied to
some giant macro story that you have no idea of the timeline of,
you have no idea how far it will run, etcetera, etcetera.
You know, so, so you can't buy cheap and discounted gold miners
right now. You can only buy gold miners
that are, you know, a little expensive then that's not
totally true. I looked at one yesterday that I
thought seemed like a pretty reasonable case, but I think
it's probably still trading at twice what I would have thought
this company was valued at at the same stage in 20, 1-2 or
something, right. So it's still, you know, it's
still more expensive in 2022. I'm not sure I would have looked
at the company given its current market cap and where they are in
their development now. I'll look at it and it's
reasonable, but, you know, the spread of outcomes has widened.
Yeah. So it sounds to me like if the
price of a commodity is close to the marginal cost of production,
that could give some sort of confidence that it's the
probability that it goes much lower and stays much lower is
fairly low given a supply response.
Can, you know, sort of offset some of that?
But in a scenario where the commodity is valued at some sort
of political premium or whatever, the premium exists,
the distribution gets wider at the same time that people
probably like the stocks more than they liked it when the
commodity wasn't liked. And that those kind of
situations make you a little more nervous.
Is that fair? Yeah, no.
Absolutely. That's that's very well said,
yeah. Much makes sense because when I,
when I saw you like getting out of gold and into oil, I was
like, Ah, that's I kind of like that, you know, as but I like
contrarian things by nature. So, you know, I hope I don't
jinx you. No, no, I'm I'm sure.
Yeah, I don't. I don't buy into that type of
thing too much. But the hocus pocus.
Side of life. Yeah, I can't every once in a
while I get or I mean, I guess I shouldn't say that I I was very
hocus pocus very nervous about that last year.
But like if I'm doing poorly, that's all on me.
Yeah, if the funds doing OK and it's like 0 to plus 12%, you
know that's a mix of me in the market.
If it's doing really well, I'm like, oh boy, I don't know guys,
this I'm very worried here. I don't I don't know if this is
a good scenario. My investors are thrilled and
I'm like guys, this is very touch and go here.
Well, you should. Probably be a little kinder to
yourself in that scenario and take a little more credit, but I
think that that that general disposition will probably serve
you better in this profession than.
Than the opposite one, yeah. Yeah, Well, I don't know.
Being kind to oneself. I think if I, if I beat myself
enough, I'll, I'll improve, you know, pressure.
Yeah. I.
You know, I used to think that, too.
Now I realize it's OK to say, you know, give yourself a little
pat on the back, but not too much.
Yeah, not. Too much, not too much, maybe 1.
Or two kind words among the the lashings.
Yeah. Yeah, I, I tried to do that.
So I turned 40 last year. I tried to sort of be like, OK,
been around the block a little bit here.
Maybe I'm a little wiser. I can be a little you know, but
it didn't last for anymore. Well, that's fair.
Whatever works. I was.
So why? Why, given what we just talked
about, does your outlook on copper seem fairly constructive?
I mean, and and to frame it, what I hear you say is some of
the tailwinds that were driving some of the adoption of EV or,
or renewable technology have sort of dissipated and maybe
even turned into headwinds. I was under the impression that
that transition really was positive for copper.
Now I assume AI is fairly positive for copper.
I don't know, but seems like copper wins in both those
scenarios potentially. But then, you know, it is kind
of, I don't think it's as hated as it once was.
So that's kind of the, that's why I'm asking the question I'm
asking. If we look at the demand side on
copper, what I would say is any, you know, energy addition in
basically any form to be perfectly frank, is a net
positive for copper. AI is a net positive for demand,
rearmament, defense, big net positive.
And then I think this one is slightly underappreciated.
Any revamp or rebuilding of infrastructure sort of writ
large refreshing your societal infrastructure is a net positive
for copper. And I do think we we see some of
that increase going on throughout the Western world.
I've long thought we have sort of rested a little too much on
our our, our sort of greenly well built infrastructure sort
of post World War 2. We've lived on that until it
sort of it isn't quite fit for purpose anymore.
And so we're getting a lot of rebuilding that type of thing.
