ANDREW PAGE | Strawman

· Podcast Episodes
Strawman Investing Club

While we all like to think we’ll behave a certain way in the next crash, the odds are most of us won’t. And a crash is definitely coming (we just don’t know when). There are, however, some practical steps we can take to ensure we are well placed to weather any storm, and take advantage of any opportunities that may arise.

“We don't think about the downside when everyone's making a lot of money, when share prices are marching ever higher. You're only looking at the upside. Then things get scary, then people start focusing on the downside and then you're trying to make a judgment of, ‘Geez, how bad can this get?’ And you're trying to make that at a time when you're very emotionally charged, when you're watching lots of red on the screen and your net worth falling. It's not a very conducive environment for objective clear-thinking. So I think it's always good to ask the ‘what if’.”

Here's a link to Andrew's blog post: How to prepare for the next crash - Strawman 

Image of stock market crash

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

 

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Phil (27s):

G'day and welcome back to Shares for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. Today we're welcoming Andrew Page from Strawman back to the podcast. But before that, we're having a quick word with the winner of the recent Shares for Beginners eInvest competition: James Ballard. James was the winner of $500 worth of eInvest ETFs and I wanted to find out why he chose that particular ETF, the EIGA. Hello James. 

James (51s):

Hi Phil 

Phil (52s):

It's always great to actually meet a listener in person. I don't get to do this very often. Have you been listening to the podcast for a while or just wandered in and out? 

James (1m 0s):

Only recently. So yeah, I've been learning a bit more about different investment options. 

Phil (1m 7s):

How long have you been investing for? 

James (1m 9s):

About a year. But quite small start-in and then probably the last few months, since we completed purchase of a house. So now looking "What happens next? What do we come for next?" 

Phil (1m 21s):

Yeah. So what are you doing to learn? What sort of steps are you taking to learn about investing? And you can mention other podcasts as well, I'm happy to talk about that, even if there's other ones. 

James (1m 30s):

Yes, yes. Bit of internet browsing, bit of searching, quite a few blog posts and seeing what different people are doing and then jumping in a little bit. So I started on Spaceship, so quite micro investing just to start learning first-hand, learn by experience and have then moved on from there. So I'm also, kind of, learning by doing as well as learning by reading. So starting small and seeing where it goes. 

Phil (1m 59s):

Did you find that useful, starting with a micro investing app? Because it's something we actually talk about on the podcast that sometimes it's better just to start, you know, really, really small with a Spaceship or a Raiz or something like that. Did you find it useful in helping to learn what you were doing? 

James (2m 14s):

It worked well for me because we were saving a deposit for a house at the same time. So having those small investments helped me learn, particularly when you look at it, sort of longer term, passive style investing like I am, the fluctuations and bits like that that you're going to experience that it goes up, it goes down, it goes up. So what's the difference between those fluctuations and longer term type trends? And you get, you sort of just leaving it and checking in and seeing how it's going every so often. And so for me, it was a very good way to, kind of, start. And during and the, sort of, COVID lockdowns, et cetera where it had dropped quite a bit at the start and then the market was picking from there. 

James (2m 60s):

So we got to see that happening without having committed a huge amount of, kind of, my investment at a time or distracting from the property we were going for. Which was also going up quite fast in that same windows. So yeah, it was a good starting point for me, definitely. 

Phil (3m 18s):

Well interestingly enough, we're going to be talking to Andrew Page from Strawman today about how to be prepared for the coming crash. Which, you know, we don't know if there's going to be a crash. No one knows what's going to happen, but have you actually thought about what would happen if there was a market correction with your investments? 

James (3m 37s):

Yes. That's obviously the risks you take. Part of that is not all of my money is in there so I have looking to diversify that, I've still got cash against offset and the property a bit there. So this isn't money I would see myself needing in the next year or two. So it's looking at: my kids are quite young now, what do I need in 10, 15, 20 years time? Not what would I need if there was a correction in the next year or two or even three years out. So part of that is also how you balance, what other monies you have. 

