FidelityConnects: U.S. equities, uncovered: How Fidelity finds its best ideas
Stephen DuFour, Portfolio Manager, Fidelity U.S. Focused Stock Fund, provides his perspectives on U.S. equities and explains where he is finding high-conviction investment ideas for his concentrated fund.
Transcript
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<b>Subtitles are AI Generated</b>
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Hello, and welcome to Fidelity Connects. I'm Pamela Richie.
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The Magnificent 7 has played a major role in driving market returns.
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Rising spending on data centres, chips, energy,
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and infrastructure is creating new opportunities.
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Today's guest is looking beyond the AI winners to identify the
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next phase of beneficiaries across industrials, financial services,
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transportation, and others as well, other sectors as well.
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Portfolio manager of Fidelity US Focused Stock Fund Steve Dufour
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joins us here today.
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Despite the ongoing market noise Steve remains disciplined for his concentrated
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fund with a simple approach to own high quality businesses with
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durable earnings growth and let stock selection, not market forecasts,
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drive his investment philosophy.
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Warm welcome to Steve. Great to see you.
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Great. Thanks for having me, Pamela.
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Delighted to have you here today.
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So we kind of mentioned your style, lots of people familiar with your fund but
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it's a very interesting and new moment for any fund at this
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time in the market. You focus on growth, what's growth
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right now?
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Growth the last two years has been artificial
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intelligence.
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As the US market has been dealing with higher
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interest rates, which has kind of dampened a lot of cyclical
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industries, housing, trucking, RVs,
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boats, you name it, a new technology,
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artificial intelligence, has come about and they are spending, I
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used to say billions and I would probably move into trillions of
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dollars. Primarily, the first step was data centres to create a technology
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that people think is going to drastically change the way we do business
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in the US and around the world.
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That has been growth. That's changing a little bit right now
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so that makes the job a little more fun because I get to
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do work on other industries.
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We mentioned in the introduction there it's maybe the
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AI beneficiaries. Let's expand on that a little bit, what that means.
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Maybe there's an evolution to kind of guide us in how you're
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looking at things and where it's going now.
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Very, very simplistically, over the last kind of two and a half
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years started off with people who were making money
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building these first generation LLM models.
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A large language model
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is nothing more than data,
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some good chips, some power.
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We owned the chips, we owned the
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power and we owned the companies that cooled it, we owned the companies that
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have the backup power, we owned the whole stack of how we create a
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LLM. We transitioned over the last year to, all right,
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now these LLMs are working, who is benefiting from the LLMs being
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used and where these tokens are going, so
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connectivity between the data centres as well as the tokens need
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to be stored so it was in DRAM and NAND and
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in disk drives.
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That kind of was A to B and now I'm trying to
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go to C, which is find companies that are doing a good job of
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being early adopters of these models and using them
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not only to improve their cost structure but to grow their
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top line.
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As I look at the evolution of AI, and it's moving fast, I'm
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kind of going along the way because eventually, I
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know it's hard to believe, but we will have built most, if not all, the data
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centres that we really need.
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Then we will actually ... the usage will continue to
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grow but it won't grow at the same rate.
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The durable growth will be companies that get out in front,
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improve their profit margins as well as their products, and can
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grow for many, many years. That's kind of my evolution.
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When I put a slide together and I put the themes in the fund I put artificial
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intelligence but it's changing very rapidly
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the types of beneficiaries of AI as well as the companies.
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This is a fund, we've mentioned off the top it's concentrated so you don't have
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a lot of room for a lot of different stocks, a lot a different plays.
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Just tell us a little bit about, maybe generally about turnover and how you're
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choosing stocks for this fund but maybe just in light of what you've said
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how much that's had to change recently, if it has.
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It has had to change.
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I put constraints on myself because
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I know myself.
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I try and have 36 stocks.
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In order for a new name to come in the fund
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it's gotta be an attractive investment but it's got to be better than one of my
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current soccer players.
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If you want to hold up the board and put in player A and take out
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player B you had better be better player
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or have fresher legs or whatever the reason is you're changing, defence
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versus offence.
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That's that and I try and run with zero cash.
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I run with zero cash, 36 stocks, anytime
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something new shows up I can't buy it because I have no cash, I have
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to find something to come out.
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It makes me go through and say, let's go through the
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fund again and go down and say what is the upside, downside in that name
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versus the new name and let's keep changing.
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Given the earnings growth in
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the market right now it's very, very hard to keep a portfolio
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together that has strong relative
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earnings and attractive prices because the earnings growth is very, very
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high right now so if something's had one
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or good years of earnings growth but it's now starting to slow
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you probably have to say goodbye and move into something that's
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growing a little faster.