So that's not positive. So on the demand side there,
there's really only temporary issues and those temporary
issues are say a recession, recession or depression,
whatever, you know, that's not good for copper demand.
But those are very much temporary on the supply side.
And I think a couple of years ago, so let's say 2019, 2021,
the copper story was very much a demand driven store it is now.
But there were those of us who would have told you at the time
that supply was also going to be an issue, it just it was further
out. Now that supply issue is very
much, you know, if it's not here already, then it's next year or
the year after you, you know, it's the supply issue is here
and the supply issue, you know, copper today, where are we here
$5.80 a pound. You know, that's sufficient to
incentivize mine building, not sufficient to incentivize A rush
of mine building, though. It's that's sufficient to
incentivize the building of, you know, sort of like fantastic
year one projects, you know, like, you know, you were you've
you've filed 1D mining a little bit and and it's only because
of. You, man, but those that's,
that's a cool family, yeah. You know, they've got projects
that are tier one projects that will be producing copper for the
next 40 or 50 years. You know, this price will
incentivize the building of those types of assets, but there
aren't that many of those. And we need sort of like one
year, to be perfectly frank, of that sort of scale, that size,
if not more to keep up with demand plus attrition of the
existing assets. And that, you know, again, in
2020-2021 that was a story for the second-half of the decade.
Well, you know, a we're, we're now in the second-half of the
decade and a lot of the time in between, there wasn't, there was
actually, you know, a shortfall in capital.
And so rather than sort of coming into the second-half of
the decade from a period of strength, we've allowed
ourselves to come into the second-half of the decade, you
know, on the back foot. And so, you know, I remain
positive on copper for sort of the exact opposite reasons or,
or yeah, I guess the exact opposite reason is that I'm, I'm
sort of negative on gold, right? Like never seen a gold mine that
fired $4800 gold come online. See plenty of copper mines that
require $5 copper. So you know where where the
price of copper is relative to the incentive cost to bring on
new mines or where mines are profitable enough to continue to
invest or where they're profitable enough to build the
infrastructure to get out, etcetera.
You know, this price here, it's not, it's not even a sweet spot.
Sweet spots, probably more like 657 dollars.
I think the former CEO of Freeport Mac brand, and this is
dated now a guy by the name of Richard Atkins, she's probably
2020. But at the time he said
something along the lines of I couldn't bring a copper mine
online at $8 copper in 10 years. I think at the time he was
speaking at a conference, he was being a bit, you know, dramatic.
But that sentiment is is, you know, directionally sort of
accurate and appropriate. So what what he was trying to
say is if copper were $8, I would want to build a mine, but
it would take me 10 years to get it done.
Yeah. And, and I would need that $8
cup. Yeah.
Now, again, I I think he was being a big glib and you know,
he's speaking at a conference media, blah, blah, blah.
But you know, again, I think the general thrust of that comment
is accurate. You know, the, the Lund beans
and if copper was at 2:50 A1 Dean or $3, let's say 350, how
was it 351? Dean's would not be trying to
build the Kuna way, just not sufficient.
The, the, there's also this, and some people will have heard me
say this before, but there's this sort of spectrum, if you
will, with, with mining firms where there's geological
complication on one scale and then there's infrastructure need
to get the material out on another stick, right?
And so lot of infrastructure, but little geological
complication over here, lot of geological complication, little
infrastructure needed to get product.
So think about something like diamonds, right?
The mines are really complicated, but you can put the
product on a helicopter and fly out.
You can build the mine anywhere. You don't need anything to get
the product. Iron ore mine in Australia, just
scraping dirt off the surface, not geologically complicated,
but they have to build a railroad.
They just carry the iron ore to the port that they've got to
build a deep water port that they've got to build, right?
So the infrastructure need is huge, right?
And then? Ship it to somebody else that
needs all the same stuff. Yes, exactly copper used.
To kind of sit in the middle where it was hard because it was
geologically difficult and the infrastructure was reasonably
significant. Now what's happened is it's gone
like this where the geological complication has gotten really
hot and the infrastructure has gotten really big, which makes
it very hard to accomplish, very hard to execute, very costly to
execute. And I kind of expect that, you
know, as demand for copper increases and as the easy
deposits get mined, that spread will actually increase, making,
you know, the demand on the copper price go higher, even
more significant. So we had some, some issues with
copper mines last year. And, and this is just sort of
provide a sort of characterization of how
complicated copper mining can be.