James (4m 18s):

It's money that I can put aside that goes up and down, but trying to look at interest on a savings account off inside that is quite low anyway. So I'm looking at what's the longer term view for this money than the short term. And yes. So there would no doubt be corrections and going 

Phil (4m 39s):

Market ructions up 

James (4m 40s):

Yes. How big they go. Kind of where I've been looking at and what I've mostly been reading about is the time in the market, so the best time to invest was 20 years ago, as opposed to just trying to time those peaks and troughs in the market. But over a longer period of time, we're not going to expect to see some of the rapid growth that's perhaps been in the last 12 months. But obviously there are risks in that. Going down the kind of ETF route is an easy way of diversifying the portfolio, I guess. So there's a bit of spread across markets and companies so, yeah, longer term some of that will hopefully balance out. 

James (5m 23s):

I look in it a longer term view than what happens in the next few years. So the recommendation is seven years at least, but, kind of, you want to be planning that you don't need this money for 7 to 10 years kind of thing and it will mature over that timeframe. So that's what I've got in mind when going into this. 

Phil (5m 46s):

Fantastic, very sensible approach. Now, congratulations, because you've just won $500 worth of ETFs with eInvest and you've chosen the EIGA ETF. Tell us about that and why that particular one. 

James (6m 0s):

So I had a look through the active ETFs there and I chose that one because of its more income focused piece. So because it was, a kind of prize on it, perhaps wasn't one I would've gone for with my portfolio. So winning the prize kind of gave me an opportunity to say "Well what would that look like? What does an income generating one look like?" So again, I could learn a bit more about that without having put too much into it. So it's a kind of prize winning one, and then I can see how that goes and I'm learning a bit more around "What's the difference between a growth one or a ,kind of, one that's tracking the index versus one that is good for income generation?" 

James (6m 45s):

So in future, I may want to put more towards an income generating one versus a growth one over time. So my idea was I could learn a bit about a different style of ETF to what I've experienced recently. So that was the idea behind choosing that one. 

Phil (7m 3s):

Fantastic. Okay, James, thank you very much for joining me today and chatting about this. And I just also wanted to remind listeners that there's a new competition form eInvest where they're going to be offering a thousand dollars worth of their new hybrid ETF. And we're going to have Brad Dunn from eInvest on in a couple of weeks. He'll explain what hybrids are and how you construct an ETF with those. And again, this is another income generating one James. So you might be interested in entering that competition. Who knows, you might get lucky twice. 

James (7m 34s):

Hopefully. We'll see. 

Phil (7m 36s):

Thanks very much, James. Lovely to meet you. 

James (7m 37s):

Cool, thanks Phil, good to meet you. 

Phil (7m 41s):

And now on to Andrew Page from strawman.com, a private investing club. Hi Andrew. 

Andrew (7m 45s):

G'day, Phil. How are you? 

Phil (7m 46s):

Good. Really good. Thanks for coming on. So you've been on the podcast many times before, but for those listeners who haven't met you, please introduce yourself. 

Andrew (7m 54s):

Yeah. It's always a pleasure, Phil. Yeah. I'm Andrew Page. I'm the founder and managing director of strawman.com. As you say, we're a private investment club and yeah, the whole idea is just to get a bunch of savvy investors together and share ideas and challenge each other's ideas and hopefully improve our investment outcomes collectively. 

Phil (8m 11s):

Yeah. Because you've always taken that scientific approach. You will always want to be proved wrong, don't you? Especially in your investing thesis. 

Andrew (8m 17s):

You're either right or you're wrong. And the market's going to point it out to you if you are wrong. So it's far better to sort of know in advance if you can. So yeah, stress testing is quite important. 

Phil (8m 29s):

So today I wanted to discuss your latest blog post, which is "How to prepare for the next big crash". Is there one coming? 