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We're really on the eve of some of the biggest tech names reporting
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so if this is replayed by people later on they'll know that we're speaking
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just before the second quarter earnings for the tech majors come out.
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Many of those, or some of those, are in your top 10 but as you're saying,
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you're moving into other places as well.
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Does that include a cyclical story?
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You mentioned higher interest rates off the top.
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Those are coming down, they have been coming down.
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Tell us a little bit about where you're playing within that cyclical story, if
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at all.
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A number of people on the call may have heard me talk about this before, I
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think I was talking about it in the early fall and heading into the thing is
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that one area has been trucking here
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in the US. It's hard to believe given the strength of the stock market
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but we've been in kind of a three to four year trucking depression.
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And so
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Why is that? Just over-inventoried through COVID,
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after COVID?
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COVID, the stores all wanted stuff.
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You had to deliver stuff. People bought trucks, blah, blah blah.
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You ended up with too many trucks and stuff like that.
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Now we've kind of worked our way down, the truck orders came
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down, and when you ask a question later, I'm assuming, about
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the Mag-7 this is kind of a different story.
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This group is lowering their CapEx and in a cyclical
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industry lower CapEx is Nirvana.
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We did a lot of work on trucking.
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I own a less than truckload carrier.
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I own a truck engine manufacturer.
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I own a full truck manufacturer.
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It's starting to show that they're both getting volume and,
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more importantly, they're getting pricing.
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Our LTL company we own has
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35% excess capacity.
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They have huge warehouses that are just waiting for
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volume to pick up. When the volume picks up you have huge incremental margins
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because the plant is already a fixed cost.
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It's a fun area and you're
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getting twice the market EPS growth
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at a below market multiple so it's exactly what I like
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to do. I like to let people know this is
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a company, a fund that follows strong earnings and attractive prices and
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you can have AI at the same time you have a Class
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8 truck manufacturer because it allows [indecipherable] we buy
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earnings. I don't care how you do your earnings, that's what we
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buy. The fund moves with
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the earnings.
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That's exactly what I was going to ask you. I was gonna say is trucking some of
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the cyclical story, the AI, sort of is it accretive in a company?
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Is that becoming more magnificent than the Magnificent Seven?
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I mean, the Magnificent 7 are still earning.
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Yes.
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Okay, the answer is yes. So there's got to be room in your...
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The problem with the Magnificent 7, and I own a number of them, I'm watching is
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their CapEx. Our largest position is Google and their CapEx
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in three, four, five years has gone from – and don't hold me to exact numbers
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– but roughly $35 billion a year in CapEx and
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now they're spending close to $200 billion.
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That's a big increase in CapEx.
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That's what the market
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is trying to digest, is this a one-time thing
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which, if it is, these companies are going to be great, or
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is this an ongoing need of CapEx which could be
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more difficult to their model and become ...
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they could be closer back to railroads versus high growth tech
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companies? That's why the market is very volatile right now because the
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market's trying to determine where these models are going
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three to five years from now, which is a very hard thing to do as we sit here
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reading the tea leaves.
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It is a difficult thing to do.
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With Fidelity you get incredible opportunities to meet with executives,
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CEOs, those running the companies.
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Even before the rest of the world hears forecasts from earnings calls
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you have a sense.
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Can you give any more context to whether this is a bit of a one-time
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thing that's been bitten off and that will end?
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I mean, what do you have in terms of the view there?
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My view is that this has been a technology
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that has been thrust ...
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that has emerged and grown faster than anything that anyone
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currently alive. I wasn't here when railroads were introduced or
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lighting or some of the other new technologies so I don't really know the
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growth rates that they had, but nothing we've ever seen is
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growing faster than this.
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It's very difficult.
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The market is gonna go through over exuberance
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and then under, whatever the under exuberance is or negativity,
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and then back. My belief, and I'm just following the
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number of tokens that are being generated and used, is we
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have a long, long, long way to go.
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I am an AI believer but there is going to be periods where
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the gets a little too exuberant
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and you just got to take the pull back.
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I see it
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with the companies I talk to, everyone is kind of trying out AI
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right now but no one has really fully jumped
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into the deep end of the pool.
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We're still very, very early.
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And with that bring us back to transportation and the discussion
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there. Trucking is a little bit of an anomaly within transportation
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but are there other areas of the industrials/transportation part
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that are of interest?
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We own Cummins Engine which is in our top 10.
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That one's just ...
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sometimes you get lucky versus smart.
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They have two businesses. One business is they're the largest manufacturer
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of class 8 engines in the world.
