QAV America (free feed)

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  1. 3d ago

    The Oil Is Ours: Petrobras (PBR): QAV America #62

    This week we do a full pulled pork on Petrobras (PBR), the Brazilian oil giant that scored a perfect 100% QAV score and promptly got added to the Lite portfolio. Cameron takes Tony on a tour through Brazilian dictatorships, the “O Petróleo é Nosso” mass movement, Operation Car Wash, and why a left-wing government drilling toward the Amazon somehow makes sense. We also check in on the state of the Strait of Hormuz, the Chinese AI models rattling US chip stocks, and how the portfolio is tracking after 12 months of running roughly double the S&P 500.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AMERICA 62 CLUB VIDEO [00:00:00] Cameron: Welcome back to QAV America TK, episode 62. This is the 21st of July, 2026. How you doing? Tony Kynaston: Very well. How are you? Cameron: I’m good. I’m good. Um, I’m gonna do a great, fascinating deep dive pulled pork today for you. A lot of fun stories about Brazilian dictatorships. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: but before we get into that, quick checkup on state of the world. Tony, US markets closed down yesterday as oil surges on the escalating conflict. Uh, how many ships are passing through the Strait of Hormuz at the moment, Tony? Tony Kynaston: Uh, I’m gonna say 10 Cameron: Yeah, I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. But interesting, to, uh, John Mearsheimer this morning, a recent interview with him, like a day old or something. And he’s saying, so we know that, you know, there used to be 20 million [00:01:00] barrels a day go through, uh, the strait, which has stopped. But he said there’s some interesting things happening. He reckons there’s 7 million barrels that the Saudis are getting out through the Red Sea or through the Oman, um, you know, side of the strait, which we talked about last week. So he said there’s 7 million of that 20 million that are still getting out, although I know, uh, the Yemenis are gonna. the Houthis are gonna start shutting down the Red Sea traffic again, the news is this week. Iran’s bombing stuff that tries to get through the Oman side of the strait. But he also talked about, and I’ve read about this in other places this week, uh, China has cut its requirement by 5 million barrels. So, um, no one really knows how, but, uh, one of the suggestions I read is that they were tapping into their own reserves that they had been building up. [00:02:00] Plus, the rest of the world has been tapping into their reserves, so he said probably accounts for another 3 million barrels. So of that 20 million, sounds like a good 15 million of it is being accounted for in other ways, either reduction in demand or reserves being provided. Uh, so that might explain why we haven’t seen the panic that we kind of expect to see. Oil price is back up, I think, around about 80 bucks now. What do my notes say? Somewhere around that, I think. Uh, t- t- 80? 90. 90. Sorry, not 80, 90. WTI I think is about 83, Brent’s about 90. But, uh, know, could be a lot higher. so there you go. Tony Kynaston: Well, I think the other thing that happened for, to, to rattle US markets was the release of Kimi, uh, the Chinese AI, which is, [00:03:00] uh, taking the value out of a lot of the, the US chip manufacturers at the moment. Cameron: Have you used Kimi, Tony? Tony Kynaston: No, but Cameron: I downloaded the Kimi app, uh, which is equivalent, uh, at least on paper, to the Claude Co-work and the, um, OpenAI Codex app. So it, it’ll plug into all your files on your desktop, and it can do stuff for you. I try, I’ve tried it twice in the last, uh, three or four days since it came out, and both times it said, “Sorry, Kimi’s really busy right now. Too many users. Come back later.” I’m like, “Oh, well, that’s not really working out for me.” And I did read last night that they’ve shut down registrations for new users. Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Cameron: struggling to handle the demand. But, uh, Tony Kynaston: You didn’t tell him, you didn’t tell him who you were? You couldn’t get to the front of the red velvet rope? Cameron: I did, but I told him in English, not in, uh, Mandarin or Cantonese apparently. no, but the fact that, uh, there are three [00:04:00] Chinese models now that are Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: much according to the benchmarks, neck and neck with the state-of-the-art US models. You’ve got Kimi from Moonshot, you’ve got DeepSeek, and you’ve got Qwen from Alibaba. all pretty close to Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a little bit ahead of G- Google Gemini. So, you know, it’s, uh, it’s interesting, uh, what this means for the, uh, forecast business models and revenue potential of these US models. Tony Kynaston: Correct. Cameron: Uh, speaking of models, our US model portfolio in the last month is down a little bit less than 1%, much neck and neck with the S&P 500, which is also down about 1% over the last month. Um, over the last one year, though, we’re up 35%, 36 nearly, versus 18 for the S&P 500. So 12 months, we’re doing roughly double market and all [00:05:00] time, which is, uh, for new listeners, September 23, our portfolio’s up about 113% versus the S&P up 67%. double market, but, uh, pretty damn close. Our light portfolio, on the other hand, last 30 days is also down about 0.3% versus 0.76, and it’s only been going since, uh, December last year. Since then, it’s up about 6% versus the S&P up about 8%. So we’re lagging a little bit. And, uh, some of the pulled porks I’ve done recently have done, um, particularly poorly. Uh, actually some of them not too bad. F&G, which we did on the 7th of July, is up 8%. Kohl’s, KSS Retail is up 1%. Carter Bankshares is up six. Aeromexico’s [00:06:00] down 10. that in the 18th of June. Northrim Bancorp, though, is up 13. Some nothings from a few others, bit u- bit up, bit down. Deutsche Bank’s up 11 since we talked about it. But one that’s relevant for today is PagSeguro Digital. Remember them? Brazilian fintech. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: since we talked about them back in April. Some of the big winners, Pitney Bowes is up sev- 70% since we talked about them at the end of March. insane. Bread Financial we talked about at the end of February. They’re up 40% since then. Uh, so a couple of big financials doing well. One that really fascinates me, you remember, uh, the Chinese watch company, uh, uh, what are they called again? Zepp Health Corporation. At one point, we talked about them in July last year, so a year ago. point they were up 380% or something. They’re now only up 77%. So I don’t know what that means. Tony Kynaston: Oh, probably means the bubble’s [00:07:00] burst. Cameron: Yeah, I don’t know who’s playing what games with that, but, uh, there you go. Still up. I’m not complaining about 80% in a year. It’s good. It’s not 380%, but you know. It is what it is. right. Let me, uh, let me talk about my pulled pork today, ’cause we’ve got a guy we gotta talk to in less, in a little bit over half an hour. Tony Kynaston: Well, I’m interested in hearing about this one because I’ve been invited to a wedding in Brazil in February next year. Yeah, so. Cameron: Your daughter’s, Alex? Tony Kynaston: No. My nephew, Dylan, who did some work for us many years ago, yeah. Cameron: Wow. Tony Kynaston: He’s marrying a, marrying a lovely Brazilian girl who wants to get married in Brasilia, well, no, São Paulo, where she, uh, near where she comes from. Cameron: Well, pay attention and you can, uh, amaze her family with your knowledge of 20th century Brazilian politics. So today, uh, I’m gonna be talking about [00:08:00] Petrobras, ticker PBR on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s a $116 billion company. I think it might be one of the biggest businesses we’ve done a pulled pork on. Um, bigger than Ford, I think. Um, probably. Don’t know how big Ford is, I can’t remember. this company was ranked number 71 on the 2023 Fortune Global 500 list. 58th largest public company in the world. Not often we get to invest in companies this size. Usually they’re priced out of our, um, sort of range. But this one is looking good. We’ll see what you think. A bit similar to the Argentinian Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: about last week though. It’s largely currency movements, I think, that has brought this onto the buy list. based in Rio. “When my baby looks at me, Tony, I go to [00:09:00] Rio De Janeiro, mama mio.” Uh, Australian hit song, 1975, I think. Peter Allen, for people who don’t know that song. but I, I hadn’t listened to Peter Allen since he was still alive and I, I. When I was preparing my notes for this last night, I went and listened to a bunch of Peter Allen tracks. lie, dude had some good songs. You know? He, he knew how to write a song. Tragically died of AIDS, I think 1992. Was the first husband of Liza Minnelli. I’d forgotten that, too. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: he, he used to open for Judy Garland and, uh, she him and Liza Minnelli. Anyhoo, uh, this company does report in the Brazilian reais, uh, which I found out it’s pronounced, the, the ri- what I would call the real is Tony Kynaston: Mm. Cameron: haio. [00:10:00] So you can use that when you go to Brazil. Haio. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. I still have some reais sitting around home from the last time I was in Brazil. Cameron: When were you

