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  1. 3d ago

    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

    1h 10m

  2. 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

    17 min

  3. May 28

    Straw Mattress to Steel Bumper (MGA): QAV America #54

    This week Cameron (with guest co-host Phil Muscatello from Shares For Beginners)  runs a full QAV deep dive on Magna International (MGA), the Canadian-born automotive giant that quietly makes everything from your car door to the entire vehicle itself. He covers the wild founder story of Frank “Straw Mattress” Stronach, the EV overreach that cost the company over a billion dollars in writedowns, the tariff headache courtesy of Trump, and why the numbers are now looking good enough to add to the portfolio. Plus a quick look back at how previous stock picks from the show have performed, with NBR up 31% leading the charge.   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 54 – MGA 2 [00:00:00] Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): Today, Cameron from QAV America joins me to unpack MGA Magna International, a major Canadian-based global automotive supplier and mobility technology company founded in 1957 and headquartered in Aurora, Ontario. It ranks amongst the world’s largest tier one suppliers, I don’t even know what a tier one supplier is, but with 156,000 employees across 28 countries and 327 manufacturing assembly facilities. And do you think I can get a headlamp that will work in my car, Cameron? Not for any longer than about eight weeks is my experience, and then you have to replace them again. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So hi, Cameron. How are you? Good, Phil. Machinations of Magna, is that the title? The Magna Machinations. Is that what you’re doing- Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good-. to me today? I like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Is it machinations or machinations? I don’t know. Uh, whichever you choose. Um, and a tier one supplier is a company that supplies lots of tier ones, I think, Phil. They just. They have like a, a, a [00:01:00] warehouse stacked full of tier ones. Um, what does Magna mean in Greek, Phil? You’re, you’re an erudite, uh, educated, literate person. Uh, great, isn’t it? The great, yes. Yeah. Like, uh, Magnus Carlsen is the greatest chess player of all time, and that’s why he has that name. He lived up to his name. Mm-hmm. Um- And, um, who was the, um, Roman history, who was the enemy of Caesar? Uh, Pompey the- Pompey the Great. Yeah, Pompey the Great. Yeah. Pompey, Pompeius Magnus. Yeah, good one. MGA Magna International: So, uh, Phil, Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): uh, I thought before we get into this week’s deep dive, uh, I, I just went back and had a look at some of the others that we’ve done on the show over the last few months. Do you ever go back and look at how they’re performing, all the stocks that you talk about, or you have your guests talk about on the show? No, no, I haven’t, haven’t done that. Uh, just, um, are, are, are we going to have one of those, um, um, snapping your braces with pride moments? Uh, well, some of them have done very well. Couple haven’t, but that’s normal. You know, [00:02:00] Tony and I always talk about having a 60% success rate, which I think is what Buffett, uh, aims for as well. So I think we’ve done five stocks on your show over the last few months, and three are up and two are down. So the three that are up are NBR, Nabors Industries. It’s up 31% since we did it a couple of months ago. I think, like, early March we talked about NBR. 31% in a couple of months isn’t bad. EC, Ecopetrol is up 18%. DB, Deutsche, which we did last time, I think, is up 8% since we talked about it. The two that haven’t done so well are PAGS, PagSeguro. They’re down 13%. And SHG, Korean energy company, I think. They’re down 7%. So three good ones, two not good ones. Eh, it’s about what you expect, you know. Things happen in the market. Wars happen. Tariffs happen. Can’t predict the future. It’s worth, it’s worth noting though, isn’t it, that it’s a, it’s a numbers game as well. It’s [00:03:00] not, you’re not gonna get everything right, you know? Um, we, we- Well, that’s why I said, like, a 60% success rate. Yeah. And it’s why we have rules to sell the ones that go the wrong way. You know, uh, we don’t stick around and wait to see what happens. We have hard rules to sell them and keep the winners. Anyway. Yeah. What’s that, what’s that old- I thought that was- what’s that old joke, you know? Uh, yeah, sudden- a short-term trade which suddenly becomes a long-term holding. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, uh, I take the same approach to stocks that I did to my first few marriages. Like, you cut your losses and you keep going until you find the winners, and then you stick with the winners. A trail of broken hearts. MGA Magna International: Oh, Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): well, I hope not. I hope they’re all doing very well. Anyway, let’s talk about Magna. Uh, so as you said, company’s been around for nearly 70 years, market cap of roughly 18 billion US dollars, 156,000 employees. MGA Magna International: Well, as Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): as you said, one of the biggest auto parts suppliers, but, uh, I also read that they like to call themselves a mobility technology company, which I think sounds way sexier. Uh, I think [00:04:00] their, their share price went up, like, 10%. Uh, it sounds sexier than auto parts supplier really, doesn’t it? Mobil- no, no, no, we’re a mobility technology company. Oh, okay. Sure. Right I don’t know. I was thinking, I was thinking old people on mobility scooters. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s not as sexy. Well, unless you’re into that kind of thing. Who knows? Um, like lots of companies that appear on our buy list, particularly in our US buy list, by the very nature of value investing, it’s a bit of a turnaround story. It’s had a couple of rough years, bit of a founder scandal going on. I don’t think that’s affecting the business at all ’cause he’s been out of the business for some time. But it’s sort of a classic value stock in it’s a brand that most people have never heard of because they’re behind the scenes, but they’re running a great business. Been around a long time, very deeply embedded in their industry, which is part of the reason they had a rough couple of years. We’ll get into that. Listed on New York Stock Exchange and also the Toronto [00:05:00] Stock Exchange. Price today is around about $64.58 US. That’s on the New York Stock Exchange. Founded in Canada, as you said, Aurora, Ontario, sort of north of Toronto. So Tony. It’s a shame Tony’s not, uh, with us today. He, there’s a couple of things he’d like about this. One, he lived in Toronto for, I think, five or six years. Uh, he probably knows Aurora well. Probably might even know Magna. Uh, maybe he MGA Magna International: played Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): golf with people from there. I don’t know. But, uh, also the, uh, founder of this is into thoroughbred horse breeding and, uh, Tony’s not with me this week because he’s buying and selling horses on the Gold Coast. According to their website, Magna is one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers and a trusted partner to automakers in the industry’s most critical markets, North America, Europe and China, with a global team and footprint spanning 28 countries MGA Magna International: So Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): So they’re a big deal. The founder [00:06:00] is a guy called Frank Stronach. MGA Magna International: Now, he Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): he was born Franz Strosack. MGA Magna International: How’s your, how’s Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): how’s your German? I know your Italian’s pretty good, Phil. Not very good, no, no. How’s your German? No. We don’t like Germans in Italy. Well, my wife, uh, speaks German. She tells me that Strosack means straw sack in German, which is what people used to live on, like a sack full of straw. So his name is literally straw mattress. Have to imagine that somewhere in his genealogy there was a, the local guy in the village that made beds for people. He was born in 1932 in- And, and I just wanna, and I just do wanna. I do love Germans, okay? I do love- Oh, okay. Nice backpedaling there, Phil. Born in 1932. Well, we know, you know, Mussolini and Hitler got along famously for a little while anyway. Long, long history- Yeah. of the Italians and the Germans getting along. Born in 1932 in a little village called Kleines [00:07:00] Semmering in the Austrian province of Styria MGA Magna International: Working Corrected Cam-PC-01 (1): class family, left school at 14 to become an apprentice tool and die maker. Precision metalworking. You make the metal molds, cutting tools factories use to stamp out metal parts at high speed. Incredibly skilled work, and stood him in good stead when, in 1954, 22 years old, he moved to Canada, arrived in Montreal, gets on a bus to Kitchener, Ontario, gets a job as a dishwasher. Nothing to do with making metal parts at first, but built his first company from a rented garage in Toronto only two years later, 1956. He’s 24 years old. Company was called Multimatic Investments. Slept on a cot in the corner of the shop. Classic Silicon Valley startup story, but [00:08:00] in Ontario, not Silicon Valley. Gets his f- In, in, in greasy overalls. yeah. Gets his first automotive parts contract in 1969, so takes a, takes a while to get to automotive parts. Then he merged with a company that he had a contract relationship with, I think called Magna Electronics, and in 1973 t