You know, people often think a mine is just a hole you dig out,
you move on, right. But you know, a lot of copper
mining these days, you, you get these assets where they say,
well, we think we've got to produce it via a block cave mom.
And, and I tell people this story just because it sort of
blows their mind with, with what these guys have to do to get the
copper out. And So what is a block cave mom?
So envision a a a giant upper deposit.
It looks like this. It's it's like a round ball,
let's say just for simplicity purposes.
And it is 500 meters below ground to a block cave mine.
They will dig 750 meters down. They will build a giant cavern
below the deposit. Then they will drill holes up
into the deposit from below. They will pack those holes with
explosive and they will clear everyone out of the mine and
they will blow the roof. They will hope that they have
built this thing just run such that when they fracture a column
of 750 meters of rock above them that they then funnel.
They then the rock that's been cracked under the weight of
gravity in these explosives will then filter down through these
funnels they've built in the roof of the Tavern that they've
made. If this goes wrong, it's one
directional bat, meaning once they press that that that sort
of go button. If this all doesn't occur
perfectly, they can't send people back underneath it to fix
it because oh, you got to like. Re dig the whole thing.
No, no, there's no RE. Digging of the whole thing.
Oh, really? You ruin it, You're done.
Wow. Because you have fractured all
of the rock above you and it can all just collapse on top.
And, you know, look and these things that process billions of
dollars to build and takes years.
And, and Shreveport Mcmoran had a problem this last year at the
Grasberg mine, which is, is their largest copper mine and
one of the world's largest, most important copper mines, where a
lot of water got into that column and into all those
fractures. And they are aware of that and
they monitor that and they keep, you know, they keep a close eye
on that. But of course, you can only see
so much, right, with radar and stuff like that.
And what ended up happening was one of these little shoots, or
this is roughly what ended up happening.
One of these little shoots like it got a rock sucking right and
up above, you know, filled with a lot of water.
And then when the guy comes by with his, his bucket loader, he
knocked the rock and you had a flood of thousands of tons of
liquidy mud that basically just turned to cement in the, you
know, in the, the mine. And, and so they've got to try
and monitor all these things. Now, not all mines are blocking
since they're not very common, but, you know, we're getting to
the point where they, you know, those types of activities, those
types of engineering efforts are what is needed.
That dude make it or no? No, but a couple of guys died.
That's sad, you know. Maybe it happened so quick you
didn't really feel it. Yeah, no doubt I.
Don't. Yeah.
I have no idea how quick that you know.
I don't know. I don't.
I don't think it's like those ocean gate guys, you know, went
down to the Titanic. Yeah.
They don't think it's that quick.
I think I don't. Mean to laugh at those guys, but
also you don't need to go down to the Titanic.
No, and I don't think you do, man.
Come on. It's come on.
We all have weird, weird things we want to do.
That's true. None of I don't think any of
mine want to are going to kill me.
But hang on, can I go get a soda real quick?
Yeah, go. For it, go for.
It hang on one SEC. This episode is brought to you
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If that is something that may interest you, it is probably
worth your time. Yeah, I I think the only thing
that might kill me is my general affinity for basic materials
ideas right now. Do you know anything about
caustic soda? Not really, man.
I. Wish I knew Olin better.
I'd like. I just wish I knew it.
I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I look at it.
I'm like, this is so. And I know some of the people
that own it. Just looks cheap.
Oh well, yeah. No, I I've looked at it before,
but not in a long time. I don't.
Yeah, I don't really know much about caustic soda.
Yeah. I'd Mike, I gather a lot of it
is somewhat tied to building construction.
So it's wild how much stuff is I mean, you know, like the EV
discussion, obviously EV adoption has slowed.
I have not looked at the share of new autos.
I there's no way that reducing the tax incentive like helps,
right? But overall, I kind of wonder
how much of the, the slowing down is mostly an interest rate
story. Some of it's the early adopters
have adopted and and that, but I don't know, I, I.