  2. Jul 16

    Conan the Barbarian (TEO): QAV America #61

    This week we do a full Pulled Pork on Telecom Argentina (TEO), a near-monopoly telco that owes much of its shine to one of the most unhinged political stories on the planet right now. Cameron walks through the Javier Milei backstory, dead dogs, clones, chainsaw economics and all, before getting into the actual numbers, which are genuinely solid. We also cover IBM’s ugly 25% overnight drop, Leslie’s pool company going haywire with trading halts every five minutes, and what the Strait of Hormuz chaos means for oil prices.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AMERICA 61 CLUB VIDEO Cameron: [00:00:00] Welcome back to QAV America, episode 61, the 16th of July, 2026. TK, duh, how many ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the last 24 hours? Tony, do you wanna take a guess? Tony Kynaston: could not guess. How many pass through safely, I think, is probably the answer. I’ll say none Cameron: Well, it’s hard to tell. As we talked about the other day, I mean, you know, the US have been claiming they’ve been sneaking ships through. But according to everything I’ve read, maybe about 10 passed through in the last 24 hours, which is more than I would imagine. I don’t know how they’re not getting bombed or attacked, and the US has put a blockade on them apparently, but they’re getting through, so I don’t know. I don’t know what the real– like with all of this stuff, no one knows what the real story is. You can’t trust any of them. They’re all crazy. It’s all lies and propaganda and fog of war and craziness going on Tony Kynaston: Gee, I’d, I’d want to be paid a lot to be a ship [00:01:00] captain going through the Straits of Hormuz Cameron: Right? Yes Tony Kynaston: the only guarantee that Donald Trump’s gonna get you through okay. Cameron: You’ve c- you’ve got a ship full of liquid, liquefied natural gas Tony Kynaston: on a bomb. Cameron: or oil. Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Oh, dear. Cameron: Uh, so yeah, it’s kinda crazy Tony Kynaston: 20% to the US. Yeah. Cameron: Yeah. Well, no, no, he’s, he’s, he’s reneged on that, Donald Trump. Yeah, he’s not, he’s not, charging him, ’cause it was gonna be like $30 million a ship or something. Tony Kynaston: And, Cameron: Apparently, uh, Gulf countries went, “Ah, hold on a second. What? You, you’re doing what now?” Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Well, the other thing is too, I, wouldn’t want to be an IBM stockholder this morning. Their share price went down 25% overnight. Cameron: Yeah, I, I didn’t really get a chance to drill down into that. What was that all about, do you know? Tony Kynaston: it was a quarter up- quarterly update where they missed their targets and called out the [00:02:00] fact that a lot of their clients were diverting what was CapEx going to IBM for mainframes into cloud service for AI. Cameron: Right Tony Kynaston: So that’s kind of starting to bite for IT industry now as well. Cameron: Interesting Well, uh, what else is in the, uh, US, uh, market news recently? Dow is up, S&P 500 is up, Nasdaq Composite was up. Um, oil is up. Tony Kynaston: A little bit Cameron: WTI and Brent all up. Tony Kynaston: It’s a bit surprising. I mean, Cameron: as much as Tony Kynaston: they went up, but given that only 10 ships pass through, you’d think it’d be higher, wouldn’t you? Cameron: You would. Um, Tony Kynaston: Lot Cameron: yeah. Tony Kynaston: in that oil price, I think, at the moment. Cameron: June CPI was released, uh, 14th of July in the US. Uh, headline CPI was down 0.4%. Annual rate down to three and a half from 4.2 in May, [00:03:00] which was below the consensus. So that all sounds good, but the Fed’s not buying it apparently. Markets still price a September hike at 63% odds, down from 75% the prior day. The new chair, Kevin Warsh, said, “That is not my view on readings that it’s mission accomplished.” So we’ll see how it all plays out. Apple hit a record high. Amazon and Alphabet hit record highs. Well, they’re up 3%, enough is a record high. Microsoft’s up 3%. Semiconductors sold off hard again, though, due to Samsung results. SpaceX now below the $135 offer price, down 34% from its post-listing record price. So what impact that has on other listings like Anthropic and OpenAI. I, I saw Anthropic’s numbers that they’re floating about for their [00:04:00] IPO. Insane. They’re m- they’re, like, uh, they’re making, like, $13 billion a month or something. A- and it’s all API pricing. It’s not actually, um, you know, uh, uh, monthly charges like people like me pay. It’s all API stuff. And the numbers, you look at the numbers, it’s just going exponential what they’re earning from API pricing. It’s crazy. But anyway, um, closer to home, my, my star stock of the last few weeks, Leslie’s, the pool company, uh, was up 10% in a week after I bought it, and I was like, “You beauty.” And then it crashed 27%, uh, below my buy price the other day, and it’s continued to fall. Um, it’s now trading at $2.97. I did get out of it a couple of days ago. I’m just bringing up my transaction list here. Can’t remember what price I sold it at. Um, I [00:05:00] bought it at $7.68 on the 18th of June. Went up 10% in a week. I thought that was great. I sold it at $5.60 on the 14th of July, and as I said, it’s now down to $2.97. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: So nothing in the news except when you look in Stockopedia, the, the news section for it is, uh, hilarious. It’s, um. Hold on, let me try and bring this up again. Um, Leslie Over the last week it’s just NASDAQ trade halt, volatility trading pause. NASDAQ resumed. NASDAQ trade halt, volatility trading pause. This, like, for yesterday, this happened at, uh, 12:27 AM it was a halt, resumed at [00:06:00] 12:32 AM. Then another halt at 12:33 AM, this is our time, I guess. Um, resumed at 10:30. Uh, oh yeah, it’s in American time. So there was a halt at 10:27 AM New York time, then resumed at 10:32. Then at 10:33, another trading pause, resumed at 10:38. 10:43, another trading pause, resumed at 10:40. This goes on every few minutes all day. Trading halt due to volatility, and then it resumes trading. That’s all I can see in the, in the Tony Kynaston: Wow. Sounds like they’ve sprung Cameron: when Tony Kynaston: the pool Cameron: It was down 41% Tony Kynaston: Wow. Oh Cameron: Um, so gamma squeeze maybe, whatever that is. But anyway, there you go. That was my big excitement for this week. I sold it and I replaced it with the stock I’m gonna do a Pulled Pork on today, which is a good one with a absolutely bonkers story ’cause it’s all [00:07:00] about Argentina’s president Javier Milei. I’m gonna be talking about Telecom Argentina, Tony. Ticker code TEO. Not sure if I should pronounce that TEO or Tayo. I’ll probably go with Tayo ’cause it sounds slightly Latin American-ish. You know, makes me sound like I’m very, you know, I talk like this. I do my best Al Pacino. I say sanitarium, not san- I say sanitarium, not sanitation. You know? Tony Kynaston: And of course, Argentina won the World Cup semifinal this morning, couple of hours ago. Cameron: Did they? Tony Kynaston: this Cameron: Ah, good for them Tony Kynaston: was evening in the US, yeah. Yeah, Cameron: Messi play for them? Tony Kynaston: Messi did, and he had a, he had a blinder. He scored a late goal and then set up a Cameron: Good for him. Well, Argentina, buckle up ’cause man, Tony Kynaston: 2-1. Yeah Yeah, and you’re off to the, [00:08:00] you’re off to the World Cup final too on Ma- Sunday night, so good luck Cameron: I’ve had, uh, I’ve had a great time researching this story. I’m, I’m gonna try and not get too sidetracked, but, uh, uh, this is just, just gave me so much glee learning about this. We’ll start with, uh, Telecom Argentina. So, uh, they’re basically a monopoly, uh, ef- effective a monopoly for the moment, but it may not last in Argentina. They trade under the brand names of Personal and Flow. Sounds more like a women’s monthly, uh, tracking app, but there you go. Um, your Personal Flow from Telecom Argentina. They’re simply known mostly as just Telecom, like Telstra used to be called here in Australia. They’re just called Telecom by most people in Argentina apparently. They are listed as an ADR on the New York Stock Exchange. Each ADR is five of the underlying Argentine B shares. They’re listed back home in Buenos Aires as TECO2, [00:09:00] T-E-C-O-2. The, uh, Argentinian peso is known as the ARS or the arse, uh, because it’s in the arse end of the world, I guess. Um, it’s, uh, one ARS Tony Kynaston: that’s harsh Cameron: currently, one ARS is currently worth 0.0006723 US dollars. I think it’s about Tony Kynaston: for Aries, the ram Cameron: C- could. Just not as funny though, so leave the humor to me. Tony Kynaston: I’m not trying to be funny. I’m, I’m trying to stop s- whatever it is, 120 million Argentinian, Argentinians from sending us Cameron: Messi turning up at our doorstep and kicking the ball into our nuts. Um, market cap’s about 5.8 billion US dollars. Share price is around 13.5 cents. Well, it was when I did my analysis on it. Let’s see, what is it today? Uh, closed. Well, it’s, market’s still open there. Yeah, 13.78 [00:10:00] now. And it