    18 min

  4. May 21

    The Gas That Moves the World: BWLP – QAV America #53

    This week we do a full deep dive on BWLPG (ticker: BWLP), one of the world’s biggest LPG shippers, and why the Strait of Hormuz closure is sending their spot charter rates into the stratosphere. We also cover the bond market’s grim verdict on Trump’s economic record, oil heading toward $140 a barrel, and the fascinating story of Y.K. Pao, the banking clerk who built the largest privately held shipping fleet in history.   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 [00:00:00] Cameron: Ba-dum-bum. Welcome to QAV America, Tony, episode 53. It’s the 19th of May, 2026. Trump went to China, Tony. Tony Kynaston: He did. Cameron: with a nice T-shirt and some knockoff Nikes, and that’s about it. Tony Kynaston: He was, he was flogging, uh, copies of Art of the Deal in, uh, Tiananmen Square. Cameron: Yeah. Um, it sounds like it was a bit of a nothing meeting. They had nothing really to announce. A few sort of minor things, but nothing about opening the Strait of Hormuz, nothing really about, uh, trade deals. Trump’s g- I think China’s gonna, excuse me, China’s gonna buy some more beef, US beef. Uh, I think that was it, really. Tony Kynaston: my read on it was between the lines was that Xi Jinping said, “Hey, [00:01:00] gonna take over Taiwan at some stage. Don’t get involved.” And Trump said, “Hey, sounds good if you can help us get the Straits of Hormuz open.” And they wouldn’t that formally either of those two things, I wouldn’t think. Cameron: No. But, you know, technically speaking, Taiwan is already part of China. Everyone agrees to that. Tony Kynaston: road Cameron: Everyone agrees to that, including the US, including Australia. It’s the One China policy. Everyone’s always agreed to that since the ’70s. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm Cameron: agrees with that. They just think they run China. They think they’re the– They just believe they’re the real Chinese government. Tony Kynaston: Uh-huh Cameron: Anyway, um, it, it– You know, it was sort of a bizarre trip, like the leaders of the two major economies meet in secret and really have nothing to announce afterwards. Tony Kynaston: Yeah So that leads me to think [00:02:00] something was going on behind the scenes that they can’t announce So I Cameron: Or nothing, or they reach no agreements on anything. Tony Kynaston: yes that of course that’s possible But it’s still it’s good to see the two leaders get together They’re not sniping at each other from across the Pacific Ocean Cameron: Yes. Tony Kynaston: thing What did Trump say He said uh I like it here I could I could live here for a long time here It’s great Cameron: He might have to, depending on how things play out. Tony Kynaston: That’s what I thought I thought I’m glad Chinese food Cameron: Mm. Like Latin American dictators, after they got kicked out of their countries, had to go to Florida, the guy from Florida might have to go to Beijing to live. Uh, you know, it was– I, like, I don’t know what went on, but reading between the lines for me, he went there to try and get support to get Iran to bow down, and they went, “No.” And, you know- reach a deal and cut it out because this is annoying [00:03:00] and, Tony Kynaston: I I thought like You want that Have a look over here at Taiwan You know Don’t get involved Cameron: Yeah, maybe. I, again, I, I don’t think they need to worry about Taiwan. I think Taiwan’s just gonna, you know, knock on their door and ask to be part of it the way things are going, but we’ll see. Uh Tony Kynaston: a bit like Cuba knocking on the door and wanting to be part of the US Cameron: no, not like that at all, no. No, but, uh, you know, the– Taiwan, like every country, they’re gonna need to pick a side at some point. They’re gonna need to decide where their future is best placed. Is it by an alliance with the United States or an alliance with China? Tony Kynaston: I I’m not sure alliances with the US are worth much at the moment so Hmm Cameron: Yeah. So anyway, um, we talked briefly about this on the last show, the, the Australian show, but, uh, the, it’s more appropriate to talk about it here. So the bond [00:04:00] market in the US is going through some friction at the moment. The US 30-year yield went above 5% for the first time since 2007. You know, Trump, in his campaign for his, uh, second term, promised to fix the economy, eliminate the debt, crush inflation, no wars, peace everywhere. He’s 16 months in, Tony Kynaston: He Cameron: growth has slowed, debt has grown by $4 trillion, inflation is rising, manufacturing has shrunk. The Supreme Court has thrown out his tariffs that were going to bring in so much money that America wouldn’t know what to do with. His economic approval rating is the worst of his career, down to 30%, so going about as well as you would expect when you put a reality TV star in charge of the world’s leading economy. But Tony Kynaston: A and I think [00:05:00] Amazon are looking at rebooting The Apprentice starring one of the Trump boys so the succession the succession plan’s in place Cameron: yeah. Tony Kynaston: But anyway like the bond market’s having nothing of it isn’t it That’s the that’s the real important thing for investors Cameron: well, you know, on one hand, the S&P is booming. On the other– although it’s back a bit over the last few days. But, uh, on the other hand, the bond market is pricing in the reality of the long-term picture, which isn’t pretty. Tony Kynaston: No Uh uh including the fact that uh US debt’s up um no sign of it being reined in But also the oil price is gonna be higher for longer I think than people are are factoring at the moment too Except for the bond market they can see it or at least they’re guarding against it happening But um yeah the the bond market rules the roost really If if interest rates on or or if yields on bonds keep going up [00:06:00] that raises the cost of borrowing for corporate America and and so the growth slows Uh yeah if the problems aren’t fixed by the government then it just leads to a collapse somewhere down the track And Cameron: And Warsh has now been confirmed as the new Federal Reserve chairman. Jay Powell is on his way out or is out. Not exactly sure what the timeline is on that. But y- you know, there is, there was this expectation that Warsh was gonna come in and cut interest rates. But with inflation going up Tony Kynaston: Yeah Cameron: to 4% now, and people think it’ll go over 4%. Apparently, historically, when US inflation crosses 4%, the S&P falls 4% over the next three months, and then 7% over six months. But maybe this time it’s different, Tony. ‘Cause AI. Tony Kynaston: three of the three of the most [00:07:00] unreliable words in the English language time it’s different Cameron: It’s four words, but yeah. Um, there’s, uh, uh, Helima. Look, e- every economist I’ve read in the last month or six weeks has said even if the Strait opened tomorrow, we’re gonna see at least six months of higher oil prices. Uh, there’s a lady called Helima Croft, who runs commodities for RBC Capital Markets. It’s the Royal Bank of Canada. Used to work at the CIA on Middle East stuff. She reckons oil is heading to $140 Tony Kynaston: Hmm Cameron: the way it’s going. There’s no sign that the Strait’s gonna be open anytime soon. It’s still nacho. Uh, Trump did say today that he was going to authorize more bombing of Iran this week, but then didn’t again because he claims Middle Eastern countries asked him not to, and negotiations with Iran are going tremendously well, better than, better than any [00:08:00] negotiations have ever gone in the history of negotiations. You wouldn’t believe how great these negotiations are going. US Treasury Secretary Bessent called this. Yeah. Instead of Taco Tuesday. Yeah, Nacho Monday. S- Bessent called this inflation transient, which apparently is the same word Powell used in 2021 coming out of COVID, but it turned out not to be transient, so apparently it’s the T word. Markets reacted badly to the T word being used, which I thought was Trump, but it’s the other T word. It’s transient. Tony Kynaston: wasn’t Taco It’s Cameron: So many T words Tony Kynaston: Yeah Cameron: Well, I was looking for a stock to– I don’t really have any company news this week. I was looking for a stock to do a deep dive on and to add to our portfolio this week, and it was tough. I went through 20 stocks at the top of the buy list, and everything was having a down day when I was looking at [00:09:00] them on s- uh, Sunday, Monday. Until I finally found the company that I am gonna talk about today, which is, uh, BWLP is the ticker, BWLPG Limited. And, uh, you know, it’s kind of a interesting story. Again, it’s sort of a pretty boring, classic value investing stock, I think, in many ways. The numbers are a little bit, uh, interesting, but we’ll, we’ll get into the whys and wherefores. Nothing as complicated as some of the ones I’ve looked at in the last couple of weeks. By the way, there were some more of those when I was trying to find a company. A lot of financial services companies on the buy list in the US this week, but a lot of them just had massive dumps of new capital, which is affecting their operating cash flow, and we [00:10:00] decided to put the kibosh on those. But BWLPG, as y