Andrew (8m 36s):

There's definitely one coming. Unfortunately I can't tell you how big it will be and when it will happen or even what will cause it to be. But it's coming as sure as night follows day. 

Phil (8m 44s):

So why is it going to be a big crash? I mean, this is a strange thing and I know there's the saying that equities go up via the escalator and down via the lift, but why does the downward movements have to be so severe? 

Andrew (9m 1s):

Yeah. Well, I guess it's a difference between the price that people are paying and the underlying value of the thing that they're buying. I mean, prices are determined on the margin. It's just, who's trading a particular stock on a particular day that sets the price. So when we say, you know, a particular share is worth $1 and 23 cents, that's just the last time that those shares traded hands. And when things are very scary and uncertain, a lot of people are prepared to sell shares at any price they can get. And those that are wanting to buy probably aren't prepared to pay that much. So really it just comes back to uncertainty and fear. And there's always a bit of that around, but when things are particularly uncertain, that dynamic changes and prices tend to go down very sharply. 

Andrew (9m 41s):

And it's why you tend to need to see some pretty scary things. You know, most people don't really know what's going to happen. I mean, think of coronavirus in March of 2020. Obviously that recovered very quickly and we're now on to record highs again, but that could have been like the movie contagion for all we knew at the time. Or the GFC. I mean, there was a lot of very smart people saying, you know, we could be in for another great depression. So you have these really, really scary things. And that just sends prices down really, really quickly. On the way up the market's sort of dragged by the underlying fundamental performance of the actual businesses you're tracking. And the best businesses in the world don't grow at ridiculously high rates forever. 

Andrew (10m 22s):

So it tends to be, that's why you get up the stairs and down the elevator. But the timing of which is the tough part. 

Phil (10m 28s):

So are we in a speculative bubble at the moment? I guess that's the big question. 

Andrew (10m 33s):

It's interesting. So Michael Burry, who a lot of people will know from the GFC when he was played by Christian Bale in "The Big Short", and he recently tweeted, not Christian Bale, the real Michael Burry made a lot of money on betting against the US property market, said that we're in the greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things, which is a pretty big statement to make. And I guess, you know, it got a lot of attention at the time. Are we? I don't know. Unfortunately, these things are more obvious in hindsight. There was a lot of very smart people years ago, sort of, saying that things were very expensive. And on traditional valuation measures, I think a lot of people have been saying for a while that things are sort of quote, unquote stretched. There's two things of that: one, are they right? 

Andrew (11m 15s):

And two, even if they are right, you know, "the market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent" as the old saying goes. So are we? I don't know. Are valuations a little bit stretch? Yes. I think against a couple of measures they are. Does that mean that there's a crash around the corner? Not necessarily. And I don't know. And that's the frustrating thing with all of this, Phil. 'Cause you can say off of this with a great deal of certainty and everyone can sort of nod and go, "Yes. Okay. That makes a lot of sense." And at all times there are a lot of people out there, you know, the permabears, which will always tell you that there's a crash coming. 

Phil (11m 46s):

That's a great term, isn't it? The permabears, there's people who are always looking for the next crash around the corny. And eventually there'll be right. 

Andrew (11m 52s):

Like a broken clock, it's right twice a day, you know? So eventually it will be right. But then as Peter Lynch, and this is what I wrote in the article, is that a lot of people know him from the book "One Up on Wall Street", is a really great investor over in the US. He says that far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in the corrections themselves. So for example, you could have said in 2017 "Geez, you know, some of these tech stocks are getting up there. Things look pretty expensive. I tell you what, I'm going to pull all my money out of the market. Put it into a savings account or a term deposit and get, you know, half a percent interest or something." Now it would have seemed prudent and you certainly haven't lost any money. It's hard to lose money in those instruments, but look how much opportunity cost there has been there. 