  3. Jul 9

    Guaranteed Returns (FG): QAV America #60

    This week Cameron does a full Pulled Pork on F&G Annuities and Life (ticker: FG), a Des Moines-based annuities and retirement income company that’s been through four owners in 25 years, had its share price smashed 44% from peak, and is now sitting at a QAV score of 0.862. Tony brings the context on why annuities businesses are genuinely complex to run, the tailwinds from baby boomer retirements, and why the Blackstone connection is both impressive and worth watching. Plus: the Strait of Hormuz shipping update, jobs numbers, Tony’s horse wins at Flemington, Welsh heavy metal, and a walk through a freezing Queensland creek.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV America 60 Club Video [00:00:00] Cameron: Welcome back to QAV America, Tony, episode 60. It is the 7th of July, 2026. Well Tony Kynaston: and happy 250th America Cameron: Yeah. Let’s, Tony Kynaston: may not Cameron: let’s, Tony Kynaston: there wasn’t much going on in the mall Cameron: let’s see if it makes it to 251 as a republic. Um, well, the, the big U.S. market related news in the last week, I guess, Tony, is the market’s booming still despite the June jobs report that was released on July 2nd coming in softer than expected. 57,000 payrolls added. The expectation was around 115,000, so it’s, uh, slowed down for some reason. Unemployment ticked down though from 4.3 to 4.2% because labor force participation fell to [00:01:00] 61.5%, the lowest since 2021. So apparently it’s, um, not a good thing. It’s sort of an indication of people not working. Um, I guess like here, what do we, we’ve done shows about this before. We’ve talked about unemployment versus underemployment, full-time employment versus gig economy type stuff. I’m not sure if that’s how they track it in the US, but I suspect it’s something to do with that as well. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. I’m not sure. I’m not sure how it works over there. Underemployment in Australia is defined at, uh, for people, people get surveyed and they get asked are you trying to get more hours. And if you say yes you’re underemployed. Cameron: Hmm. The chip index, the, uh, Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell but then recovered. It’s choppy over there, uh, still, like the whole AI bubble, Mag Seven stocks, the Mag Seven, up and down. It’s a bit all over the place. Uh, which again is, I think, maybe an indication that the bubble is starting to weaken, or maybe it’s just profit taking at the end of the month. Um, they’ve gone up. They’ve had a good run. Maybe there’s some profit being grabbed out. Bitcoin’s down. We did, uh, we talked on the last show about how there’s this great story about, uh, how nearly a million investors lost a total of $3.8 billion on Trump Crypto coin, while Donald Trump’s made 2.2 billion from his business ventures since starting his second term as president, including 600 odd million from his crypto ventures, where his fans are losing billions. But as you pointed out on the last show, some of them were doing that as a way to buy favor, so they probably see it as a good investment. Some people got out of jail, I think, [00:03:00] after buying a lot of crypto. So, you know, cheap. Tony Kynaston: Crazy isn’t it though. Cameron: Hmm. Tony Kynaston: if Joe was doing that. Who knows. Cameron: Who knows? Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: Hmm. Tony Kynaston: Guessing that at least it’s out in the open now. But Cameron: if that’s business as usual it’s, I don’t want a part of it. It’s not, it’s very unsavory. Cameron: If you went to, if you went to jail though, Tony, would you want part of it then? Tony Kynaston: Oh yeah definitely. I’d buy a meme coin to get out, get out of, get out of jail. Yeah. Uh and Cameron: we’d even buy a Trump phone. Uh, and Alphabet joined the Dow this week. Tony Kynaston: Yeah it’s surprising it took that long. Cameron: And, uh, I checked my Strait of Hormuz tracker this morning. About 25 ships have transited the Strait of Hormuz in the last 24 hours. This time a week ago it was five, so it’s increased a lot since then. Not up to the 60 to [00:04:00] 100 that it is normally, so we’re still a long way from that. But it’s making progress, which hopefully it continues to go in that direction. But as you said in our last show, um, you know, anyone’s bet. The, obviously they had the funeral for the Ayatollah Khamenei this week, and, uh, lots of people on the streets in Iran, and there was lots of gnashing of teeth about the, uh, number of missiles that Israel and the United States fired on his house. His son and successor, Mojtaba, was nowhere to be seen still, which suggests that he’s not fit to be seen still. You’d think if he was gonna be seen at all, it would be at his father’s funeral. So no one knows what’s going on with him. Uh, but it sounds like he’s Tony Kynaston: dressed in black. Even dark sunglasses kind of Weekend at Bernie’s style. They could Cameron: Yeah, yeah, two guys propping him up. Yeah, like when a Mormon prophet gets up to give a speech and he has to be propped up, or Mitch McConnell. [00:05:00] Uh, but, um, you know, how long that fragile deal is able to be maintained is anyone’s guess. As my Persian friend keeps telling me, there’s just so much factionalism in Tehran at the moment with people that want a deal, people that don’t want a deal, people that wanna sabotage the deal, wanna keep fighting, people that wanna keep fighting until they get more of the upside of the deal. Um, so no one knows really what’s gonna happen. It’s very fragile. Tony Kynaston: Hmm. And there must be some people who are celebrating getting three hundred billion dollars on the release of sanctions. Cameron: Sure. Tony Kynaston: well Cameron: Some people will be profiting from that. Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Cameron: Uh, before I get into my deep dive of the week, Tony, do you want to guess how many stocks were on the US buy list this week? Tony Kynaston: Ooh. 10. Cameron: Multiply it by 10 and then add four. 104 stocks I had to choose from. [00:06:00] Tony Kynaston: Wow. A smorgasbord. Cameron: Indeed. And I chose the, the number two. The number one I had a look at, can’t remember what it was, but for some reason, uh, something about it I didn’t like. Something looked dodgy. Um, I think they were losing money, um, and their revenues had been going backwards for some time. Can’t remember what the deal was. But this one I picked is another boring, very boring stock, Tony. Um Tony Kynaston: I thought it was great. Cameron: Really? I look forward to seeing why you think it’s great. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Interesting business, interesting, interesting of the market it operates in too. Cameron: But the CEO hasn’t been fired for sleeping with a supplier. They haven’t electrocuted anyone. You know, I like, I like my spicy American stock market stories. This one, eh, is an insurance company that’s making money. Like it’s, uh, [00:07:00] Buffett would find it exciting. For me, it’s boring. No one died in the making of this Pulled Pork. The company’s called F&G Annuities and Life. Ticker code is FG. It’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Yeah, F&G. That’s, they walk around all day in their office going, “Ah, F&G. Accidenti,” as we say in Italian. Um, uh, they’re headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. Been around in one form or another since 1959, but have been through four different owners in the last 25 years. Market cap’s about $3.7 billion. Stock’s had a wild ride, down 44% from its peak over the last year. Dropped from $36.70 down to $20.50. Now sitting around about 28 bucks. [00:08:00] I haven’t checked it this morning. Should check, see what happened overnight, actually. FG, not FG Holdings. That’s a different company. Uh, let’s see. Oh, they went up. That’s nice. $28.38 yesterday. Um, they’ve also got a brand new CEO as of this month. The guy who had been the CEO for the last seven and a half years has moved to run a subsidiary where his strategic brilliance is required and his former CFO has moved into his, uh, chair. So continuity, no big deal. Didn’t get fired for sleeping with a supplier. It’s all legit and above board. So this company started life as Fidelity & Guaranty Life back in the olden days. Uh, [00:09:00] sold to a company called Old Mutual in 2001 and became OM Financial Life. Then it was sold again in 2011 to the Harbinger Group and became Fidelity & Guaranty Life. Then in 2017 it was sold again to a Cayman Islands SPAC run by a Vietnamese American financier, Chinh Chu, who was a former Blackstone guy who set up his own investment vehicle. Bought it for around $1.8 billion and renamed it to FGL Holdings and did a deal with his former colleagues at Blackstone which is still in play today. I’ll get to that a little bit later. Then in 2020, Fidelity National Financial, a separately listed company, ticker is FNF, they’re a big title insurance company, bought the whole thing outright [00:10:00] and then at the end of 2022 they spun it back out again. Well, they spun off 15% of it to their own shareholders as a stock dividend and it started trading as an independent public company. Then in December last year they handed out another 12% to their shareholders so they’re down to about 70% ownership a