    24 min

  5. May 13

    PUMP AND DUMP – QAV America #52

    On this episode we run through the dummy portfolio , which is crushing the S&P at 125% time-weighted return, and dig into this week’s Pulled Pork: TriMas (TRS), a Michigan-based maker of hand pumps, dispensers, and packaging components that’s been quietly dumping divisions and sitting on a billion dollars in cash. The numbers look great on paper until Cameron and Tony notice the operating cash flow figures in Stockopedia are wildly inflated by the aerospace divestiture proceeds; the classic data quality trap. They also cover market news, Michael Burry’s doom outlook, the Nacho trade, and wind down with Red Dragon, paintball, and the Rolling Stones.   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 52 CLUB VIDEO [00:00:00] Cameron: Welcome to QAV America, Tony. Episode 52, the 12th of May 2026. The title of this episode, Tony, Pump and Dump. Tony Kynaston: You keep titling these episodes before you’ve even spoken yet. So Cameron: It’s ’cause I’ve Tony Kynaston: title Cameron: my– Uh, we could swap it out, but Tony Kynaston: okay. Cameron: the working title of this episode, let’s say that. Tony Kynaston: You put a thumbtack in Cameron: Mm, mm. The Pump and Dump, Tony Kynaston: Pumping Cameron: which will become clear later on. Um, big week in, uh, news, Tony. Um, surprising to everyone. Tony Kynaston: we can use in the US? Cameron: You heard of the Nacho trade? Tony Kynaston: I have, but I’m just struggling to remember what it stands for. Cameron: I just read about it in the Fin just a minute ago. No, it’s not a chance of Hormuz opening, is the Nacho trade. There was an article in the Financial Review this [00:01:00] morning, uh, Michael, Michael Burry from The Big Short, basically talking about how the US market is headed for a massive disaster, but they also had somebody mentioning the Nacho trade. Not a chance of Hormuz opening. Trump, Trump says Iran’s offer is totally unacceptable. That was yesterday, and today he said, “The Iran ceasefire is on life support.” For weeks, all I’ve heard from him is, “Oh, they, they can’t wait to do a deal. They’re begging to do a deal. They wanna, they’d love to do a deal. They’re desperate to do a deal.” Apparently, they’re not so desperate to do a deal. Tony Kynaston: H- you name one war the US has gotten into in the last 100 years that hasn’t lasted for, like, at least five or six Cameron: Yes. Yes, uh, Gulf War one. Tony Kynaston: Ooh, that lasted a while though, didn’t it? Cameron: Nah, it was over in, like, two weeks, but [00:02:00] just went in, surprise attack, massive overwhelming force, signed a, signed a deal with Saddam, and got out. Um, but yeah, it was, it was a rare one. But, you know, as I’ve talked about on my other shows many times, you and I have talked about off air, you know, the US is driven by military Keynesianism. The US economy survives on military Keynesianism. Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: it is now, $1 trillion Pentagon budget he’s got it at, uh, people don’t realize how much the US economy relies on that and how campaign financing for senators and congressmen and women rely on that, how it’s, uh, uh, the centerpiece of the US– uh, how the US economy works. Doesn’t get talked about much, but when you drill down into it. And you can’t justify that kind of a budget endlessly unless you’ve got a [00:03:00] big war at least every five to 10 years. Tony Kynaston: No, that’s all true. But my point is that every time US, uh, exceptionalism thinks they’ll get in and out of a war within a week, it generally lasts Cameron: But they don’t think that. That’s what they say publicly. They don’t really think that. I mean, the planners I don’t think, think that because there’s no profit in a quick war. I mean, okay, you do 24,000 missile strikes and you need to go and rebuy all those missiles, but there is some profit in it. But there’s a way more profit in a long drawn out war for everybody involved militarily. Not for the people who die, but for the people who make the money on the back end of the military industrial complex, that’s where the profit is, right? Tony Kynaston: Uh, yes, but I don’t think Trump saw things that way. I think he saw a way of stamping his authority and, Cameron: Oh, yeah, “ Tony Kynaston: I’m a Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: than anybody else, and I’m a better deal-doer than anybody else,” and he’s just proving that he’s not. Cameron: Well, I [00:04:00] don’t think Trump knows what he’s getting into most of the time. He just… Yeah. Uh, so anyway. Tony Kynaston: in the shoes and goes, “Ooh, what have I gotten into now? Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Look at Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: Best shoes Cameron: mean, and a lot of it I do believe, like there’s also the element of distraction of the day, so deals are getting done on the back end and building hotels in Gaza and, uh, probably in Venezuela and the Epstein file distraction and all that kind of stuff. Tony Kynaston: Yep, definitely. Cameron: Uh, uh, I’ll just cut, I’ll just cut and paste all the news in later. Tony Kynaston: Okay. Cameron: Tony, there’s been a lot of news in my US news report that I run a couple of times a week. Uh, too much really to go through. These are stocks that we’ve, that we own in our portfolios or we talk about. I’ll get into those in a minute. Before we do that, let me just talk about our portfolio performance in the US. Our, uh, dummy portfolio, which as you know, has been running since [00:05:00] September 2023, is currently tracking at 125% time-weighted return versus the S&P 500, 66% over that period. So doing double market on that one. The QAV America Light portfolio, which has been running since the end of last year, s- December 22nd, is currently at 7% versus 7% for the S&P. So we’re neck and neck. We have come back quite a bit. Uh, we were doing way better than it a week ago. What’s fallen in the last week? Hmm, couple of things. Hmm, PAGSEGURO Digital has dropped. But a lot of s- a lot of, uh, stocks have had a rough week with oil prices and all this kind of nonsense going on. The Nacho trade or the Nacho [00:06:00] market, whatever we wanna call it. But that said, um, a lot of our stocks are doing very well. Uh, let me, let’s run through some highlights from the dummy portfolio. Uh, uh, let me, listed by that. Number one performing stock in our dummy portfolio is still Willis Lease Finance, and I’ve got some news from them in the news section. They’re up 350% since we bought them. Enova International is up 183%. Euro Seas is up 156%. SASCO Energy Navigation, TEN, is up 148%. Banco Latinoamericano BLX, Blaze, uh, Blade, Blade, BladeX, I think. It’s up 115%. StealthGas is up 98.8. But you know when I always say invest in mass, not gas? They’re the exception, um, StealthGas. They’re up 100%, 98.8% since we bought them. The others are all doing well, too. The one that’s not doing [00:07:00] well o- out of our portfolio is Korea Electric Power, KP. They’re down 11.8%. In the light portfolio, Cord Energy, they’re also in my news today, is up 46.6%. Pitney Bowes is up 46.4. Commercial Vehicle is up 46.3. Tony Kynaston: That’s amazing. How does, how does Pitney Bowes go up forty-six percent? Cameron: I’ll tell you ’cause they’re in my news, uh, today. Kodak was up 80%. It’s now only up 35. Tony Kynaston: Oh, that’s volatile, isn’t it? Cameron: That is volatile. I mean, I’m s- I’m not complaining about being up 35% in a month, but still. Nabors Industry is up 28. Uh, all the rest are up, too, except for a few. Shi- Shinhan Financial is down four and a half. Opportune Financial, OPRT, is down seven, and PAGSEGURO is down 8.7. Not coincidentally, they’re all not American-based companies. They’re all f- you know, foreign, [00:08:00] um, entities. But so is, uh, I think GeoPark, uh, so is Danaos. They’re all doing well. Ecopetrol is up now 4%. Deutsche Bank that we did last week is up 2%. But, uh, everything’s doing quite well. Um, the other stocks that we’ve talked about on the show, Pulled Pork’s, that aren’t in our portfolios but stack ranking them in terms of how well they’ve done since, uh, we talked about them. At the top of the list is Zepp Health Corporation, the, uh, digital watch manufacturer. They’re up 278% since July 25. Sasol is up 166%. Chemex is up 134. Precision Drilling is up 92. POSCO’s up 82. ORIX Corporation is up 75. Long, long list of stocks doing very well. [00:09:00] On the not so good side of things, uh, Cal-Maine Foods is down 20. Controladora Vuela Compania de Avion is down 20. Bausch Health are also in the news. No, not Bausch, it’s Dausch that’s up. They’re down 15. AMC is down 14. They still haven’t worked out how to sell Mad Men. Um, couple of others. But yeah, generally speaking, yeah, most of them are doing really well. So I’m gonna, uh, too much news to go through in detail. I wanna get to my Pulled Pork, but, uh, just some quick highlights. Kodak shares fell. They came out with their quarterlies. Uh, US commercial print and chemicals maker rose 7%. Revenue rose 7% year on year. Operational EBITDA jumped to 15 million from two million, driven by improved pricing. But net loss widened to 16 million from seven mi

    25 min

  6. May 7

    THE HAUSBANK THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD (DB) – QAV America #51