Andrew (12m 35s):

And this is the tough part, this is the tough part. Or worse, perhaps you went short the market, perhaps you made a bet on the market going down. In which case, not only did you miss out on the upside, but you got absolutely wiped out as it went up. So a lot of this trying to sort of anticipate these big moves, while it's done with the best of intentions, often very counterproductive. And the observation that Peter's making, and this has absolutely been backed up by a lot of research, is that you're just better to wear it and suffer through it. It's the price of admission for long-term wealth creation on the share market that it's going to occasionally, as you say, fall down the elevator shaft. But overall, it's going to go up and you're better off just taking that on the chin when it does. 

Andrew (13m 17s):

After all, I mean, we'll come to this later, if you've actually invested in pretty sensible companies, yep, the share prices might really fall a lot when the market's freaking out, but overall, good companies will come back and you will make your money back and in fact, you've got an opportunity to buy. All very rational kind of things by the way, but you just, you have to have that preparedness that it's going to get scary and potentially scary and uncertain for a long time. And that's the hard part. 

Phil (13m 41s):

It is the hard part. And that's what people don't remember is during the GFC, it wasn't like a quick, short, sharp correction like it was in March 2020. It just went on and on and on like water torture and people just don't know what it feels like to go through that and it can be debilitating. 

Andrew (14m 2s):

Yes. There's another observation that I really like. And that is that when you're looking forward, a crash is always seen as a risk, but when you're looking backwards, retrospectively a crash is always seen as an opportunity. I know this is not a visual forum, but you know, you and I can point to any number of points in time on charts and say, "Wow, wouldn't it have been great to buy in 2009, wouldn't have been great to buy in 2001 after the tech stocks popped?" And yes, absolutely. That is true. But what often gets lost is a bit of sense of context and perspective is that when you're actually going through those periods, okay, maybe after the first few weeks, the first few months you go, it's okay, I'm okay with this. But some pullbacks last, a long time as you observed, and maybe after a year or 18 months, you really start to get haunted at night. 

Andrew (14m 47s):

Am I doing the right thing? I thought I was. The market fell, I didn't panic. In fact, I put more money in and then I lost money on that fresh money. It's very, very, very hard to do. And usually it will often, people will reach this point of capitulation where they just can't bear the pain anymore and often sell out at exactly the wrong time. And it's easy to sort of laugh and at that. And say "Ha I would never do that," but we all do. 

Phil (15m 11s):

You don't know what you're going to feel like once you're in that situation, are you at all? 

Andrew (15m 16s):

It's like playing poker online with play money versus the real thing. It's very, very different. Not just real money, but potentially a very large chunk of your life savings. It's super hard. Also in that article that I wrote recently, I found some great research from MIT. And they did a study of all these broker accounts and the interesting thing was they said that investors who are male, above the age of 45, who self identify as having excellent investment experience or knowledge were the most likely to freak out during these times. And I spent time working at a broker as well, a bit of a cliche, but the little old lady who just doesn't even look at her shares, who just has happened to have the BHP shares in the bottom drawer for the last 30 years. 

Andrew (16m 0s):

Who's far out performed all these so-called, you know, experienced and knowledgeable investors who tend to try and freak out and do overly clever, but ultimately counterproductive things. 

Phil (16m 14s):

So let's talk about the storm clouds that we're seeing at the moment and what seems to be the main thing on the horizon is inflation. That inflation will go up, and we keep on hearing the word transitory, it's not going to last, but every day it seems to be less and less transitory. What are your feelings and observations and thoughts about that? 

Andrew (16m 35s):

The macro is what you would call, is it important? Yes, it's really important and valuable. It has a big impact on economies and therefore businesses and therefore share prices. But it's also what you might say it's important, but unknowable. So what you really want to find with investing are the important things that you can have some hope of having some foresight on. So it's, it is something that I do think about a lot in terms of inflation and the macro environment. But the thing is, is after all of that, you kind of land back to where you were, which is, well, my strategy remains unchanged. I'm just going to continue to find good companies, hopefully at attractive prices and just accumulate and build and build and build and build and wait and wait and wait. 