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That business has been awful and now is getting very good very
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fast. Their other business is they do backup power
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of data centres. For every data centre out
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there you need 1.2 times the
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electricity usage in backup power so that when something
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unforeseen happens the plant doesn't go down and all the chips melt
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and blah, blah, blah. That
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one, you get kind of get lucky. I've been investing in AI and
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I'm trying to get cyclicality in the fund and you have a stock that has a
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little bit of both.
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That's one area, would be backup power,
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is another great area.
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I think
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depending on what primary power
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source we eventually really lean on for all these data
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centres you're still always going to need backup power.
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Here in the US there's kind of only two or three different ways to
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do it and Cummins is one of the leaders in that.
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You must watch the power discussion with great interest.
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What do you see there as there are different types of power vying for
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being the next generation AI power source.
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At the moment it's a little bit of everything.
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How do you watch that?
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Just sort of share with us. I don't know if you're invested in it but watch it.
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We used to be in kind of stage one of AI.
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Some of our largest holdings were
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independent power producers which provide
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peak capacity to the regulated utilities here in
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the US. They have extra capacity that basically sits
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idle until a 110
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degree day in August and then they get paid 10X
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the value of what they have for usage of three days.
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The data centre people came around and said, ooh, you have all this extra
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capacity, we would like to buy it for our data centres.
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That is an area that we owned and we did
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but I kind of moved on from that.
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I do follow ...
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as in this fund I think there's going to be
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a day when we're going to own small nuclear providers
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for these data centres but right now they don't
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have a product that works, they don't have earnings.
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I wait till the
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earnings. It's kind of like in technology I think quantum computing,
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and I've done way too much work on quantum computing, is going to be just
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fantastic but there is no way to buy a company that actually
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earns any money.
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When you have 36 stocks we try, as you've talked
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with me in the past about the fairway, I try and have all these
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gates so that we crush it in the upside but in
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the downside we don't get crushed.
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You stay away from companies that are overlevered, you stay away from companies
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that don't earn money. Those are designed for
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the downside not for the upside because
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there are times when those companies will do better than what I own but
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I know that over a cycle we will do better with what we
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do own.
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Yeah, that's fascinating.
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Outside some of the areas are there beneficiaries across other sectors that are
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of interest? I know over the course of many years you certainly follow
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the healthcare industry very carefully, don't know if this is a moment for it
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but tell us a little bit about that. You've got one in your top 10, certainly.
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Eli Lilly, it
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was great, then it was mediocre, actually poor,
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now it's kind of good again.
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Eli Lilly was supposed to be so easy. It's a duopoly in
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the GLP-1 industry.
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Basically, they were in the diabetes business and
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someone realized that some of the diabetes products were resulting in weight
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loss. They then isolated it and found that they
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could create a product that they could use for weight loss.
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Their main competitor over the years in diabetes has been Novo Nordisk
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and the two of them, kind of like LLMs, each
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would then put out a new product and say their new product was better than the
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next one, and they leapfrogged each other and it's a little more.
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The next thing that happened is Eli Lilly got too far ahead
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so Novo Nordisk decided to go with pricing because
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they didn't have a good product so they cut price.
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That was harmful to Lily.
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But now the products continue to get more ...
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now people are leaning toward Lily products because
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they're so further ahead. I think it's very early on.
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Proving that weight loss helps with a lot of
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things, sleep apnea, joints,
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a whole bunch of things are very helped by weight loss.
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Right now we're only getting
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coded through the insurance for weight loss, and
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severe weight loss not for ...
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it's too expensive for that but the outlook is very, very good.
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It's an interesting, I mean, they often were called evergreen
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for different reasons because you're always gonna need healthcare.
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They're always often gonna be in that area.
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Now with different types of drug companies, and again, I'm speaking more
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broadly, the idea of healthcare companies being AI beneficiaries
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has really taken root. It's incredible, we think, what on the
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research side can be done on many areas of that.
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Do you see that bit yet as being very compelling and the reason for
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it, or not yet?
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Not too compelling. I was the
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energy sector leader here in 1996
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and we were very excited when they went from vertical
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to horizontal drilling.
20:05.237 --> 20:09.241
It was a new technology and it was going to bring
20:09.241 --> 20:13.178
on more resources. You know what, it did, and resulted in
20:13.178 --> 20:16.648
lower oil and natural gas prices.
20:16.648 --> 20:20.953
So sometimes new technologies to industries, particularly if
20:20.953 --> 20:25.424
you can create drugs faster and better and
20:25.424 --> 20:29.828
everyone can do it then you have too many drugs too fast.
20:29.828 --> 20:32.598
I have not bought into that.