  4. Jul 2

    KSS Me, Darling – QAV America #59

    This week we dig into Kohl’s (KSS), the mid-range American department store chain that fired its CEO after just 15 weeks on the job for running a secret sweetheart deal with a former romantic partner. Tony and Cam work through the QAV scorecard, weigh up the enormous real estate portfolio sitting beneath the struggling retail business, and debate whether a Gordon Gekko moment is coming. Plus: Fed chair Kevin Warsh goes dark, the Strait of Hormuz tracker, and Willis Lease Finance announces a 3-for-1 stock split after a 383% run.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AMERICA 59 v2 Cameron: [00:00:00] Well welcome back to QAV America Tony episode 59 It’s the first day of the new financial year in Australia but Americans don’t care about that Tony Kynaston: No. Happy new financial year, Cam. Cameron: It’s it’s nearly the Fourth of July I said to my wife who’s an American uh Do you wanna celebrate the Fourth of July She’s like Yeah not really I was like Okay Tony Kynaston: She doesn’t wanna go to the MAGA concert on the reflecting pool. Cameron: I will I I was just looking for an excuse to make a pumpkin pie She goes Yeah the one pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving is enough You don’t need to get you know you know We’re going down the pumpkin pie slippery slope she says I do love making a pumpkin pie now Um well I haven’t checked It’s early morning here on uh Wednesday in Australia I haven’t checked what happened in the market in the US last night Oh it went up Tony Kynaston: Well up, yeah Cameron: It went up Well I did my market recap yesterday A few things going on in the [00:01:00] US over the last week that have affected the market There is um some uh concern I think now that probably aggressive rate cuts aren’t gonna happen Um with Kevin Warsh in at the Fed there was some optimism I think initially that uh he was gonna cut some rates But I think people are thinking yeah maybe that’s not gonna happen He seems to be signaling that gonna do the right thing despite the political expectations And uh they’ve got hotter inflation data three consecutive months of strong payrolls people seem to think that there might be a second rate hike by the end of the year Tony what are you reading in The Wall Street Journal and all that Tony Kynaston: Oh, s- the same. Um, I guess it’ll be very interesting because, [00:02:00] you know, he was appointed by Trump to specifically cut rates. The, the difficulty for him, for Warsh, is that he doesn’t. He’s not the only vote on the Fed, and the Fed still has other people who are, um, at least acting a little bit independently and making up their own mind on rates, and the data doesn’t support a rate cut at the moment. Um, but I think the other interesting thing with the Fed, uh, that I’m reading is that Ke- Kevin Warsh is really pushing the, the line that the Fed has been too transparent, too much in the market talking, jawboning, as it’s called, um, to try and influence what the market’s doing, what interest rates are doing without having to change rates, and he doesn’t like that, so he’s going dark. And I think that’ll be interesting because then the market’s gonna r- you know, probably react to every piece of data as it comes out without being told how the Fed interprets it. They’ll be jumping at their own conclusion. So may lead to some more volatility. Um, and we’re going back to the days prior [00:03:00] to probably Greenspan and Bernanke, where, um, it was just the Fed doesn’t release a dot plot, just comes out when it makes a move and tells you about it after the fact. So it’ll be very interesting Cameron: Indeed Tony Kynaston: Whether it’s good or bad, I can’t really say. I mean, the, the things evolved to being more transparent under the last couple of chairmen, so we’ll see, um, whether it’s better or, or worse by, uh, by not being as, uh, transparent going forward Cameron: Well the other thing of course that’s going on is the Strait of Hormuz I’ve got my Strait of Hormuz live tracker website open in front of me I love this website You ever looked at this Tony Kynaston: No. Mm-hmm. Does it show you where the s- where the mines are? Where the sea mines are? Cameron: sh Tony Kynaston: Oh Cameron: shows you where the ships are but not where the mines are I don’t think anyone knows where Tony Kynaston: I guess, I guess you can extrapolate that if the ships are there, the mines aren’t. Cameron: Well Tony Kynaston: It’s Cameron: ships aren’t going anywhere Tony Kynaston: It’s, like Battleship, it’s like a game of Battleship, isn’t it? Cameron: [00:04:00] battleship Tony Kynaston: D3. Cameron: Yeah Uh so according to the tracker the strait is still closed for the uh 122 days 23 hours and 29 minutes it’s been closed according to this Uh ships transiting now in the last 24 hours five it says Tony Kynaston: From where Cameron: It uh Tony Kynaston: Iranian or are they Western? Cameron: I don’t It doesn’t say Tony Kynaston: Right. Cameron: yes it does down here actually Uh no this is vessel seizures Um okay that’s different I don’t know Okay I don’t know Tony Kynaston: Little bit Cameron: are getting through but the point is that five is not a lot Um Tony Kynaston: and and the interesting thing was the oil price dropped overnight as well Cameron: That’s yeah it’s 73.42 according to this website Tony Kynaston: Yeah Cameron: Uh why Who knows There are 485 [00:05:00] vessels waiting tankers 147 bulk carriers and 118 other This tracks the uh tanker spot rate uh tracks the uh daily throughput It tracks the war risk insurance which it still rates as extreme yeah normally It says normal daily average is 60 uh ships I thought it was more like 90 to 100 ships is the daily average in normal times But way five is not a lot So Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Cameron: the current reality of the Strait Oil price is dropping but the ships aren’t moving Tony Kynaston: Yeah. How do you explain that? Cameron: Well I think reserves uh being released into the market um is probably part it The Tony Kynaston: I don’t think they’ve done that release for a while, and they must be getting very low on their reserves to release. So y- I would have thought the oil price should be rising, [00:06:00] but there’s, I mean, I know there’s discussions going on again in Qatar, but whether that’s to open the straits or whether it’s to release s-sanction held money back to Iran, it’s all very convoluted and underreported at the moment, so it’s hard. I don’t kn- I, I don’t, I don’t know how you, you could trade oil futures at the moment. It’s just highly speculative and, and surprising it’s going down. But Cameron: Well Tony Kynaston: anyway Cameron: the market’s like highly speculative Tony I don’t know if you’ve uh picked this up Did you pay attention to the SpaceX flight Tony Tony Kynaston: Yeah, I also saw a graph of, uh, companies that make no money and their performance versus companies that make money, and the, the, the losers are winning, if that makes sense. The companies that make no money have done better. Cameron: Yes Uh uh so speaking of SpaceX it’s uh risen again a little bit yesterday it’s uh [00:07:00] still below where it was its peak but it’s coming back up What else have I got The yield cushion Despite rate anxiety and geopolitical noise the US 10-year treasury yield held relatively steady tracking at 4.37 down from the 4.56 highs seen earlier in June So you know go figure Um not really sure that makes any sense uh but there it is What else is going on in the US Uh big tech took a brutal beating last week It sort of There was a big tech drawdown uh across the market over the last week since we last recorded And as I mentioned to you on our Australian show yesterday it looks like OpenAI is talking about pushing its float back after the uh in some perspectives uh what happened with [00:08:00] SpaceX after its float The price sort of dipped again after the initial there was a big selloff and people sort of ran away from it So there is some talk that OpenAI might kick theirs down the road a little bit But they also announced their own in-house inference chip So there was a little bit of excitement around that They’re gonna build their own chips Everyone’s building their own chips No one wants to be tied to NVIDIA Tony Kynaston: Right. Yep. Cameron: is interesting Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm Cameron: Uh and you mentioned something yesterday about the Korean market being shut down again Tony Tony Kynaston: Yep, another 8% trading halt. So the market was shut for twenty minutes. That occurred last week, and that, that helped to drive down some of the AI stocks in, in the US. Um, but there’s also. You know, we’ve seen plenty of commentary we talked about yesterday on the Australian show. Uh, Jeremy Grantham’s come out calling it, uh, the AI boom a bubble. Um, the clearing bank, this, this [00:09:00] central bank’s clearing bank, um, which is based in Europe, came out saying the same thing that, um, there was a boom in data centers, there was a boom in AI chips and that the, in AI, in AI stocks, and there was a circular economy going on. They claimed it was as, you know, the, the situation looked as bad as before the GFC. So there’s lots of people who are fee