Andrew (17m 14s):

But yes, so inflation has been getting a lot of air time, in fact, for a long time, more so now. And the reason is, is that inflation has a huge impact on interest rates. When prices get a little bit hot, that's the policy response. You put up interest rates to sort of cool the economy and when things aren't great, you lower them to help stimulate the economy. So if inflation rears its head again, and it has in pockets, we've had all these supply chain problems, we've had issues in China, there's rising fuel costs, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe it is transitory, maybe it's not, I'm not too sure. But if we do see sustained inflation, and it hasn't been a feature of economies for a long time, like a really long time, but if it does come back, we will see interest rates inexorably rise. 

Andrew (17m 57s):

And there's a lot of debt out there. So that's going to definitely put the brakes on things and that's going to have real world impacts. But it's also important from a valuation perspective. So without getting too much into the theory and the weeds of this, share prices are very much a function of interest rates because when you buy shares, there's an opportunity cost. I could put my money in the bank or a term deposit. Let's go back to the 80s and let's say I could buy a term deposit and get a 10% yield on that. That is an outstanding investment for something that almost, I won't say it's impossible, virtually impossible to lose your money on. Why would I invest in the share market, which long-term on average, historically has given me about 10%, with all the risk and volatility and scariness when I could get it there? 

Andrew (18m 40s):

So you're always going to want a premium on what you can get in so-called safe haven investments. And so because of the safe haven investments have been very low for a long time, that premium, you can make a very sensible argument to invest in shares if your long-term expected return is only 6 or 7%. It's below what you would normally expect from the market, but relative to what else you can get, it's good. But let's play this forward and let's say interest rates go up and therefore the return that you'd want on the market will also go up. Well, the way the maths works would mean that the share price needs to go down to make it more attractive an investment. Because we're discounting all of these future cash flows in trying to come up with a valuation. And the higher the discount rate, the less those future cash flows are worth. 

Andrew (19m 23s):

Add them altogether, the less the share prices. I really butchered that in a verbal sense, it's hard to do verbally, but what I'm saying is is that interest rates, as they go up, share prices and valuations on the market go down. So we have this potential of not only having an impact on profitability, but also on the valuations themselves. So when you're looking out there at some of these big tech companies that are trading on price to sales multiples of 20, in some cases much higher than that. You can sort of squint and say, that makes sense if it's genuinely a lower for longer quote, unquote view on interest rates. But if that dynamic in that outlook changes, it's harder and harder to rationalize. And this is where you have to distinguish between the business and the valuation. 

Andrew (20m 4s):

The business might continue to do exactly as you predicted, but you are now valuing that in a different way. And you need to value that in a different way. And that's where the potential risk is with interest rates and ultimately you go back to inflation. 

Phil (20m 19s):

Okay, so let's have a look at "what if". If this is going to happen, how well are the companies in your portfolio going to weather these storms? 

Andrew (20m 26s):

That is the question to ask. Unfortunately, it's a question that too many of us, sort of, ask in the heat of the moment. We don't think about the downside when everyone's making a lot of money, when share prices are marching ever higher. You know, you're only looking at the upside. Then things get scary, then people start focusing on the downside and then you're trying to make a judgment of, "Geez, how bad can this get?" And you're trying to make that at a time when you're very emotionally charged, when you're watching, you know, lots of red on the screen and your net worth falling. It's not a very conducive environment for objective clear-thinking. So I think it's always good to ask the "what if". You know, yes, absolutely, when you're buying a share, you need to have an optimistic view of the company and all of that but ask yourself, "Well, what's the bear case?" 

Andrew (21m 10s):

I should know the bear case better than the bears. I don't have to accept it but I need to be aware of it. What can go wrong here? So I can't predict what the economy is going to do, but I could probably have a reasonable assumption as to how well this business would hold up during a debt. So for example, two hypothetical companies, we have both of them making a million dollars a year. Let's say that the same market valuation, but one is loaded up on debt. And it sells a product that's highly cyclical, highly consumer discretionary kind of thing. The kind of thing that people are happy to buy when times are good, but when they tighten their belts that, you know, I don't know, I've read back scratches for example, they're selling something like that. 