    This week we run through a stack of Pulled Pork results that are absolutely cooking — Pitney Bowes up 40%, Eastman Kodak up 81%, and the US dummy portfolio now sitting at 110% since inception versus the S&P’s 62%. Then Cam does a deep dive on Deutsche Bank — 156 years old, scandal-ridden, and somehow posting their best year ever. Plus Spirit Airlines collapses, the Iran War drags into its ninth week, and Ford beats estimates by three times but still slides.   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 AM 51 Cameron: Welcome back to QAV America, Tony, episode 51. We’re recording this on the 5th of May, 2021. No, 2026. Uh, I Tony Kynaston: In a bit of a time warp there aren’t you? Cameron: Good, good, di Good. Good time to be a value investor. 2021. Tony Kynaston: As is. As is 26. Cameron: Yes. As is 26. Well, now that you mention it, let me just talk about how our portfolios and stocks and whatever are doing, um, the, uh, Pulled Porks that we’ve done over the last couple of months. Some of them are doing great, some of them not so well. Um, PAG, Seguro Digital PAGs is down eight or 9% since we covered it. And in fact. I added it to the light portfolio and it’s become a three point sell today. I just noticed, but. Commercial vehicle group is up 20% since we talked about it on the 6th of April. Pitney Bowes, [00:01:00] PBI is up 40% since we talked about it on the 30th of March. Eastman Kodak is up 81% since we talked about it on the 23rd of March. Geo Park 11% since the 17th of March. Murphy Oil is up 22% since the week before that. Neighbor Industries is up 33% the week before that. Bread Financial is up 18% since the 28th of February. Things are just going bonkers. Uh, Tony, and of course, none of these are even remotely AI related stocks. Universal electronics that I added to the light portfolio last week after we put the kibosh on MRP, it’s up 5%. Since I added it and can’t even remember what it does, um, not Tony Kynaston: No. Me neither. Cameron: week. But, uh, well, I didn’t talk to you about it. You wouldn’t know. We didn’t do it in the show, but it’s, Tony Kynaston: Oh, okay. Cameron: a great week. The US dummy portfolio though, Tony, which, uh, as you know, has been running since September, 2023, [00:02:00] currently up 110%. Time weighted return over that period of time versus the S&P 500, up 62%. So, uh, not quite double, but pretty damn close to double market over that period of time. The QAV light portfolio that I started a week before Christmas, uh, well a few days before Christmas, actually. December, 2025. Is currently up 11% versus the S&P 500, up 4.6899999999999995%. So that is doing double market even though it’s only over, say, four months or so. Um, yeah, so the US market, as we know, absolutely going bonkers at the moment despite bite. The what’s going on in the US economy and the global economy. We read some articles out on our Australian show people talking about the fact that it’s the AI stocks. Oh, by the way, the RBA did lift interest rates for the third time this year. Tony, I just saw it on the [00:03:00] Financial Review Tony Kynaston: So we can make out on our, on our prediction market bets. Cameron: Well, I, I was gonna bet the opposite, so I would’ve lost money. You would’ve won. Congratulations on your Polymarket bet there. Betting against yourself before yourself. Um, we were talking about Tony Kynaston: sorry, I was just gonna, Cameron: Yeah. Tony Kynaston: yeah, before you go leave the portfolio results, I mean, it’s, you talk about the S&P 500, but that includes the AI stocks. If you back those out, Cameron: Yes. Tony Kynaston: you know, we’re running way above the rest of the market. Um, but, but, but buying rest of the market stocks, so we’re really picking the eyes out of what’s left. Cameron: And it’s like there’s just so many stocks turning up on my US buy list every week. And you know, we’re just picking the ones at the top and buying them. And most of them, vast majority of them, are just doing very, very well. Um. You know, in the last, since we started adding or doing, Pulled Porks on these every week deep dives in March of [00:04:00] last year, so a little over a year now, I’ve talked about 48 stocks on the show. 34 of those are positive since then, 14 and not, so it’s a 71% win ratio. the average profit across them in a year is 35%. Tony Kynaston: Wow. Cameron: So I mean, the outliers being Zep Health, which is up 500%, Sasol ISS up 178%. Chemex is up 110. Couple of losers Cowain Foods is down 21. I think it’s the worst. I know. Controladora. Um, the Latin American airline, VLRS is down 23%, but, uh, nearly everything else is doing very, very well. American Airlines is down 14%. I see that the, uh, United merger is definitely off the table there this week. Speaking of airlines. Spirit Airlines has shut down the collapse of the carrier following a doubling in [00:05:00] jet fuel prices during the two month old Iran War will cost thousands of jobs. Um, no US carrier of Spirit’s size. It accounted for 5% of US flights at one point, has liquidated in two decades. Tony Kynaston: Wow. Cameron: So congratulations to Donald Trump. I do believe the reason he started. The, uh, war with Iran. It was, uh, because he thought there were too many airlines in the United States. Uh, it’s five D chess, Tony, this is how he plays five D chess. He’s like, how do I get rid of one of these, uh, discount budget airlines thousands of jobs? I know I’ll start a war with Iran on. Tony Kynaston: Well, I don’t think Donald would’ve been a frequent fly with Spirit Airlines, so he’s not, he’s not concerned. Cameron: to fly. They Tony Kynaston: He’s not concerned. Cameron: you’re saying? No, it had to pay for three seats instead of the one. Well, but is that like, uh, a sign of things to come? I mean, I know that they were [00:06:00] already doing it a little bit tough, I think before all of this happened, but, uh, that was the death nail for them, the doubling in jet fuel Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: But I wonder if they’re the canary in the coal mine in terms of the US economy. Tony Kynaston: Well, potentially, I mean, uh. Jet fuel has gone up a lot, and they were a low cost operator, so they didn’t have a big margin to, to buffer it with. Um, but you know, you wonder about other airlines. Airlines are pretty good at hedging their costs, but hedges do come with a time constraints. So, you know, as the war goes on for, as a two week war goes on for its ninth week, uh, it’s, you know, you wonder when the. Hedging might start to unwind and it might affect other people. Yeah. It’s a shame. Cameron: Well, speaking of affecting other people, Spirit had 4,119 domestic flights scheduled between May one and May 15th, offering [00:07:00] 809,638 seats. All of those people obviously have lost their flights. I believe some of the other airlines are offering them deals to help out, which is nice of them. But I’m not sure how much are gonna get back in terms of refunds, Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: uh, for all of these flights. Like the, uh, tariffs that Americans have been paying for the last year, which they’re probably not going to get. Uh, apparently the Trump administration had been offering $500 million in financing in exchange for warrants equivalent to 90% of Spirit’s equity. There had been disagreements inside the Trump administration over whether and how to fund the bailout. The Wall Street Journal reported, but it didn’t help at the end of the day for some reason. It, uh, fell through, but interesting this, these moves by the Trump administration, as we saw by the Obama administration. After the global financial [00:08:00] crisis of intervening directly in Tony Kynaston: Yep. Yep. Cameron: corporate socialism will come and will, uh, you out. Tony Kynaston: Yeah, well, I mean it sometimes it can be, um, just a zero sum game if we, the government works out how much it has to pay in welfare for the employees who aren’t gonna be there. And, and the knock on effects for people who, uh, are in that industry might be cheaper to bail the company out, especially if it’s a short term problem, if they expect, you know, ’cause it’s, like I said, the ninth week of a two week war, they expect jet fuel to prices to drop. Uh, maybe it is worth bailing it out, but they looked at it and it didn’t happen. Cameron: I told you, I’ve told you before about my, my, my Iranian friend, uh, who I go to kung fu with, we talk Iranian politics all the time. And, uh, you know, a few days before the war, said to him, he was all for it. He wanted it to. He wanted it to happen ’cause he hates the regime and he wants the regime to go and he wants to [00:09:00] take the leadership of the country. And before the war, I said, how many? How long do you think it’ll last? He goes, two days, three days, tops. And after the first week, I said, how long now? He goes, two weeks. Two weeks tops. It’ll all be over. after the end of the first month, I said, how long? He goes, two to three months. Two to three months. That’s it. As soon as Trump puts boots on the ground. I know we about two months in when, when’s he putting boots on the ground? Any day now. Any day now. Boots on the ground. Yeah. Well there were tons