20:32.598 --> 20:36.335
I am not investing in the fund based on the industries could be able to get
20:36.335 --> 20:40.372
their drugs faster or more effective because
20:40.372 --> 20:44.910
I think if they do I think they actually will be too many of them.
20:44.910 --> 20:51.250
I'm interested in healthcare because a number of the healthcare providers
20:51.250 --> 20:55.487
have very, very low operating margins and
20:55.487 --> 20:59.891
are very good candidates for the use of AI to
20:59.891 --> 21:04.630
get rid of paper processes,
21:04.630 --> 21:05.631
all the bad Ps.
21:06.531 --> 21:10.535
All the bad Ps will be able to get
21:10.535 --> 21:14.806
away of ... you can go from a company with a very low operating margin to a
21:14.806 --> 21:19.378
medium operating margin
21:19.378 --> 21:23.915
by basically giving approval for procedures,
21:23.915 --> 21:28.153
for everything can be done. The first wave can be done through AI and
21:28.153 --> 21:33.058
then the tougher decisions can be given to a person to look at.
21:33.058 --> 21:37.996
There's a lot of these processes that are going to be very
21:37.996 --> 21:41.600
helped out with AI.
21:41.600 --> 21:45.804
That's what I'm more interested in, as well as companies that are changing kind
21:45.804 --> 21:49.741
of their nature either through a new product here, kind of
21:49.741 --> 21:52.544
like Lily did with GLP-1s, and stuff like that.
21:52.544 --> 21:56.782
I'm not investing whole hog yet into how
21:56.782 --> 21:58.917
they're going to use AI technology.
21:58.917 --> 22:02.054
I think they will and I think it will change things but I'm just not convinced
22:02.054 --> 22:07.192
it will be good for the stocks.
22:07.192 --> 22:11.263
What you mentioned there, I mean, it goes across financials,
22:11.263 --> 22:15.033
it goes across anything with back office, essentially.
22:15.033 --> 22:17.069
That can go across many sectors.
22:17.069 --> 22:23.241
Correct. As well, what you want is low margins.
22:23.241 --> 22:27.179
If you have a company that has 80% operating margins there's just not
22:27.179 --> 22:30.282
a lot to throw the AI at.
22:30.282 --> 22:36.355
You want to throw the AI in a huge pile.
22:36.355 --> 22:40.258
It goes against pretty much everything I've been taught about stocks where we
22:40.258 --> 22:41.026
want great margins and...
22:41.026 --> 22:45.297
That's really interesting. It is kind of, yeah, it's counterintuitive
22:45.297 --> 22:46.131
to the way you think.
22:46.131 --> 22:46.198
Yes.
22:46.198 --> 22:50.535
Take
22:50.535 --> 22:54.706
us through a little bit about where
22:54.706 --> 22:56.975
that comes into ... is insurance of interest?
22:56.975 --> 22:57.142
I mean, there have to be places--
22:57.142 --> 22:58.110
Oh.
22:58.110 --> 22:59.544
--for it still to work--
22:59.544 --> 22:59.578
Oh.
22:59.578 --> 23:04.916
--not just health insurance but
23:04.916 --> 23:04.950
— I'm getting a yes.
23:04.950 --> 23:09.621
Is that a particular place where you're holding stocks that are insurers?
23:09.621 --> 23:13.658
We have stock. Talked to one real large insurance company
23:13.658 --> 23:19.197
and they explained through the entire process, he was saying
23:19.197 --> 23:23.435
that there was a hotel company that they ensure all
23:23.435 --> 23:27.439
their hotels around the world. The process to get the new bid
23:27.439 --> 23:31.977
for covering all these hotels around the world takes months because
23:31.977 --> 23:36.014
each hotel has three feet of data on when the
23:36.014 --> 23:38.884
roof is and blah, blah, blah, it all has to be thing.
23:38.884 --> 23:43.121
Then the insurance company has to say, okay, we will ensure your 350 hotels
23:43.121 --> 23:46.425
around the world for X.
23:46.425 --> 23:50.495
The process of going through the data and seeing
23:50.495 --> 23:55.000
if there's been a change year-to-year at blah, blah, is cutting
23:55.000 --> 23:59.171
zillions of hours out of the process and they're able to make their
23:59.171 --> 24:03.175
bids crisper which is allowing them to keep their business
24:03.175 --> 24:06.211
from being moving to another company.
24:06.211 --> 24:10.148
Not only does it take costs out, it actually helps the top line.
24:10.148 --> 24:13.585
That is just one example.