Andrew (21m 53s):

The other is selling mission critical software for large enterprises. Manages their accounts or something like that. And it has no debt. Now, when things get tough, I could probably say, well geez, that first one, it's going to see its revenue fall. It's going to see its profitability dive down lower. It's going to have to continue to service this debt. It might struggle to do that. It might need to raise more capital. If it can raise more capital and maybe to do that, it needs to do it at a highly discounted price. And therefore I suffer a lot of dilution. I mean, it's not going to be pretty. I'm not having to predict what's going to happen. Just what would happen. I can stress test this in advance. The other company. I bet you its share price goes down too during a correction, but it's got no debt. 

Andrew (22m 33s):

So there's nothing to worry about there. It's customers may be suffering during these tough economic times, but you just don't live without a core infrastructure as a business. Well, if you do live without it, it's because you don't exist anymore, right? You have to have it. So companies will slash a lot of unnecessary expenses, but they're not going to slash that. And so, as I say, both will suffer because when the market's scary, everything tends to go down. But I know that fundamentally, that second business is going to weather the storm so much better. And if I thought that through, I don't have to make a panicky decision now. I can understand that. In fact, I could probably be opportunistic and take the opportunity to buy more. If the market does freak, it's selling at like it is a highly leveraged hyper cyclical company, which it often does. 

Andrew (23m 17s):

Look at the recent Coronavirus crash of March last year, Pro Medicus, which we've talked about, Phil, got down to 15 bucks. And instead of like, well, I don't think they're going to suffer too (much). And obviously they didn't. And it's all about chance favouring the prepared mind, as they say. And doing this exercise is something that you want to do before the proverbial hits the fan, not after and not during. 

Phil (23m 40s):

And that's the other thing to consider as well as is what's on your wishlist? If you were going to get something at a crazy price, have that list prepared in advance. 

Andrew (23m 49s):

Absolutely. In fact, I think it's always a good idea to have a bit of a wishlist. You know, you've got very, very precious capital that you've worked very hard and saved for. You've got literally thousands and thousands of different companies out there. So often I'm asked about perfectly decent companies. And I say, "It's not a buy for me, I'm not interested." And it seems "Oh, you must be negative on the company, you don't think it's going to do that well." It's not really, that's not the question. The question is, "Is this the best risk adjusted opportunity for me?" So you're building a team of stars here. Who are you going to field on the team? And you only need 15, 20, which we've talked about before, 15, 20 different stocks to be very well diversified and get all the benefits of diversification. 

Andrew (24m 29s):

So what are the best 20 companies that you want to hold? Now unfortunately, there are companies out there that are far better than the ones I'm holding in my portfolio but I don't hold them because I feel as though the price is too excessive. But I've got that wishlist. And I've also got next to that, a price that I think is reasonable. Now, I don't know if and when the market will get there, but if it does, I've thought it through. And this is particularly relevant in a crash. Because you want to maintain that fussiness, you want to be hyper selective. Because everything is going to be cheap during a crash. So you don't just want to be buying anything you can. You want to be able to take the opportunity to buy up on the very best companies that you can. So again, have a plan. 

Andrew (25m 9s):

You know, what do they say? Fail to plan, plan to fail. You know what I'm saying? And this is again from that first point, think it through in advance. 

Phil (25m 16s):

Okay. So there's been a lot of changes with Strawman since the last time we've spoken. It's become a premium product. Tell us about how Strawman operates now. 