Think a lot of it actually just has to do with the fact that the
at least in the United States, the selection, yeah, I've driven
a couple of Chinese EVs, I hear they're.
Nuts. They're really slick.
Yeah, I I think that. Well, thank you for.
Supporting our our mortal enemies, Sir.
Yeah, well. I didn't.
I didn't buy one. I didn't say I bought 1.
I just said I've driven them. I've I.
Drive an old used Chevy Cruze that I insist on driving until
it falls apart. It's like my.
Volvo, yeah, 90,000 miles on it. Looking for 90 more?
Yeah. Yeah, that I'm, I'm of that
mindset. But yeah, I mean I, I think.
You know, like that Ford. Lightning, that was really cool,
but they don't even make it anymore now.
Yeah, You know, And then what? What do you got?
You got Tesla, I don't think. When was the last?
Time, Tesla, Scalia. It's got one.
Your selection is. It's really limited, very poor.
Ribbian. Ribbian was I That's a real
conduct. They sell a.
Lot man. So I'm in Charlotte, NC Gosh,
those guys are doing well down here.
I don't know if you know, I think they lose they lose money.
They lose quite a bit of money per car my understanding, but
make it up some. Scale, baby.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe there's a lot of them down
here, everyone, every housewife driving to the Country Club and
whatnot. It's got a Rivia SUV, not a bad.
Whip I, I would drive it for sure, but I, I, I justify my to
the extent that I have an environmental bone in my body,
which I do, But I, I just say, well, I think holding on to my
current car is less environmentally harmful than
trading in cars all the time. Now, maybe that's a flawed way
to think and I'm definitely open to that, but I don't know.
I don't know. I, I just drive so my office is
like 5 miles away from work from from home.
So I drive, you know, cops 10 miles a day type of thing.
The end. Otherwise if I'm going someplace
it's with my wife and kids in the FTV and she needs a big car,
kids and all crap and whatnot. Well, I'm aware of this.
Story. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So I just don't see any reason
to change my car for 5 miles a day.
I, I figure figure I can make the thing last another 15 years
as long as I don't, you know, get forced to get rid of it.
Yeah. Well, the real story with mine
is the Kelley Blue Yes. Yeah, that's, that's probably
true of mine as well because I, I.
Know it, right? It's like I know the warts.
There aren't many. There's no way it's worth what
they think it's worth, so I'll just hold it until I don't.
Whatever this this is. What people came on the podcast
to hear about was our cars. Yeah, well, it is it.
Is interesting to think about. I mean, like you had zero
interest rates or near 0 plus the stimulus and all the
incentives to buy the EVs. It's just I how many, how many
bull whips are we still working through from like a combo of
COVID and policy? I think we're almost done with
them, but I still think that there's some.
Yeah, that stimulus that lasts a long time, I think you're
probably right. I think we probably got to be at
the end of it at this point. But boy, did that that was
surprising Juice in terms of its longevity.
Yeah, I, you know, I, I hope we don't learn the wrong lesson
from that. I'm sure we did or, or, or at
least I sure we did for a little while.
Right. And actually, this is something
I, I talked about in my letter. Like, I'm not certain that, you
know, like if the economy falls over under Trump, I'm sure that
he will try to juice it in any way he can.
But I don't think the wherewithal to continue doing
that is is going to be there much longer.
And I don't, I mean the the fiscal capability is probably
not going to be there much long. Yeah.
So, you know, did this pattern that we've gotten into where
everyone is very comfortable buying the dip because policy is
going to be there to, you know, put a floor underneath that one
of these days very soon, that trend has got to come to an end.
I mean, this is kind of why people are buying gold, right?
Yeah. I think so, you know, at least
at. Least you know what your
monetary value is and Oz right, Maybe not dollars, but you have
an idea. I know it's why people aren't
buying. Well, I think it's why people
aren't buying bonds. So I don't know it's it's a very
I mean, I guess every every time is interesting.
I do feel like, you know, I always felt like the Peter
shifts of the world. Well, I'll just say Peter Schiff
since there's only one Peter Schiff of the world.
But I always felt like he was kind of like knocking on the
wrong door until the stimulus which I missed.
I, I did not see it. But now I get what I missed.
You know, that was like a real change and a smarter me would
have seen it. But who knows, maybe there will
be another one that I do see. Experience.
Is what you get when you don't get what you want.
I haven't heard that before. I like that.
Oh, yeah, man, Where's that from?
I don't know. But I got plenty of experience
so I've heard it a couple times. Yeah.
Well, experience is important. Yeah, you can, you can learn
from other people's experience as much as you want, but it
doesn't doesn't hit like your own experience.
Yeah. I think it's not margins.
That's my experience. I mean, it's like, you know,
there's only so much reading. For me at least, the emotions
of, of owning things and going through things is a lot
different than what you read about.
Yeah. Well, it's one of the reasons
why I like if I'm getting serious about something, even if
I'm not necessarily all that serious about it, even if I'm
just getting started, I got to put on a position to really
care. Care.
What'd you say to like care? Care.
Yeah. To like, care, yeah.
There's caring and then there's caring, caring there's.
Caring and, and, and there's also, you know, sort of, you
know, research, research can drag on for a long time.
You got to give yourself sort of a boost to like pursue the
research with urgency. His position's on.
There's a there's a bit of urgency because there could be
money lost. Yeah, that's right.
Well, Chris Meyer. Wrote that book.
How do you know? You know, it's somewhere on my
on my shelf, but that I, I find that hard, you know, like I, I
don't know, I, I mean, read that.
Book. What did he say?
I would need to reread it to to tell you, but I know he wrote it
and people should check it out to help him out.
But I I don't know the answer to When you know, you know I I do
know that. I do know that.
Owning something is different than researching something, Yes.
Without without question and I know.
That I've thought that I've known things and then I've owned
them and I've been like, I don't know this.
But. I don't know I've I've been
spending. I've been.
Spending more time trying to find interesting management
teams and that's been a a fun use of time.
I don't know that it's the the best way to outperform, but I
it's been a. It's been.
Time that I've enjoyed spending. So to the extent that some of
this is for a life reward, it's helpful in that way, yeah.
But I think it's, I mean, they're very, you know, we
always talk about sort of Warren Buffett's little aphorisms and,
you know, he wants a business that even an idiot can run.
I challenge that concept not because he's wrong.
Are there any? Well, that's that's.
Where I'm going, I I'd love to find a business an idiot can
run. I'm not sure I've ever seen one.
Yeah. And that's, that's a lot of what
I spend my time. When you you know, you talk
about them. My companies.
I, I think of them all as project, right?
They they all got a big project or maybe they have multiple big
projects and you think about or read about or experience, you
know what makes a project successful.
It is absolute managed, you know, getting a project off the
ground you need. I had someone say it to me,
recent management team tell me about they're saying we're
firefighters every day, you know, they're building, you know
they're spending a billion dollars to build something.
Every day there's a fire that we need to put out, we need to stay
on schedule and you know, on budget, etcetera, etcetera.
And so we need to be there, you know, putting out fires on a
continuous basis until the project is done.
You got to have a good management team to do that.
And you got to have the right management team for for the one
of the that I've found, or one of my observations I've found
really interesting that I think it took me a little while to
learn was that, you know, we're in a company's life cycle.
It is, yeah. Or it's very different
management team. And I mean, you, you think about
that with something like, right, Tim Cook, perfect management
team or or CEO for that period of time after Steve Jobs, like
they've made the innovation. It's like when you look now and
has innovative anything is on the same iPhone, Steve Jobs, but
made a fortune with it because he was the right manager for,
you know, supply chains, logistics, construction, you
know, etcetera. Who knows if Steve Jobs would
have been the right manager for that?
Maybe they would have already moved on to some new something
and then he had come up with syncing your management team,
your life cycle critical. What do you?
Think makes the Lundin's capable of.
Passing. On like intergenerational
skills. I don't know.
That's a really good question. I mean, I, I guess I get in
trouble for saying this, but I, I think that if we go back and
look at so Lucas Lundin was the second generation, Adam and Jack
and got a third brother whose name is escaping you right now
is a third generation think that the father the, the father of
Lucas, his name was Adolf. Adolf had successes.