    28 min

  7. Apr 30

    The $3.6 Billion Illusion (MRP) – QAV America #50

    On this episode we hit episode 50 and celebrate with a portfolio update showing we’re nearly double the S&P 500 all-time, before diving deep into Millrose Properties (MRP) — a brand new REIT spun out of home builder Lennar that had the AIs screaming “stay away.” We dig into the weird world of land banking, shadow banking, private credit, and why a company can show $3.6 billion in operating cash flow while only pulling in $600 million in revenue — and whether that should ever pass the QAV sniff test. Spoiler: it doesn’t.   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 50 Club Cameron: [00:00:00] Welcome to QAV America, Tony, episode 50, big five zero. Tony Kynaston: Wow. Cameron: Yeah, Tony. Um, it’s been an interesting week in the, uh, stock markets and in the news and in, uh, presidential affairs. Tony Kynaston: hmm. Always is. Cameron: Failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Tony Kynaston: But it’s, it’s like, what was that, uh, movie Edge of Tomorrow where Tom Cruise gets like moves one step closer to his goal of killing the, the aliens, but gets killed and then next day wakes up again and does it, bearing in mind what he knows isn’t gonna work. So we’re like, we’ve had the guy on the roof, blah, blah. He’s gone. We got the guy running fast through the checkpoint, so he made it through but didn’t get a shot away. So kind of the golf course. So like the next one is gonna run through quickly and get the shot off. Knows what’s coming. Cameron: Yeah. [00:01:00] Well, listen, I, uh, as I said to you on the last show, I dunno what the Secret Service is doing. Um, I think they should all be fired, but I think Tony Kynaston: Hey, they saved. They saved the president. How much of those guys getting paid though to go and stand in front of JD Vance and between him and a poet? Cameron: The guy shouldn’t have been, you know, able to get into the hotel with a Tony Kynaston: Oh yeah, Cameron: Should have security on the front of the hotel. Like not a guy running through the place with a, how did he get a shotgun into a, how do you get a shotgun into a Hilton hotel? That’s what I wanna know. I know it’s America, but still. Anyway. Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Cameron: I just think it was fascinating that Trump didn’t do any of the White House correspondents’ dinners during his first term. Didn’t do one in the first year of his second term, agreed to do this one, doesn’t even get to get on stage before it all gets shut down and he goes home. It’s, uh, [00:02:00] very strange. Any who, Tony Kynaston: The universe doesn’t want him to talk to White House Correspondents, obviously. Cameron: Yes, some people, some people are saying it’s staged, Tony, a lot of people, a lot of Tony Kynaston: Really? Cameron: A lot of people, Tony, a lot of people are saying they’re staged Tony Kynaston: to distract. Okay. Yep. Cameron: from the Iran war, to distract from the economy, to Tony Kynaston: Ah, Cameron: you know, Tony Kynaston: hadn’t thought of that. Cameron: who made money off of Polymarket betting that there would be an assassination attempt on that day, which it literally happened. Tony Kynaston: Well, that’s one of the difficulties of Polymarket, isn’t it? If you bet there’s gonna be an assassination attempt, you could be the assassin. Cameron: Yeah. Check the alleged assassin’s, uh, bank account. Anyway, let’s, uh, so the market, uh, in the last week in the US, Tony, is up. In Australia the market is down significantly. In the last week in the US it’s [00:03:00] had a few dips, but it’s ended up, despite the fact that the latest news today is that offered some sort of a deal. Trump said he doesn’t like that deal. Nothing’s moving forwards with the Strait of Hormuz as far as we know, but the US market does not care. It’s just trundling along, happy campers. Tony Kynaston: Cares more about forecast earnings, I think, which AI is driving up. So and Cameron: driving up for seven businesses. What about the rest? Tony Kynaston: Yeah. That’s right. Big disconnect between those businesses and the, and the Main Street type businesses. Isn’t there? Cameron: Now the, the, the deep dive I’m gonna do today is a tricky one. I’m not sure if you’re gonna like it. In fact, I was so unsure about it. I didn’t add it to our portfolio this time. Tony Kynaston: Ooh, Cameron: Uh, did my head in, Tony Kynaston: really? I, I had a look at that. It’s definitely an interesting topic to talk about for sure. Cameron: Very different from anything that we’ve done recently. [00:04:00] Um, I had lots