Andrew (25m 23s):

So it's still free. You can still sign up an account. You've got a play money portfolio of a hundred thousand straw dollars that you can buy shares with and track. So it's a really good way to practice. And in fact, keep a watch list of stocks. So you can add notes against your companies, you can put valuations, you can put alerts in. But now as a free member, you will be restricted on seeing what other people can do. So we made the transition to a private investment club. And we tried to be pretty restrictive on that. So we had north of 20,000 subscribers when we made the transition. And it was a difficult transition to make because we basically said, we're only accepting the, sort of the 3% of people who want to apply. 

Andrew (26m 6s):

So we've gone from that down to about 600 premium users now. But that closed inner-circle are our most serious, most engaged, most successful investors. And we wanted to keep it tight because one, we feel just it operates better as a smaller community, it's easier to collaborate. And it also means that we can pursue opportunities at the smaller end of town. Unfortunately, there's some great opportunities there, but they can be a little bit of liquid and they can be hard to build positions in. So we took this position of, look, let's get serious about this. The other alternative really was to go through a paid sponsorship model where we might be getting ads from investor relations companies and the rest. We want it to be really 100% focused on our users as well. So yeah, it was an unusual step. 

Andrew (26m 47s):

It was, in hindsight, the absolutely right one to make. And yeah, we're off to a great start. And essentially, yeah, it's a platform, but we're just an investment club. You know, every month we have an online meeting, we get a couple of CEOs, we interview them, we have a guest speaker, a fund manager, an expert investor, or so. And the platform is really our clubhouse where we share investment ideas, which we track everyone and we track the group as a whole, so far outperforming the market, which is really great. And yeah, it's all care, no responsibility. I want to put my ideas out there, I want people to challenge, as I said at the beginning, and hopefully help me become a better investor. Hopefully point some more ideas, or make me aware of new opportunities. And hopefully, ultimately lead to better returns for people who are sort of, I guess you'd call self-directed investors. 

Andrew (27m 29s):

People who want to make up their own minds. We're not here to tell you what to do. Let me make that clear. 

Phil (27m 38s):

That's right, we just want to test your ideas. So I just wanted to shout out at the moment to Canadian Aussie, who's currently number one and who's started, I hate saying investment journey, investment path. What's the best way? El Camino, the investment El Camino. This is Canadian Aussie, started with Shares for Beginners and now he's number one on Strawman. So yeah, we just wanted to say hi to Trevor. He's a great guy. And he's got some great views on investing and well-worth following on Twitter as well. 

Andrew (28m 6s):

I was just about to say absolutely well, he does a lot of great summaries of podcasts and books. So I find really valuable. But yeah, he's been with us for a while and look, Phil, as I say, we track returns for our members. Trevor's gotten, as I look now ,125.8% per annum since March of 2020 and 56% in the last three months alone. So he's done incredibly well. So that's helped his ranking on Strawman. But what's important for your rank is also the quality of content that you put out and how that gets endorsed by your peers on Strawman. So a lot of great research underpinning those stock picks as well. And yeah, that's why he's number one. 

Phil (28m 45s):

And his Twitter handle, from memory, is Martadura. 

Andrew (28m 48s):

Yes. M A T A D U R A, I believe. 

Phil (28m 53s):

Yeah. So we'll put that out there, Trevor. And interestingly enough, we were having a conversation because I guest that I had on recently, an American guy, talked about buying stock in a company that was bankrupt, was called Arctic Ice. And it just became this opportunity that was just obvious that even though it was bankrupt, it was going to be saved. There was going to be someone who was going to come in and put in the investment and it had plenty of underlying value in it and ended up being this guest's four bagger. But anyway, Trevor used to drive trucks for this company. It was a bankrupt ice company. 

Andrew (29m 27s):

Wow. There's so many fascinating opportunities out there and it always comes to the people, again, who are the most prepared, right? Who dig a little bit deeper, who have that, what they call variant perception. And that's where the money's made. 

Phil (29m 38s):

Andrew Page, thanks very much for joining me today. 

Andrew (29m 41s):

My pleasure, Phil, always fun to chat.

Andrew Page Investing Club

Shares for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Shares for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation