Me & The Market Goliath 🚶🏻 ➕ The Market 🏛️ Goliath🗿

We invited Friso Alenus who is an investor and Seeking Alpha Contributor from Belgium.

Friso has a distinguished degree in electromechanics and a profound interest in the world of finance and investments. His international investment portfolio consists of solar panel manufacturers, financial tech, footwear, gaming, semiconductors, healthcare, REITs, e-commerce listed in U.S. and Asia stock market exchanges.

Friso delivers thought-provoking analyses that resonate with seasoned investors and novices alike which has led him to have a following on fintwit with over 3,000+ followers. We deep dive into Friso’s investment philosophy and mistakes, the solar panel industry as well as the macro environment on solar energy and also why so many people missed out on the incredible returns from investing in the popular footwear company Crocs.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction
(01:17) What does investment mean to Friso?
(01:53) When did Friso start investing?
(02:12) Friso's investing style
(05:20) Did obtaining a degree in electromechanics help with investing?
(6:35) What is in the investing landscape like in Belgium?
(8:40) Home country bias
(10:47) Acquire a worldview to study and invest in international companies
(12:33) Due diligence process covering foreign companies abroad
(14:52) Crocs and why many investors overlooked this investment opportunity
(16:00) Crocs's acquisition of HEYDUDE
(21:38) The Solar Energy sector and why is Friso bullish
(25:00) Main concerns for companies like Enphase and Jinko Solar?
(27:33) Interest rates and headwinds impacting solar panels
(28:30) Why there is an upside with investing in solar energy
(28:58) Solar energy buyers and cost structure
(32:35) The role of infrastructure for solar energy development
(35:00) Importance of of margins for solar industry
(37:38) Friso's biggest investing mistake



Follow Kelvin (Podcast Host): ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/kelvinMMGoliath⁠⁠
Official Podcast on X ⁠⁠:⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/Memarketgoliath⁠⁠
Subscribe: Youtube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MeandTheMarketGoliathPodcast⁠⁠



Follow Friso Alenus on X: https://twitter.com/FrisoAlenus
Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/author/friso-alenus


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NO FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE

In this episode, we invited a friend from Malaysia, Chris Chin to talk about budgeting and how this important discipline can help us retire early. We talked about investing in emerging markets like Malaysia and what makes a company from good to great in Chris’s business management view as well as key learnings from pursuing happiness over money, which is one of life’s controversial investment questions that comes across our minds more often than we think.

Chris was a chemical engineer turned management consultant focused on strategy development for digital businesses across Southeast Asia. He ended up pivoting and joining what would eventually become the first tech unicorn in Malaysia. Driven by formative experiences during the 2007 Global Financial Crisis and 2014 Global Oil Crisis where Chris witnessed first hand the insecurity of being a wage-earner, he sought to better understand economics, market cycles, its influence on businesses, and long-term investing behaviours. Chris is also strong believer in personal finance where regulating one’s behaviour can often change the course and purpose of a person’s life.


Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:00) Chris's Background
(04:00) Why is budgeting important?
(06:30) Global oil crisis and how it changed Chris's view
(06:58) First step to budgeting
(09:12) Challenges with budgeting
(11:12) Earn more versus save more

(14:20) Accounting for lifestyle creep
(16:22) Chris's definition of retirement
(22:00) Quitting your job to pursue happiness
(24:45) Learnings from taking a sabbatical
(25:51) Decision criteria for quitting your job
(29:45) Cutting your losses early
(33:26) Chris's definition of investing
(35:50) Why companies fail and what makes them successful
(39:00) Reducing layers of management
(39:40) Why companies have layers of management
(44:00) Which is more important: A company's qualitative or quantitative aspects?
(46:29) Why it's important to measure your wage by hourly than monthly
(48:30) Job titles over pay?
(51:20) Financial literacy in Malaysia
(57:12) Why is Malaysia a great place for retirement and starting a business?
(1:00:00) Geographical bias and opportunity costs
(1:01:58) Chris's biggest investment mistake
⁠
Follow Kelvin (Podcast Host): ⁠https://twitter.com/kelvinMMGoliath⁠
Official Podcast on X ⁠⁠:⁠ https://twitter.com/Memarketgoliath⁠
Subscribe: Youtube: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MeandTheMarketGoliathPodcast⁠


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NO FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE

This is Me & The Market Goliath's first episode in 2024. We invite Luke Hallard and Krzysztof Piekarski to talk about the freelance gig economy.