I think he had a couple of big wolves, but he wasn't quite the
success that Lucas was. I think, you know, if there
hadn't been a Lucas, we wouldn't know who the Lundeens were if
they had just taken what Adolf had done.
So, so Adolf had one skill set and and he was successful at and
successful in a big way. But it it really was Lucas, the
second generation that supercharged it.
And now we're still at the early stages of the third generation,
right. So Jack Lundeen has taken over
Lundeen Mining as CEO or Jack is like 36.
This is the first mine that he's, he's going to be in charge
of building a Vacuna, if you will.
This is the first mine he's going to build, You know, So in
some regards we are right now in the sort of the trial period, if
you will, where, where this third generation is really going
to have to have to prove themselves.
I do think that they didn't say this to me, but this is the type
of people they are actually a different manager say this to
me. The this management team said to
me, you know, we're going to be here for this phase of it, but
then we're going to have to find someone else, be the CEO in a
couple of years because I can't do XY and Z.
Think the one Deans have raised group of people up around them
and built this team around them that has been very capable of
pointing out when they're over their skis and they have
listened to them. And I don't think they've
allowed themselves to get in many situations, no, but.
That's good to have people around you that'll tell you and
you have the ability to listen. That's good stuff.
And. So I don't Yeah.
And so I, I think that is critical.
I don't know how you love to, you know, teach my daughters
that skill set, right. Like I don't know how you teach
that skill set. Takes a level of humility.
Well, yeah. And and so there's got to be
some sort of activity. I think I, I don't understand
people in in equity markets that are really arrogant because
equity markets punish you so frequent on such a regular basis
that I don't know how you can have like a ripped roaring ego
if you like, are a trader or something in markets frequent.
Maybe there's something about, you know, the fact that they're
in a business that that punishes people for errors that, you
know, their lives at risk, etcetera.
Bring down the ego a little bit. But I don't know, it's a good
question. I mean, they all also, I don't
think that, you know, there's a story that, that, that everyone
was sort of sat down every generation then like, hey,
you're the oil guy, you're the mining guy, you're, you know,
the parents saying what you're going to do.
It's not clear to me that that actually is the case.
Like the eldest brother, it's got nothing to do with.
I mean, he, he's, he runs a hedge fund.
He, he's got nothing to do. I mean, they invest in mining
firms, you know, so there's relation there.
In essence, he went off and did his own thing.
So I'm also not sure if, you know, they were guided to it or
they were forced into it or, or whatnot.
But I, I think they come to their interest in these
businesses natural. But I think it's also probably
critical. And I'm not sure with family
businesses if that is, you know, as common as perhaps it should
be. Yeah.
I don't think so. I think a lot of family members
feel an obligation to do it, yeah.
I mean, I would certainly, you know, and let's say massive
capital goes on to be a big success.
I'd certainly love, you know, one of my daughter's to be able
to rise up to the and I'd I'd probably try and push them in
that direction. It's probably the exact wrong
thing. You want them to come to it, the
interest natural. If they don't come to it
naturally, then you're trying to force a square peg in a round
hole and snack on work. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. I think that's right.
I think that's, that's probably a big piece of it, but that's
surrounding yourself with good people.
I can't, can't beat that. Yeah.
And being willing to listen. They all also started at the
bottom, you know, they didn't, they didn't get a management
position. They all, they all started, you
know, out in the field and stuff like that gives you an.
Appreciation for what? What the people that work for
you go through, right? Yeah.
But also gives you appreciation for, you know, how, how the
omelet's actually made, right. So, you know, but they're good.
They're they're great management team and got big things out of
them. Hopefully at least at least
that's my bet. Yeah, well.
I mean, I think that's AI don't know to your point on the
business that an idiot can run. I mean, I, I just, I just, I
think you need good jockeys. I don't and you know, I don't, I
don't really know how you prospectively manage that or, or
figure that out. I recently made an investment.
We'll see if it's smart or not, right?
But it's like at the end of the day, I really like these people
and like, it's more than like I want to hang out with them.
Like these people strike me as people that are really good at
making money. So we'll see, right?