of conversations with AIs and they were all trying to talk me out of it, telling me this Tony Kynaston: Oh, Cameron: stay away, really bad. I was like, I dunno. Tony Kynaston: If AI tells you it’s bad and says to stay away, must be really bad. Cameron: Well, maybe. Um, so we’ll get into that in a minute. Before we get into that, I just want to do a quick update on our portfolio. So in the last month, our main US portfolio is basically neck and neck with the S&P. They’re both up about 12%. We’re a little bit below, we’re up 11.76. The S&P 500 is up 12.64, slightly underperforming it. Uh, in the, uh, last 12 months, uh, our dummy portfolio is up about 36%, 37% versus the S&P up just under 30. So we’re outperforming [00:05:00] slightly, Tony Kynaston: Mm-hmm. Cameron: I don’t know, 20%, um, over the course of the last year all time. We are up now a hundred and, arrows not working on this thing. And uh, it looks like we’re up 90, 97% versus the S&P up a little bit less than 51%. So all time, not quite double, but almost double. So that’s, that’s not too bad. Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: with that. Tony Kynaston: Yep. No Mag Seven stocks. Cameron: Sorry, what? Tony Kynaston: And we don’t have any Mag Seven stocks. Yeah. Cameron: The QAV Light portfolio that’s only been running since just before Christmas is up about 8% since that time. Uh, versus the S&P’s up about, uh, four. So it’s doing double, only over a few months. Some of the, some of the big winners in [00:06:00] that one. Uh, Kodak is, uh, up Tony Kynaston: Wow, Cameron: is up Tony Kynaston: That’s developed, hasn’t it? Cameron: I know. It’s crazy. Oh, I see what you’re doing. I see what you did there. Very good. Yeah. Very, very good, Tony. Uh, yeah, all you know, Pitney Bowes is up 44, Quarters is up 44. Scripps is up 33, Commercial Vehicle Group, CVGI is up 21. Nabs Industries is up 16. Um, so yeah, doing quite well considering it’s pretty new. Some of the stocks that we’ve done pulled porks on that aren’t in our portfolio though. But, um, we’ve covered in this, I just had incredible runs. Of course, the, the big one is still Zep Health Corporation, which is up 466% since we talked about it in July last year. Um, ChemX, uh, we talked about in March last year, over a year ago, is up [00:07:00] 116%. Uh, just too many to talk about. So many winners. Lots of winners. Out of the 47 stocks that we’ve done a deep dive on, 34 are up, 13 are down. It’s about a 30, no, 72% win rate and about 34% average profit of those over the last little bit over a year. We started doing deep dives in March last year, Tony Kynaston: Pretty good. Cameron: Yeah, like it’s just been a bonkers year. Tony Kynaston: Hmm. Hey, before I forget too, we, I spoke about, uh, Berkshire Hathaway on the Australian show. Um, I think it’s the Berkshire Hathaway AGM May two, which must be this weekend in Omaha, Nebraska. Cameron: Will he be there? Tony Kynaston: Oh, I think, I think he’ll be there, but it’s actually gonna be run by Greg Abel who’s answering questions this year, not Warren. Cameron: I mean, Tony Kynaston: Interesting to see the turnout. Yeah. Cameron: What will he do? Sit on the [00:08:00] stage and not talk? I don’t know. Tony Kynaston: I Cameron: Just eat his, uh, candies and drink his Coke. Tony Kynaston: Maybe talk to Bill Gates in the, in the crowd, in the front row. Cameron: I think he and Bill are on talking terms right now. Tony Kynaston: Oh, okay. Cameron: Uh, well, you know, he, he dropped out of the foundation after all of Bill’s, uh, problems came to light. Tony Kynaston: What problems? Like, doesn’t Bill know how to launch spaceships around the moon to deflect from the problems, block the Strait of Hormuz and things like that. Cameron: Assassination attempts, Tony Kynaston: Yeah. Cameron: make him popular again. So the company we’re gonna talk about today, Tony, is MRP, Millrose Properties. Now I, oh, I was gonna do a company called Vate, by the way, VATE is the ticker code. I started doing a deep [00:09:00] dive on them. Is the name of the business. They were, uh, higher up in the buy list. But then when I was running my analysis, I found out they actually had a problem with their audit. Claude actually flagged that they had a Tony Kynaston: Oh Cameron: problem with their audit. So, uh, that was good to find out. Not, it’s the first time since we’ve been doing these pulled porks and I’ve actually had a company that had a dodgy audit. So Tony Kynaston: Wow. Yeah. Cameron: picked it up. Tony Kynaston: Hey, whoa, whoa. So I clicked on the link that you sent me, which was taking me to KLM, not Millrose. Cameron:

    34 min

  8. Apr 23

    Subprime Time: Lending to America’s Underbanked at 36% APR – QAV America #49

    On this episode we run through our latest portfolio numbers — the QAV dummy portfolio is up 115% since inception versus the S&P’s 60%, and some individual picks like Kodak and Scripps are going absolutely bananas. We dig into the week’s big news including the Iran war’s economic ripple effects, the tariff refund mess, and the Cal-Maine antitrust saga. Then Cameron does a full Pulled Pork on Oportun Financial (OPRT) — a subprime FinTech lender to underserved Latino communities that’s dirt cheap, freshly activist-investor-cleaned, and either a turnaround gem or a cautionary tale.   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 49 Club Cameron Reilly: [00:00:00] Welcome to QAV America TK. It’s the 21st of April, 2026. Before we get into the news of the week, TK, I just thought I’d do a quick update on our portfolios ’cause it’s a crazy time in the markets at the moment. The QAV dummy portfolio, uh, all time, which is September 23, is currently up 115%. Over that period of time versus the S&P 500, which is up about 60%. So that’s, uh, September two and a two and a half years, not gonna lie. The S&P being up 60% in two and a half years TK: it’s good. Cameron Reilly: is not a bad, not a bad couple of years. Um, we are doing pretty much double that, so, yeah. Crazy, crazy time over there. Uh, at the moment, for the last 30 [00:01:00] days, our portfolio is up 14% versus the S&P up nine. Our QAV light portfolio, which we started in December last year. Is up 6% over that period of time versus the S&P up 3%. So again, sort of double market, but it’s only over a few months. Um, I did mention to you on our last show that some of the stocks that have been doing well, we’ll talk about Topgolf in a minute, but our, our friends at Kodak. Um, that we talked about a few weeks ago are now up Conex up 65% in our light portfolio. Um, in a matter of, TK: bid or something for them? Cameron Reilly: I dunno, it didn’t come up in my news search. Yeah, we added them on the 23rd of March, which is a month ago, less than a month ago, but almost a month ago. It’s up 65%. No idea why [00:02:00] Scripps is up 48.7% since we added them, uh, on the 25th of February, two months ago. TK: Well, of course it’s, uh, corporate reporting season over there now, so they could be putting out some good Cameron Reilly: It’s always corporate reporting season. They do it every three months. I did see that Scripps announced some sort of deal came up in my news. Well, it didn’t seem like that big a deal, some sort of a thing that they did. But yeah, I mean the market is just absolutely bonkers. you know, we’re gonna start a new segment on this show this week, which is, uh, Tony reads the Bible uh, that’s what Donald Trump’s doing this week. Uh, America reads the Bible. Have you heard about that? TK: No. Cameron Reilly: He’s doing a televised session where he reads from the Bible. I’m not sure if it’s a daily thing or a weekly thing. I’m not sure when he is gonna learn to read, but that’s TK: picture book? Oh, look at that. That’s a very ugly guy. There he is. Got terrible clothes, bad hair, Cameron Reilly: very low IQ TK: [00:03:00] straggly beard. Yeah. Cameron Reilly: Very low IQ loser. Yeah. I prefer my TK: that’s Jesus. Cameron Reilly: killed. Yeah. TK: Look at that. He’s not to a cross. It’s a very basic cross. Not even the gold cross. Well, I see. He’s obviously doing penance for the AI post of him being Jesus. He’s trying to get back into good books with the Americans. Yeah, the Christians. Mm. Cameron Reilly: Well, uh, Tony, crazy week, uh, as has become the norm. Um, York Times article in front of me. White House shrugs off shaky economy as war exceeds Trump’s timeline. Stocks may be soaring again, but the war in Iran has started to pinch the finances of many Americans. Uh, TK: Was that White House or Wall Street did you misquote there? Cameron Reilly: no, says White House. TK: Really well, of course they’re gonna shrug it off. It’s bad news. Cameron Reilly: roughly seven weeks into the war with Iran, investors have shrugged off the [00:04:00] sky high price of oil, sending the S&P 500 this week to a fresh record high. This is dated April TK: Yeah, so that’s Wall Cameron Reilly: old. TK: Street shrugging off the wall. Cameron Reilly: exuberance on Wall Street has offered a sharp contrast with the hardships facing many Americans who are feeling the financial blowback of a conflict that President Trump once promised would be brief, but seems to have no end in sight TK: You once promised there wouldn’t be any foreign wars too. Forget about it being brief. That’s like, Cameron Reilly: Oh, TK: that’s like a, an excuse you give when you didn’t do your homework. Well, I’ll be brief. It was brief anyway. Cameron Reilly: so. 2024. Thinking of you Tony, have changed with high gas prices cutting deeply into many families’ budgets. The US economy is under increasing strain, raising the odds that inflation will worsen, unemployment will rise, and growth will slow. This year TK: All completely correct, but look, Americans are whinging bitches. I, uh, [00:05:00] I compare the cost of, um, petrol in the US or gas as they put it to Australia. And uh, the $4 a gallon is equivalent to a dollar 50. Even taking into account the currency changes exchanges. Dollar 50 per liter, which is half what I’m paying at the moment at the bowser. So, you know, get over yourselves. Americans Cameron Reilly: $3 TK: pony up. Yeah. For diesel. Absolutely. Cameron Reilly: got a diesel car. TK: Yeah. Cameron Reilly: I was surprised. I filled up our car yesterday or the day before and it was only, I think two bucks. TK: Okay. Cameron Reilly: It was like TK: That’s good. Cameron Reilly: a few days earlier or a week earlier. Um, whinging bitches. I guess that’s the new, um, title for the episode. Uh, so yeah, like as we’ve said before, I think week after week after week after week, the stock market doesn’t seem to care. Uh, Washington Post article, here’s what the, uh, it wants me to pay for it. God damnit. TK: Stop shouting at [00:06:00] clouds. Cameron Reilly: Okay. Hold on a second here. Uh, let TK: Yeah. You sent me, you said listen to this. Cameron sends me all these links to the behind paywalls and I don’t get to see them. Cameron Reilly: you’ve TK: Alright. Cameron Reilly: Post subscription. I know it’s Wall TK: No. Cameron Reilly: You’ve got, yeah. TK: I do find a way to get around them, but yeah. Cameron Reilly: Here’s what the stock market might’ve gotten wrong about the Iran war. surge in optimism contrasts starkly with continued energy supply, challenges that threaten long lasting economic harm, and a market reckoning as stocks soared. This week in oil prices dropped amid an apparent cooling of tensions between the United States and Iran. It may have left the impression that the energy shock that rattled the world is quickly fading along with the risk of sending the global economy into a recession. But beneath that surface, a starkly different reality is unfolding. It is defined by disrupted supply lines and damaged infrastructure, sparking increased [00:07:00] concern among the people who produce, transport, and depend on energy. The people closest to the industry are far more concerned about these disruptions and recognize the length of time it will take for things to return to normal. If they ever do, said Jerry Morton oil and gas co-chair at the law firm, Baker Botts. The further away you get from actually being involved in producing oil, the less you seem to be concerned about the physical reality and problems that are there. is the thing that gets me, Tony, is like, there’s just this sense of exuberance and optimism in the markets. That makes absolutely no sense to me. TK: It, it doesn’t, and unfortunately, I, yeah, I don’t like to predict, but it, it’ll catch up with us, with us at some stage and the market will retrace dramatically, I think. Um, not just, so a couple of points on what you just reported. Uh, I [00:08:00] can’t see the oil majors relying on the Straits of Hormuz if they can avoid it going forward, because even if, even if they have to, in the short term, they’re possibly gonna have to pay a toll. To use it, whether that’s a toll on Iran’s permission or whether that’s some kind of support for the US keeping the straits open. Um, there has been plans to build a pipeline down the western side of the Strait so that oil can get through without having to worry about intervention. That’s a. Big, big cost, but I, I’m sure that that is being dusted off and they’re having a look at that, or they’ll find some other way to, to get the oil out, which will be more expensive. Um, so that’s problem number one. Problem number two is that the Straits of Hormuz aren’t the only narrowing in the supply chain for oil. There’s also other places like the Straits of Malacca, which um, could be shut down by China in a sort of similar way that [00:09:00] Iran’s controlling supply chain, uh, the supply chain. And given China’s moving away from its dependency on oil and gas, it’d be a really neat trick to go for the electric and then close down the Straits of Malacca, which would stop oil from getting to Southeast Asia and possibly to us as well. So it’s, it’s not just

    34 min
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The feed for the free version of the QAV American podcast.

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  • Creator
    QAV America (free feed)
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    54
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Spacecraft Publishing Ltd 2025
  • Show Website
    QAV America (free feed)

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