Luke and Krysztof are podcast hosts of Wall Street Wildlife Podcast and also 7investing lead advisors. With rising unemployment and increasing number of layoffs, can the freelance economy save the unemployed?

Youtube version

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:34) Wall Street Wildlife Podcast
(04:50) Luke & Krzysztof's investment philosophy
(09:36) Current macro environment fear and why Krzysztof is cautious
(11:50) Why AI is affecting the labor market
(13:02) Increasing number of layoff news
(12:25) Why we are in an interesting period in the macro cycle
(13:35) Will the freelance economy benefit the unemployed?
(16:00) Fiverr
(19:02) Multiple streams of income
(20:38) Will remote work stay permanently?
(22:28) Luke and Krzysztof investing experience investing in Fiverr
(24:11) Warren Buffett's obsession with moats
(24:27) Catalysts for the gig economy
(27:12) Fiverr's recent financial performance
(30:00) Fiverr's integration with AI and why the company is disintermediating the gig economy
(34:08) What would change Luke and Krzystof's mind to invest in a company like Fiverr again
(37:30) If a pandemic were to happen again, will the next time be different for the gig economy with?
(41:30) Will AI replace humans?
(43:28) Existential problems with AI
(45:00) Emerging trends and technology disrupting AI space
(47:15) Krzysztof's view on AI in classroom setting
(49:00) Investment opportunities for AI in 2024?
(50:00) Resolving a trustless world with smart contracts
(52:00) Luke and Krzysztof's investment learnings and mistakes from 2023

Follow Luke and Krzysztof on Wall Street Wildlife Podcast Youtube Channel @WallStreetWildlife



Follow Kelvin (Podcast Host): https://twitter.com/kelvinMMGoliath
Official Podcast on X ⁠⁠: https://twitter.com/Memarketgoliath
Subscribe: Youtube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MeandTheMarketGoliathPodcast


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Subscribe now

NO FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE

We invited Brian Stoffel to my show to wrap up the year. Brian has written for the Motley Fool for over 13 years, and he's also the Chief Content Officer and YouTuber of Long-term Mindset, which has over 98,000 newsletter subscribers and over 74,000 YouTube subscribers to date.

We deliberated Dave Ramsey's controversial take on safe investment withdrawal rates and reviewed Brian's antifragile investing framework, which is his core investment philosophy, inspired by Nassim Taleb, who is a mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and book author of Skin in the Game, The Black Swan, and Antifragile, Things That Gain From Disorder.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for your support.


Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:36) Brian's early career days
(04:08) Biggest takeaway writing and teaching finance
(03:11) Signal versus noise and what matters most
(06:08) Long-Term Mindset
(07:55) Lessons on money and happiness from writing about finance and investing
(09:30) Visuals are more effective than words when it comes to learning?
(11:30) Is repetition the best way to practice learning about finance?
(11:58) Investing skin in the game
(13:15) Dave Ramsey's withdrawal rate of 8%
(19:15) Brian's Optimal withdrawal rate
(20:10) What does investing mean to Brian?
(20:30) Brian's investment philosophy
(22:17) What does antifragile mean?
(23:09) A company's mission statement
(26:11) Moat and optionality
(28:00) Financial fortitude and concentration
(29:02) Skin in the game and soul in the game
(29:15) Glassdoor review
(30:11) The most important aspect of the antifragile framework
(30:46) Why free cash-flow is more important than net income
(32:30) Brian's thoughts on buy now pay later companies and companies that offer gift cards
(33:20) Starbucks and its moat
(34:10) Finance concepts all beginners should learn first
(37:03) Brian Stoffel and Brian Feroldi's top 10 biggest investment mistakes
(38:12) Misjudging a moat
(38:40) Other investing mistakes
(41:11) Investing narratives
(41:18) Mitigating the risk of narratives

Follow Brian Stoffel on X: https://twitter.com/Brian_Stoffel_
Long-Term Mindset: https://brianferoldi.substack.com/

Follow Kelvin (Podcast Host): X (Twitter) https://twitter.com/kelvinMMGoliath
Official Podcast on X ⁠⁠: https://twitter.com/Memarketgoliath
Subscribe: Youtube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlB...