Well, with all the things that can go wrong in business, that
seems like the most sensible thing to battle, if you will, in
some regards, right? You know, inflation can rise and
fall, pricing power can come and go.
But someone who's diligent, who's, you know, going to spend
the time to understand problems, solve problems, you know that,
that state and that's in their character, you know that that'll
stick around, right. So you get that a lot of fixed
things in, in in the world of business.
But, but a person's character and, and what that means or how
they approach their job, that doesn't change very much.
It'll change, but it doesn't change very much.
Yeah. And I I.
Think in the public markets, it's nice to hear somebody
actually care about shareholders and be able to figure out if
they mean it or not so. Yeah, it's very difficult.
That's why I have a lot of trouble with, you know, say like
tech companies and and stuff like that.
I don't, I just don't know. It's really hard to tell.
Like just what's the CEO of Microsoft's name?
Nipaella, you know, like he's a billionaire now and I don't know
he he made that all by being the CEO of Microsoft as he you know,
but he could liquidate a billion in Microsoft and freakonomic
indifference to the stock so he can exit that the easy you know,
does he care about you know what what does he care about right?
It's it's gonna be hard to allies it.
Well, there's something beautiful about the commodity
niche that you've chosen in that I don't think people are rushing
to enter the market like they are tech.
And you know, it's like there's no disillusion that you have
massive franchise value to assign to these projects, right?
You might have some what is it is a basis when you have a
transportation advantage. Is that what they right basis,
right. You might have some logistics
advantage and some geography or something that gives you some
outsize returns, but it's not like I don't know.
I I would think it's fairly, it lends itself well to rational
analysis that looks at the capital cycle.
Yeah, I think it does. But you raise an interesting
sort of point. All the industry's idea all have
huge people in terms of a lack of people going into them.
So I don't remember. I might get the numbers, I might
get the numbers wrong but directionally correct.
You know, if we used to graduate 1000 geologists a year in the
United, again, these numbers are wrong.
They're not don't nobody quote me on you.
If we used to graduate 1000 geologists a year in the United
States, pH DS or something, we only do 100.
You know, it's, it's that type of shrinkage.
Like if I go to mine sites these days, it's it's a lot of Gray
bearded geologists in their 50s and 60s and one or two young
kids fresh out of, you know, Colorado school mines or
something. But it's a very like that
pipeline is, is incredibly thin. It's, it's far thinner, in fact,
than the actual project pipeline.
It's, you know, and we see that in the United States with other
things like the, the processing of rare earth metals, right?
So we used to have in the United States, there used to be
something like in the Fifties, 60s and 70s or something like 12
or 15 different places, different universities you could
go to. We'd get a PhD in, you know,
metallurgy and specialize in their understanding rare earth
metal processing and stuff, you know, sort of stuff related to
that. Now it's, it's, it's down to
there's, there's a program at like the University of Virginia,
all places. And that's, that's like it.
And so there is no, you know, you want to stand up or rare
earth processing facility in the United States, you have got to
go overseas and you have got to hire people away from someone
else because there just aren't, you know, people with with
knowledge and experience. You, you probably can hire some
people with some theoretical, you know, textbook experience,
but what practical experience, real world experience, you know,
you got to hire them away from somebody else.
And that there really aren't that many firms to hire them
away from. And you know, the expertise is
in China. And those guys definitely are.
They're not even allowed to leave the country if you work in
rare earth metal processing in China.
And I don't know where the level is.
I'm sure they're different, you know, depending on whether.
Yeah, once. You're sufficiently important,
yeah, but once you're. You can't, you know that your
passport is, is taken, you cannot leave the country.
But that sucks. Year or two years ago or
something, they consider it a, you know, a national strategic,
you know, the process knowledge, which is really what we've lost.
We've lost a lot of process knowledge here in the United
States across all kinds of different fields.
One of the reasons why I say building all the infrastructure
always takes forever in the United States, because the
number of people we have with experience in megaprojects, it's
not very much. And, you know, these things
require you to do them repeatedly.
Stuff. Yeah, it's like what it's.
Kind of like what's going on with trades with a higher
barrier to entry. What do you mean?