  5. Jun 26

    The Bunker, the Billionaire, and the Bank That Cared (CARE): QAV America #58

    This week we dig into Carter Bankshares (CARE), a tiny Virginia community bank that got itself tangled up with a billionaire US senator, a Cold War bunker resort, and nearly $800 million in dodgy loans, then somehow came out the other side with $80 million in cash and a story worthy of HBO. We also cover Alan Greenspan’s passing at 100, the SpaceX float wobble, the Iran sanctions waiver, and why Big Tech’s stock-based compensation accounting might be quietly fleecing investors.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AMERICA 58 new [00:00:00] Tony Kynaston AU: Nothing to talk about on the US show, is there? Cameron AU: Nothing to talk about. Welcome to QAV America 58. Tony Kynaston AU: chill, people Cameron AU: Chill, 23rd of June, 2026. Tony? I had an ex-wife who had a birthday on the 23rd of June. Trying to remember which. Uh, probably my first wife. Happy birthday, my first wife, if she’s listening. Tony Kynaston AU: You have so many ex-wives you can’t remember their birthdays. Cameron AU: Yeah, it’s just dates. You know, you go, “Oh, I think there was a date I was supposed to Tony Kynaston AU: You and Elon Cameron AU: wife’s.” Yeah. Actually, yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Elon, Tony Kynaston AU: How can afford his alimony? Cameron AU: how, how are your, uh, are your SpaceX shares going, Tony? Tony Kynaston AU: I don’t have any, but um, I hear they’ve been doing well until all the insiders sell out, but we’ll see Cameron AU: No, they’re down. They crashed. Tony Kynaston AU: Oh, have they? Well, they were doing well last time I looked. They’re up 50% over the weekend Cameron AU: Uh, they’re down. I don’t– I wouldn’t say crashed, but, um, yeah, they’re back down to where they started, I think. Um, as of today, they are [00:01:00] less. They’re below. Um, they f- they sort of floated at a dollar sixty– uh, $165, sorry. They’re currently $154. So congratulations to everyone who got into SpaceX. Tony Kynaston AU: And got out quickly. Cameron AU: you got out, yeah Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah. That’s amazing. It– That’s, I mean, that’s a huge float to be moving that, with that much volatility, isn’t it? That’s incredible. Cameron AU: Yeah. Well, Tony Kynaston AU: All sorts of rumors in the market that he’s gonna use the float to buy Tesla, and then he can, uh, become the chief exec or executive chairman of Tesla as well, which could have bugged him he couldn’t be chairman Cameron AU: I’ve been reading these, this Colossus, uh, series of books from the ’60s and ’70s. I’m on the third one. It was a trilogy. I’m on the third one at the moment called Colossus and the Crab, and this is where, uh, Martians come down and basically help the humans to kill Colossus and then state that they want, uh, their payment is they want 50% of Earth’s [00:02:00] oxygen to take back to Mars to re-replenish the oxygen on Mars. Tony Kynaston AU: Right Cameron AU: It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s actually not as wacky as it sounds. It’s pretty good, but it got me reading a lot of it ’cause the, the, the author. This one was written in 1977. He’s making a lot of cl- ooh, a lot of claims about Mars’ atmosphere and the escape velocity of Mars and why it lost all of its heavier elements and all Tony Kynaston AU: Mm-hmm. Cameron AU: of stuff. And so I’ve been going backwards and forwards with Claude just sort of fact-checking a lot of this stuff. But as part of that process I was reading about the, uh, cosmic radiation levels to get to Mars. Do you know, do you know much about that? Tony Kynaston AU: I have heard that’s one of the problems with colonies on Mars is you just get irradiated, you get microwaved Cameron AU: Even getting there. So, um, apparently NASA has a career limit for astronauts of 600 millisieverts of radiation exposure. Over your entire career as an astronaut, you can get six– anything beyond 600, and I think your, uh, [00:03:00] rates of getting cancer from radiation poisoning go up to, like, 5% or 10% higher than they normally would be, so they cap it at Tony Kynaston AU: Right Yep Cameron AU: A one-way trip to Mars exposes you to 1,000 millisieverts. Um- Tony Kynaston AU: And I can’t line the ship Cameron AU: No. There, there’s, there’s various theories, but n- nothing that would be, uh, um, effective. Um, in fact, if you line it with metal, it, it makes it worse because the radiation hits the metal and then fragments all of the particles out of the metal, so y- it actually increases your exposure of radiation. Tony Kynaston AU: Right Cameron AU: way to do it apparently is water, um, y- you’d, it’d be so heavy, et cetera, et cetera. It ruins your ability to get the ship up. Maybe if you, if you got Tony Kynaston AU: Close out the position, yeah Cameron AU: and got in another ship, you might be able to. Apparently, I asked if Elon Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah, well, you gotta get the water up there, though. You can’t. Doesn’t matter. You gotta still get the water up there, right? Cameron AU: [00:04:00] Yeah. Tony Kynaston AU: It doesn’t flow uphill. Cameron AU: Elon’s answer to this apparently so far has been, “Yeah, yeah, a lot of people are gonna die. That’s just how it is.” Uh, Tony Kynaston AU: Is he stroking a cat when he says that? Cameron AU: you know, his, uh, thing about l- you know, the, the rocket launches with SpaceX over the years has always been, you know, blow stuff up quickly. Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah. Cameron AU: apparently that translates into kill people quickly to get them Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah. Cameron AU: He said it’s gonna be volunteer only. Apparently, his answer is to get you, get you there faster. So if you get there faster, you’re exposed to less radiation. But of Tony Kynaston AU: But you’re still exposed when you get there, yeah Cameron AU: you get there, let– and then if you ever wanna Tony Kynaston AU: Unless you, Cameron AU: so Tony Kynaston AU: unless you build underground, I guess. That was the, Cameron AU: Well, Tony Kynaston AU: was the theory Cameron AU: Yeah, you have to build underground, Yeah. Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah. Well, I thought Elon’s play was to get robots to do all that when it was safe to send humans, yeah Cameron AU: Yeah. Eventually you, you, it’s safe for humans to get in there. But, um, Tony Kynaston AU: Mm-hmm. Cameron AU: Well, before we get onto Elon, um, Iran, let’s Tony Kynaston AU: We just did. Before [00:05:00] we get onto Wieland, we just spent the last five minutes on it. Cameron AU: okay. Let’s move off of Elon. Tony Kynaston AU: Okay Cameron AU: Elon. That’s what all of his ex-wives said. Um, the Iran sanctions. So, um- Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah, it’s clown show number two. Clown show number one, Cameron AU: So the Tony Kynaston AU: in space. Clown show number two. Cameron AU: the MOU was finally released late last week, and it was the most fun I’ve had in, I don’t know, a long time reading through that. The 300 billion in reparations had been rumored for a while, and whenever I spoke to my Persian friend, uh, from Kung Fu about it and, or read about it in the forums online, the, the, the, the standard response was, “Oh, that’s just IRGC propaganda. They’re just trying to make themselves sound good. That’s never gonna happen.” Well, it was in the document. Yeah, $300 Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah. Cameron AU: in Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah. But who pays for it? Cameron AU: And [00:06:00] they’re, they’re not very specific on that. Tony Kynaston AU: No. Cameron AU: said, ” No, we’re not paying for it. Uh, the Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah Cameron AU: will pay for it.” And they might. Um, but it’s a big. And then the lifting of all sanctions on Iran is the other big thing. So then, uh, Iran pulled out because Israel kept bombing Lebanon. They walked out of the negotiations, or they said they were gonna, but apparently they didn’t, and I was reading in Al Jazeera this morning. It’s still the place where I go to for my news on this is Al Jazeera. It seems to be, you know, a little bit less, um, problematic than a lot of the Western news sources. But, um, they were saying that, uh, the US has partially lifted Iran’s oil sanctions for 60 days or 61 days maybe. Tony Kynaston AU: Yeah, so it’s basically a 60-day ceasefire, which we’ve had before as well, which didn’t last very long Cameron AU: But it says, uh, “The US Treasury issued a 60-day sanctions waiver on Monday, paving the way for the production, delivery, and sale [00:07:00] of Iranian oil to the US.” So, A, I don’t know how much oil they have sitting around now to sell to the US within 60 days. I don’t know what the situation is there, but. And it’s just like what it does to the oil price, who knows? But it’s just, uh, you know, fascinating that after decades sanctions on Iran Tony Kynaston AU: Mm-hmm. Cameron AU: how bad the JCPOA deal was according to Trump, they’re lifting sanctions on Iran and Tony Kynaston AU: I saw a, Cameron AU: billion. Tony Kynaston AU: I saw a cartoon of Trump copying Obama’s S on, on Iran. It’s like he’s just done the same thing Obama did Cameron AU: No, this is way more, uh, better. Way more better? I Tony Kynaston AU: It’s worse for the US, yeah Cameron AU: Way better for Iran

  6. Jun 18

    AERO: The Mexican Airline

    This week we dig into the SpaceX IPO numbers and they are genuinely terrifying: a Pr/OpCaf of 1,750 times, a $4.9 billion net loss, and a total addressable market pulled straight from a science fiction novel. We also cover the US-Iran deal tanking oil prices and forcing a bunch of sells across the portfolios, then Cameron does a Pulled Pork on Aeromexico (AERO), Mexico’s national airline, freshly listed on the NYSE and trading below its IPO price with a Pr/OpCaf of just 1.55 times.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AMERICA 57 Cameron: [00:00:00] welcome back to QAV America episode 57 Tony been a big week in the news with the uh Iran deal and the SpaceX float Tony Kynaston: Yes, Cam. Oh, well, big in news with the octagon brawl on the White House lawn and the president’s 80th birthday. Happy birthday, Mr. President Cameron: Do you think he had um somebody like Marilyn sing Happy Birthday Mr President Tony Kynaston: I, I think he had the Ayatollah in Tehran give him a big birthday present. Cameron: Uh we’ll see We’ll see how that plays out the first thing, I would guess, that’s, uh, of direct impact with us is a supposed peace deal, worth the paper it’s written on, between the US and Iran. Uh, we haven’t seen the paper or the terms of the deal yet, but- Tony Kynaston: Uh, I mean, I know rules are rules. I sold, I [00:01:00] sold some, uh, shares in oil companies that I own because the oil price became a sell, but I’m l- I’m doing it hesitantly going, “This is not gonna last. there’s not gonna be Cameron: Yeah Tony Kynaston: But, you know, rules are rules, so I had to sell Cameron: I had to sell a ton of things, both in the Australian portfolios and the American portfolios. Interestingly, the US portfolios, uh, stocks that I sold, we made like 30, 40% on all of them and I’d owned them for like three or four months. So it was okay. I was happy to get out. Um, but hard to replace them. I’ve replaced one, but I’m struggling to find things to buy in the US at the moment. And here too, the buy list here is down. I don’t know what yours looked like this week, but mine had, after I took out the crude oil commodities stocks, which was half of them, the rest were, you know, there was very little and stuff that I’d mostly bought before. Sun, um, Suncorp and, uh, [00:02:00] let’s see, what was the other one? Can’t remember now. Anyway, Slim Pickens. Yeah, CGF it was. Yeah, yeah. Slim Pickens. Every– ‘Cause everything’s sort of Josephines. Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Cameron: it’s been a, it’s been a rough ride. Market’s up today. It dipped a bit this morning, but it’s back up. But, uh, yeah, as you said, like, you know, Is- Israel’s not party to this. They’re still saying they’re gonna stay in Lebanon. Uh, you know, it’s. Tony Kynaston: Was clearly, was wonderful of the Iranians to give Donald Trump an 80th birthday present. That’s probably all it is. Cameron: On– It’s, it’s a wonder they didn’t turn up to his, uh, wrestling match in the front lawn of the White House. Tony Kynaston: The claw. The claw. The claw. Not the claw, the claw on the White House. Wasn’t that amazing? It was. I really, I’d love to have been there. It, it was he introduced as the, the Hammer of Hummus, the Terror of Tehran. Cameron: Oh, you need a. You got a. Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Donald [00:03:00] Trump. Cameron: Oh, you got a, you got a career as a caller of wrestling matches. Uh, yeah, absolute craziness with all of that. Um, the greatest deal ever made to get us back to where we were before it all started, but it looks like Iran’s getting $300 billion in reparations, is one claim. We don’t know the details, but I saw, I saw one analysis today that said that, um, Germany had to pay 5 billion in reparations after World War II, I think, which indexed would be about $100 billion, 90, $95 billion. The US are gonna pay Iran $300 billion for their three-month. That’s one rumor. That’s, uh, probably something the IRGC are looking for, but how much they actually get, giving up sanctions, releasing funds, it’s all. No one knows Tony Kynaston: And what do you think they’ll do with that money once they get it? Or what does Trump [00:04:00] think they’ll do with that money once they’ll get it? Sea mines, landmines, nuclear weapons, Cameron: buying more missiles. That’s, yeah, yeah. Well, the other big new– So that’s been a, that’s been a, a big thing for us, uh, this week, having to sell our oil stocks, which we’ll probably buy again a couple of weeks from now. Uh, the SpaceX IPO, Tony. I, I drilled down into this one a little bit despite myself Tony Kynaston: It feels like we’ve jumped the shark this week, Cam. I’ve gone away on holidays and the shark’s been jumped while I’m away Cameron: It’s like people have been saying, like, which, which f- you know, multiverse are we living in here? So, um, I don’t know if you’ve seen the numbers or saw my TikTok on this, Tony, but, um, what is, uh, what’s our, what’s our Pr/OpCaf cutoff, Tony? Can you remind me again what it is? Tony Kynaston: times. Less than, Cameron: S- Tony Kynaston: be less than seven Cameron: And what’s the average Pr/OpCaf for stocks on the market, Tony? Tony Kynaston: Oh, I don’t know. I’d be guessing it’s [00:05:00] about 16, but that’s just a guess Cameron: 1516 from what I can tell. Tony Kynaston: Yep Cameron: Do you wanna take a guess what SpaceX’s Pr/OpCaf is right now, Tony? Tony Kynaston: Well, I’m surprised it’s, it’s not infinity given that it probably doesn’t have any cash coming in. Not, not much. I guess it’s got the Starlink income, so it’s gonna be like 1,000 times I would’ve thought. Cameron: Close, uh, 1,750 times, Pr/OpCaf Tony Kynaston: Bargain. Bargain. Gina, Gina knows a bargain when she Cameron: Oh, doesn’t she? Gina got a billion in there somewhere, I believe. SpaceX closed yesterday at a near $2.1 trillion market cap. Their 2025 revenue was $18.7 billion. Uh, that’s a price to sales ratio of about 112 times. That’s not earnings, that’s price to sales. They didn’t have earnings. They posted a $4.9 billion [00:06:00] net loss for the year. For context, Apple trades around nine times sales. Nvidia at the absolute peak of the AI mania was around 30 times. SpaceX just IPO’d at nearly four times that while losing money, which Apple and Nvidia aren’t. So the only part of the company that actually makes money is Starlink, uh, of which you’re a subscriber. Tony Kynaston: Correct Cameron: part of their $11.4 billion in revenue that they did Tony Kynaston: could have sent me a share, couldn’t they? Cameron: They could have, yeah. Tony Kynaston: early Cameron: So you’re paying a $2 trillion valuation for what’s basically a satellite ISP company with a rocket on its back and an xAI cash furnace bolted on that they merged two months before they floated. So, but the, the best part, and I think, um, Alan Kohler pointed this out in his article yesterday, the total [00:07:00] addressable market in their S1 document was $28.5 trillion, is their total addressable market Tony Kynaston: Is that the GDP of Mars? Cameron: Uh, that’s– I think Alan wrote, “That’s the number you write down when you need the valuation to make sense and the actual income statement won’t cooperate.” It’s just like dot– like the dotcom b- bubble has nothing on this. It’s just absolute insanity. Insan- not insanity that he had a crack at it, but insanity that people went into it. I heard the investment banks made $500 million in fees out of the whole thing, Tony Kynaston: Yep Cameron: people bought into it. Um, so I did a TikTok saying, you know, our seven times Pr/OpCaf is like, well, it’s seven times, you know, f- the average of 15 times Pr/OpCaf, I was saying on [00:08:00] the TikTok that 15 years to get your money back is a long time. 15 years ago, most people thought AI was 100 years away, at least. 50– A lot can happen in 15 years. Even seven years is a long time these days. I don’t know what the world’s gonna look like seven years from now. 1,750 years, like 750 years ago was like 286 CE. The Roman Empire was still in full effect. Uh, I think Diocletian was probably emperor. The, the, the Christianity was about 10% of the Roman Empire. It was still a relatively small religion. The, the Goths were still on the borders causing a little bit of trouble. I mean, a lot’s happened in the last 1,750 years. Anyway, it’s madness. Absolute madness Tony Kynaston: Well, a bit of growth brings that number down, but you need a lot of growth to bring it down to a reasonable sort of number. Yeah, look, it’s, it’s crowd [00:09:00] psychology, isn’t it? People, people are investing. They’re almost throwing their money at it, not caring what happens to their money. I mean, some people, I guess, treating it like a lottery. It may go up. They might get three hundred times their money like they did with Tesla. So, know, it’s, it’s a bit like Bitcoin, isn’t it? I’m gonna of put my toe in the market and see what happens, is what I think the– most people are saying. But it Cameron: often referred to, you’ve often referred to Elon as a Bond villain. I think, you know, Bond villains had nothing on Elon. Bond

  7. Jun 10

    Tobias Carlisle, Soldier Of Fortune: QAV America #56

    Episode Overview This week we sit down with Tobias Carlisle to dig into his new book, “Soldier of Fortune: Warren Buffett, Sun Tzu, and the Ancient Art of Risk-Taking.” Tobias walks us through three of Berkshire Hathaway’s most misunderstood deals (General Re, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and the Japanese Sogo Shosha trades), explaining why each looked wrong at the time and turned out to be masterstrokes of defensive strategy. We also get into ADRs, the K-shaped US market, small cap value, and why Tobias and Tony both landed on “Quality At Value” as the sweet spot. Timestamps & Subjects [00:00:00] Intro and guest welcome, Tobias Carlisle’s new book “Soldier of Fortune” [00:03:00] The three misunderstood Berkshire deals, starting with General Re [00:10:00] Unpacking the General Re scrip deal, Coke dilution, and defensive strategy [00:13:00] Via negativa, inversion, and the Charlie Munger checklist mindset [00:16:00] Burlington Northern Santa Fe, railways as capital traps, and the coup d’oeil [00:20:00] Accelerated depreciation, the tax carry trade inside Burlington Northern [00:24:00] Wu Wei, mental flexibility, and breaking your own rules when the price is right [00:29:00] Apple as the greatest trade of all time and why scale matters [00:33:00] No master plan, Berkshire’s structural freedom versus niche-constrained investors [00:36:00] The Japanese Sogo Shosha carry trade and zero percent yen-denominated notes [00:43:00] Japan’s shareholder reform, Tokyo Stock Exchange pressure, and cultural resistance [00:50:00] ADRs, the DRAM ETF, and why Americans avoid foreign-listed names [00:53:00] Operating cash flow manipulation, property developers, and IFRS versus US GAAP [00:55:00] Buffett on survival, risk of ruin, and the million-chamber revolver quote [00:58:00] Profitless tech at all-time highs, the K-shaped market, and small cap value [01:02:00] Northrim BanCorp (NRIM) as a real-world cheap-as-chips example [01:04:00] The Acquirer’s Multiple today, quality minus junk, and where Tobias actually invests [01:06:00] Quality At Value as the shared investing philosophy, wrap-up and book plug   Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AU 923 VIDEO [00:00:00] Cameron: Welcome back to QAV. welcoming back to the show our old friend Tobias Carlisle, who has a new book out, Soldier of Fortune: Warren Buffett, Sun Tzu, and the Ancient Art of Risk-Taking. And I’m just gonna start with this, and then I’m gonna throw to TK to ask some questions. But one of the blurbs, this is one of the blurbs. Check this out. “Soldier of Fortune is a brilliant synthesis decoding the genius of Warren Buffett through ancient eyes. The book reveals that Buffett’s unparalleled success comes not from following common Wall Street maxims, but rather from the profound, patient wisdom of a warrior philosopher. This book is a revelation, an indispensable guide to the timeless art of strategic risk-taking. Jim O’Shaughnessy, author of What Works on Wall Street.” How the hell did you get Jim to write a blurb for your book? We’re huge fans of Jim. Toby: blurbed a [00:01:00] few of my books. I, I, I, uh, have the good fortune to, uh, know him and have known him for, uh. He blurbed, I think he blurbed “Quantitative Value,” which came out in 2012. But I, I found him on, when he came on Twitter early on, he had, you know, like 100 followers, and I was, I was one of them. And I reached out to him, and I got to know him then, so I’ve stayed in good, I, I love Jim. He’s a good dude. Tony Kynaston: Wow. Can Cameron: We only discovered his book. Tony Kynaston: him on the show. Toby: Yeah, Cameron: Yeah. We’re Tony Kynaston: his chapters. Toby: I’m sure he’d do it. Cameron: We only discovered his book like four or five years ago, maybe less. And I, I think it was during COVID I read it and I was like, “Oh my God, this is just what we talk about to a T.” Like, he absolutely Toby: The Cameron: was way ahead. Yeah. Toby: Yeah. Cameron: Brilliant. Toby: I’ve re, I’ve got a few versions of it. So the. You know, in the original version, he said that the best value metric was price sales, and then in a later edition, he [00:02:00] said it’s EV/EBITDA, is where I get to too. there’s lots of reasons why price sales works well, and then he said not, not any one of them, use a combination is I think what he finally fell to. But that, that sound, like that’s pretty sensible advice, I think. There’s lots of reasons to use price sales. It’s not a bad metric. It’s just you can’t use anything in isolation, I think. Cameron: Well, Tony, I’ll throw it to you because you’ve got a list of questions that I don’t want you to miss out on. Why don’t you kick it off? Tony Kynaston: So congratulations on the book. It’s, it’s, I loved it. It’s fantastic. Love reading books on Warren Buffett and corporate strategy and strategy in general, so well done. Um, I Toby: you Tony Kynaston: wanna start uh, got. The book sort of focuses on three of Warren’s investments, excuse me, and they were large for Berkshire Hathaway and reasonably controversial in that they didn’t sort of fit the normal value investment mold, you know, cause I think when the [00:03:00] first one was probably done people were more used to Warren buying Coke or Amex and having a, you know, big moat around a consumer company that would go on forever throwing off cash. But there were some differences to these transactions. Um, but all the, all the three of them proved to be outstanding in hindsight. So maybe you could just uh take us through what the three transactions were first of all. Toby: These were, I was looking for a way to illustrate some of the ideas in the book, and I’ve written a lot about Buffett, so I didn’t wanna rehash all of the stuff that I had written previously. Uh, though I think that you could use a lot of that to illustrate those ideas. So I wanted to find, that I felt were misunderstood, certainly transactions that were misunderstood at the time that they were done. And I vividly remember all of these transactions. I was a Buffett watcher just in 1997, so I remember this transaction [00:04:00] coming through, and I remember being perplexed. Only, only perplexed in the sense that I knew that this was an insurance deal, and I knew that Berkshire was an insurer. And so it didn’t surprise me that he would do an insurance acquisition, but, uh, I didn’t really have the analytical experience at that time to understand the transaction. Particularly because there are a number of features of it that certainly seemed to go against the grain of what he had been preaching in his letters up to that point. You know, I’d just discovered him, but I’d gone and read all the, the letters and, um, tried to organize them. And I had the Lawrence Cunningham book where he’d sort of put them all into thematically rather than chronologically. So I, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on what he was doing, and then he did this General Re acquisition. So the features of the General Re acquisition that were a little bit unusual were, he did it in stock, and he’d been saying you never do it in stock. always prefers to pay cash. [00:05:00] The other thing that. It, it looked, it looked optically expensive as well. That was one of the other things that, that folks were talking about. And I think that they had anticipated that criticism somewhat by talking about the synergies that they were expecting from this acquisition. And you can go back and find Buffett pre-Gen Re talking about synergies, like never manifesting every single firm. Whoever does an acquisition and slightly overpays said, “Oh, it’s justified because there are gonna be synergies,” and they, they never manifest. And so here he was seeming to be contra, you know, going against what he had previously said that he would do. When you, with hindsight, the deal worked out really well. and I sort of have been investing for long enough now that I can sort of break it down and analyze it properly, which I couldn’t do at the time. But the things that really stand out. The reason he did the transaction, you have to [00:06:00] go back a little bit earlier. He’d, he’d done this deal with Coke very famously. With Coke, where similarly it looked like he’d, he’d overpaid. He was paying a lot for Coke. He’d never really paid up to that extent before. But it was a wild success. He put a third of the equity of the, of Berkshire into Coke, then it pretty quickly, it was like half the equity of Coke, and then it tripled. And by nine, by the late 1990. He so did it like the late 1980s, early 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, was, um, trading at like 60 times earnings. It was a giant part of Berkshire’s equity holdings. Berkshire on top of that, Buffett had been undiscovered, I think, up to that point, but he was well and truly well known by late 1990s. And uh, Berkshire itself was trading at three times what was probably already a pretty inflated valuation that included Coke. [00:07:00] So he can’t sell it because that incurs this huge capital gains tax. He’s also preached not selling, holding these things for the very long run. And he’s received a lot of criticism since then because Coke really hasn’t done much in the 26 years since they did this transaction. But I think that that’s because f, that criticism is, is a little bit unfair when you understand what happened with the, with the Gen Re transaction. And this was Christopher Bloomstran sort of alerted me to this. But in essence, what he did by using scrip, by using stock, he was able to dilute down the Berkshire holders their big holdin