No financial advice.

In today's show I invited Rahul Setty who graduated from the
same university as I did but while I graduated with a business and economics degree, Rahul took the finance and analytics route. He is currently based in Southern California and has been working in corporate finance plus financial planning and analysis for about 5 years now as a senior financial analyst.



Rahul manages a very concentrated portfolio which top 5 of his positions comprise 56% of actively managed portfolio and is over 85% of Rahul’s net worth.



I asked Rahul how the baseball movie, Moneyball, has
fuelled his passion for investing and how investing is related to baseball management and analytics and why he’s been focused on uncovering value in small to mid-cap stocks through a disciplined approach rooted in fundamental investing. 



Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(04:50) How did Rahul come across investing?

(5:50) Is keeping up with the stock market from So-Cal difficult?

(06:50) Obtaining a college degree in finance and takeaways

(09:15) Learning college in finance versus real life finance

(11:45) Rahul's regrets in college and learning finance

(13:00) How Moneyball transformed Rahul's view on investing

(19:00) Small-cap investment ideas and origination

(27:00) Portfolio construction consisting of mid-caps and trade-offs versus large-caps

(30:45) Magnificent 7 stocks and macro impact on smaller cap stocks in current climate

(37:00) Rahul's biggest investing mistakes

(38:50) Twilio

(40:30) Picking stocks realistically and sleeping well at night

(42:30) Is the investment return time horizon the same for mid and large-caps?



Follow Rahul on ⁠⁠X⁠⁠ 



Follow Kelvin (Podcast Host): X (Twitter) https://twitter.com/kelvinMMGoliath⁠ 

Official Podcast on X ⁠https://twitter.com/memarketgoliath⁠ 

Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlB_qutOzOxr4I35OuhbCw⁠


No financial advice.

In this last part of the second podcast episode, we welcome Cayden Chang. He is the founder of Value Investing Academy in Singapore and also a three time cancer survivor. He is a living example of what being resilient means as he had lost over $50,000SGD or approximately USD$37,000 in the stock market during the dot-com bubble during his early days and managed to pay back his debt by working multiple jobs. He then went on to overcome cancer three times. He has met some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs and investing thought-leaders such as Lauren Templeton (niece of Sir John Templeton) , Mary Buffett (ex-daughter in law of Warren Buffett) , and Robert Kiyosaki (book author of Rich Dad Poor Dad) , Professor Bruce Greenwald (Book author of From Graham to Buffett and Beyond) .
Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction
(1:30) Is achieving happiness more complex than investing?
(02:40) Why do people get attached with wanting more money?
(03:40) When is money enough?
(05:30) Does Cayden think experiencing setbacks help them become a better person?
(08:12) Risk Aversion: Does Cayden see risk completely differently after cancer?
(7:50) Approaching life the same way as investing
(10:10) Meeting and learning from Lauren Templeton, Richard Branson, and Robert Kiyosaki
(11:26) Professor George Athanassakos and humility
(15:40) Starting Value Investing Academy
(18:13) If we can learn only thing from Cayden, what would it be?
(19:50) Flipping a coin analogy to differentiate speculation and buying stocks
(21:00) Biggest investment mistake
(21:50) Being an educator and the experience so far

Follow Cayden Chang on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠X⁠

Follow Kelvin Han (Podcast Host):
X (Twitter) :⁠https://twitter.com/kelvinMMGoliath⁠
Official Podcast on X ⁠https://twitter.com/memarketgoliath⁠
Youtube Channel: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlB_qutOzOxr4I35OuhbCw⁠
Me & The Market Goliath Podcast Instagram: ⁠Instagram