Well, I. Just I mean, like, I don't know
man, when I when I built the house that we built, I think
that there were three guys in town that could actually do.
Now it's not like some huge city, so you know, bear with me,
but that can actually do the tile.
Yeah, yeah, I got you trades. Yeah, you said trades and I I
wasn't sure what you Yeah, so then so.
So then I'm like bidding and and not only was I bidding, but
everybody else is building when I'm building and the guys are
just like, you don't want to pay, I don't care.
Like I'm busy. Yeah.
Now today it might be a different story, right?
But I don't think so. Not be as different.
As as most people think it is. I yeah, I I think that's spot
on. We in Charlotte, I, we've needed
an electrician to do some things for us around the House of small
things. They're not big.
I can't do them. We had a couple, we had one
electrician who was willing to come in and take a look and then
he said, no thanks, I'm not interested in doing that.
That's a waste of my time. And so we've had these projects
that just sit there undone. And because you can't find an
electrician a lot to do. So I, I, no, I think that's spot
on. And we're going to come to a
point where, you know, I don't know what it is, but I don't
know, you can't build a some sort of supply chain and some,
some sort of manufacturing facility, you know, because of
the people just aren't there. Well.
If I recall correctly, it's some of the pitch for analog semis
too. Is that like the the people that
run those companies are just older and they're they're just,
it's not what people are entering.
Yes, yeah. So.
Like the memory chips and things of that nature.
It still. Requires a ton of expertise to
build that, especially at scale. That's the thing that always
blows my mind is, is that, you know, a lot of things can be
done one off in a lab without a lot of experience, but the
scaling of things creates a demand for experience that can't
be superseded with theoretical knowledge.
Yeah, well, like the. Mind that you're talking about,
I mean, if, if people start to lose that expertise, you're
talking about billions of dollars of mistakes, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, with no. Recovery value, right?
Like it's not like you got some asset under you or, you know,
covering your loan value or whatever the whatever it is,
it's, it's, it's. A wild It's a wild business.
Yeah, that's cool. Interesting.
Anything else you wanted to talk about while you're here that's.
Good. Well, Congrats on.
You know, a, a Goodyear I, I, I appreciate that you came on when
the years were not as good, so it's nice to have you as a
regular guest. I'm, I, I always enjoy it.
We just sort of shoot shit and it's casual.
It's, it's, that's the goal, man.
Yeah, it's good. It's good.
Other times I feel like I got a, you know, I got a sort of, you
know, be on my toes pitching something or or something like
that with other shows you and like that with the money of
mines guys, have you ever heard that podcast?
No, I haven't. That is a great podcast.
A couple of guys out of Australia.
So they're, I find it funny because every once in a while
they trot out some sort of Australianism and I'm like, what
the hell does that mean? What is it the?
Money of mines are just money mines, money mines.
Yeah, they I go on their podcast or like once a year and just
sort of shoot the Shape with them and it's bomb.
So that's a home. And natural resource investing
right there. Yeah, very.
Much so they understand it over there so.
That's cool. All right, well, thank you very
much for coming on, man. And I, I wish you all the best.
May you find an electrician that doesn't totally, you know,
destroy you on the cost. Yeah.
Yeah, we'll we'll say, we'll say and and you know, best of luck
on on the coming up a a golf trout.
Yeah, we'll. See, we'll see.
So far so good. The game is crisp.
I got to keep it there. Good.
So. I think competing in amateur
events is step one. Oh, wow, OK, well, I'll, I look
forward to hearing about what that's like.
It'll. Probably be like, I shot 82 and
I'm all pissed off. But that's fine.
I, you know, I like it, man. It's something that challenges
me so and it's never ending. It's 50 strokes better than I
could do, yeah, but I. I just, I've dedicated a lot of
time. My real goal, my real goal, I
feel like my young self was not a scratch.
I was like A1 or A2. And I want to beat that kid
because I feel like that kid would have called me an old man
and my old man self wants to kick my young self's ass.
So that's the current motivation, yeah.
OK, understood. Understood.
Probably some. Some I need to do some work on
that. I'll call up the shrink.
All right, man. Well, have a good one, Yeah.
You too. We'll talk soon, talk to you
later. All right, bye.