  8. Jun 3

    Anchored Down in Anchorage: NRIM – QAV America #55

    This week we dig into why our US portfolios have taken a hit over the past month, with oil and shipping stocks giving back their war-premium gains as Middle East ceasefire hopes bleed the disruption out of the market. We also take a hard look at the US economy, the AI bubble eating 45% of the S&P’s market cap, and the arrival of Kevin Warsh at the Fed. Then Cameron does a Pulled Pork on Northrim BanCorp (NRIM), a quietly profitable community bank that is basically the financial backbone of Alaska, with a surprisingly juicy factoring business tucked inside it.   This week’s full episode is for QAV Club members only. The free episode is available below. Also check out our podcast archives link and our pages on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watch clips on TikTok. Or visit our homepage to learn more about QAV and how it works as a value investing system that you can learn and apply to beat the market. Free Podcast Archives Transcription QAV AMERICA 55 CLUB VIDEO [00:00:00] Cameron: Well, welcome back to QAV America, Tony, episode 55. It is the 2nd of June, 2026. Tony Kynaston: And the Cameron: Tony, Tony Kynaston: are open Cameron: no they’re not. no. In fact, I Tony Kynaston: on Cameron: read this Tony Kynaston: and Cameron: I read this morning that the Iranian negotiators have walked away from the table in, uh, Pakistan. Um, Tony Kynaston: Entitled Cameron: ” This is a waste of time.” Yeah. And the same day in The New York Times, Trump said they’re very, very close to a deal and it’s all going terrific, and the Iranians are basically can’t wait to do a deal. And then in somewhere else, BBC I think, it said the Iranians had walked away from the table Tony Kynaston: Well I saw a headline last week that Trump was about to go into the situation room to make a final determination Cameron: Yes Tony Kynaston: must have been to put out a tweet Finally [00:01:00] determined to put out another tweet Cameron: Apparently he forgot to notify the Iranians that, uh, he was making a final determination because they’re not interested. Who he’s negotiating with remains to be seen because I also see the President Pezeshkian is offering to resign because he can’t get anything done because the hardliners from the IRGC are sort of running things. So anyway, it’s a, it’s a bit of a mess. Um, well before we get into my Pulled Pork, Tony, I just wanted to talk about some, uh, market news from the US and also go over our portfolios, ’cause our US portfolios have taken a big hit in the last three weeks, four weeks. And I did some analysis last night trying to figure out why. Not that they’re doing badly, but they’re not doing as well as they were doing. So I’ll start with the light portfolio, which we started in late December last [00:02:00] year. It’s currently up about 6.5% versus the S&P up 10.5%. We were up 12% versus seven on the 6th of May. So we’ve lost half of our gains since then. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm Cameron: And, um, I had a look at the stocks and which ones had gone backwards and which ones hadn’t, and it’s b- I think it’s basically all, uh, oil related, was my final analysis. Um, giving back some war premiums. Um, you know, the, the bit of froth that the portfolio had. Like it was up 10% after four or five months, and a lot of that. Uh, we have a fairly high concentration in the light portfolio of oil related stocks because that’s what was showing up on the buy list, Tony Kynaston: Yeah Cameron: over the last five months, so that’s what we bought. Tony Kynaston: Yep Cameron: And obviously the oil pr- the oil price took a big hit in [00:03:00] May as Trump, uh, teased us with this idea that there was gonna be peace in the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz was gonna open. I think, uh, WTI finished the month down like 17, 19%, something like that. $87 I think it finished May. Brent was down to 91. They were both off about sort of 20% from their 2026 high. And our portfolio’s about 43% invested in energy stocks, so they’ve all come back as a result Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm Cameron: But as I said, they’re still up and, you know, obviously it’s not over yet. So they could go, those stocks could go back up 20%, uh, tomorrow the way things are going, so. But it’s interesting because we’re so concentrated in energy stocks, the market is hitting records. [00:04:00] S&P hit records north of 7,500, ninth straight up week, uh, despite the fact that the US economy looks like it’s heading towards stagflation. I’ll get to that in a minute. But so our stuff fell while the broader market rallied. Cheaper oil everyone got excited about, uh, but not good for our stocks. So look at BWLP, the LPG company that I added a couple of weeks ago, was actually the worst of the lot, down 4.5% yesterday. Cord Energy, EcoPetrol, Neighbors, Murphy Oil, all oil and gas names were down. The tankers not offshore and BWLP again as a sort of a second layer for them. When Hormuz was shut, freight rates spiked, as we talked about when we did, um, the LPG company, because everyone had to reroute. If it, if it reopens, that spike normalizes and ships are already repositioning across the Atlantic apparently [00:05:00] to take advantage of the strait opening. And there are. I have heard rumors that the US Navy have, have been, um, shepherding ships through the strait, but I don’t know if that’s real or if that’s just more fake news from the region. But anyway, Tony Kynaston: numbers even Cameron: tanker analysts. No, I mean, I’m talking, you know, handfuls of ships. There’s still mines that have to be cleared up and all that kind of stuff. Tanker analysts are still split as far as I can tell on whether reopening sinks rates or supercharges them. So there’s still a lot of flux to go on in this space and no one knows where oil’s going. No one knows what’s happening. The, the ceasefire seems to be held together with sticky tape if, if it is in fact still there. And Israel seems to have continued to be bombing the hell out of Lebanon. I see Trump today said that he’s got some sort of agreement from Israel that they’re gonna cut it out, but, you know, that’s worth the, uh, [00:06:00] paper that it’s written on as we know, so Tony Kynaston: Sure we’ll cut about Sure Yeah Cameron: Yeah. So that’s the light portfolio. The dummy portfolio, uh, for all time is, uh, which, you know, we started it in, uh, September 2023. It is currently up 94% versus the S&P up 71%. So we’re outperforming quite well, but we were up 130% a couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago, uh, versus the S&P which was up 63. So we’ve gone from double market down to being up 20 points or something like that. So this is a bit of a different animal. Uh, again, it’s sort of froth coming off a high, not damage to the portfolio, and half the book here just in recent weeks is still green. But I think some of this one is profit taking. So we have shipping. [00:07:00] Four of the stocks that are down are shipping companies. Again, you know, we’re sort of heavily invested in shipping and financials is basically the split of this portfolio. So the shipping one again connects to the oil story, but it’s broader than oil. I think the Middle East potentially calming down is bleeding the disruption premium out of all shipping, not just tankers, ’cause we know that, you know, it’s been, um, not just for oil tankers a problem with the Strait of Hormuz, but then you also have tankers that, uh, are charging premiums to get stuff around the place. It’s been a heyday for shipping companies of all sorts in the last, um, four months, five months because they’re having to take longer routes for stuff. Tony Kynaston: Yeah Cameron: So our four carriers, Tsakos, we’re all tankers, StealthGas who are gas carriers, uh, carriers, not [00:08:00] offshore. Um, same Strait of Hormuz story as the ones in the light portfolio. And then the container one, Euroseas, is off about 2.3%. Different waterway, but the same logic. The Red Sea and the Suez are reopening. Ships go back to the short route and all that capacity coming back has shoved long term container contract rates down to the lowest before the whole Red Sea crisis kicked off, which is, uh, different to the Hormuz crisis, but it seems to be opening up as well. So peace is bad for business if your business is getting paid to sail ships the long way around essentially Tony Kynaston: Yeah it’s interesting Cam because Cameron: The other Tony Kynaston: all of what you said is true but one thing that’s still in the back of my mind is we haven’t seen the figures yet on what the mo what what the shipping down what the shipping clog has meant to their profit So you know I [00:09:00] think people who are selling now maybe they are doing the right thing and taking a profit but they’re we haven’t seen the numbers yet I mean there’s gonna be outsized profits I would’ve Cameron: Yeah Tony Kynaston: this half from those companies as well and and does that change people’s minds Cameron: Yeah, so when those numbers come out, these things could get a tick up again, you’re saying? Tony Kynaston: Yeah Cameron: That’s a good point The other story with our dummy portfolio is, uh, RenaissanceRe, RNR. Nothing to do with oil. This one’s an insurance company. And the 1st of June is the big midyear reinsurance renewal date, and the renewals came in soft. Apparently, property catastrophe rates are down 15 to 20% in the US. Florida’s down closer to 20%, which is the sharpest fall since 2014. Apparently, uh, too much capital has flooded into the sector, turning it into a buyer’s market, and that’s af

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    QAV America (free feed)
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    60
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    © Copyright Spacecraft Publishing Ltd 2025
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