24:13.585 --> 24:17.756
These companies, some of these companies it's just paper
24:17.756 --> 24:22.260
process. All this stuff takes
24:22.260 --> 24:27.065
zions of hours that can be done really, really quick.
24:27.065 --> 24:31.203
It sounds great. I mean, who wants to be stuck processing all that kind of
24:31.203 --> 24:35.273
stuff? Is it a one time, and I don't mean by tomorrow, but I mean
24:35.273 --> 24:39.578
once they get the process, for instance, an insurer who's
24:39.578 --> 24:43.748
taking a look at hotels across the globe, once they get that in and
24:43.748 --> 24:47.886
sorted and get the companies that they're insuring on that
24:47.886 --> 24:51.857
track then what?
24:51.857 --> 24:54.192
That's a good question.
24:54.192 --> 24:57.028
I think it's probably three to five years.
24:57.028 --> 25:00.966
I think you're right, in three to five years I've got to say then what? Right
25:00.966 --> 25:06.471
now it's not just the process of getting
25:06.471 --> 25:10.408
the better process and the price, got to then remember you don't want to
25:10.408 --> 25:15.480
underwrite bad insurance. If you can reduce your losses
25:15.480 --> 25:19.150
... going back and looking through and understanding what we should not do.
25:19.150 --> 25:23.889
You know what, we really shouldn't do Florida
25:23.889 --> 25:26.458
hurricane insurance in this thing.
25:26.458 --> 25:30.495
People think you shouldn't do this zone of
25:30.495 --> 25:33.999
Florida but actually that's the zone you should be in.
25:33.999 --> 25:37.936
They're able to process data so much, I think it's
25:37.936 --> 25:42.040
gonna be ... you're 100% correct that probably three, five and maybe
25:42.040 --> 25:44.776
seven years it's all been a thing but that's a long time.
25:44.776 --> 25:48.713
I won't even be there in three, five, I will be on
25:48.713 --> 25:52.684
to a new group. They have
25:52.684 --> 25:55.820
a lot of runway ahead of them, a lot.
25:55.820 --> 26:00.158
There's a lot of industries, hospitals, healthcare insurance,
26:00.158 --> 26:04.396
regular insurance, all these things where it's just ...
26:04.396 --> 26:05.397
LTL truckers.
26:06.264 --> 26:10.435
How do we deliver the goods,
26:10.435 --> 26:12.237
blah, blah, like this?
26:12.237 --> 26:14.306
There is so much stuff that is being ...
26:14.306 --> 26:18.243
they're taking just little 1 and 2 percentile but but when you have
26:18.243 --> 26:22.347
a business that has 5% and 6% margins, 1 and 2% is
26:22.347 --> 26:24.182
30, 40% increase.
26:24.182 --> 26:25.183
That's incredible.
26:25.984 --> 26:28.987
There's a question coming in that fits into some of the things that you're
26:28.987 --> 26:33.158
talking about, the disruption, the ability on the other side of disruption.
26:33.158 --> 26:36.595
What is your position, Steve, on software stocks?
26:36.595 --> 26:40.165
I mean, we certainly saw them get absolutely clobbered.
26:40.165 --> 26:42.901
Is there any interest in dipping a toe back in?
26:42.901 --> 26:46.905
You're saying, no, no, zero because you want to
26:46.905 --> 26:49.774
wait and see where those chips fall.
26:49.774 --> 26:53.812
Two things, one is they have very, very high margins, which I'm avoiding
26:53.812 --> 26:55.814
high margins right now.
26:55.814 --> 27:00.018
Two, in this new world
27:00.018 --> 27:03.955
of AI there's no reason for me ...
27:03.955 --> 27:07.926
only 36 stocks, I don't really need to go and take the other side
27:07.926 --> 27:11.529
of a losing argument right now and say, you know what, I think they're being
27:11.529 --> 27:15.634
punished. They probably are over punished, and they probably could recover
27:15.634 --> 27:19.704
in three to five years, but I think their economists
27:19.704 --> 27:22.173
go down and then back up and they're probably ...
27:22.173 --> 27:24.509
it's great for a value investor, a turnaround.
27:24.509 --> 27:28.046
I think if you own a basket of them you'll probably do great.
27:28.046 --> 27:29.814
But as you said, I got to pick one.
27:29.814 --> 27:33.952
Pick one of these companies that's being disrupted and
27:33.952 --> 27:37.589
get it right and blah, blah, blah, and it's not worth it.
27:37.589 --> 27:42.794
I play the AI theme
27:42.794 --> 27:46.798
with better companies. I'm not saying that they're ...
27:46.798 --> 27:50.735
they're probably a good part of a value, some type of other thing,
27:50.735 --> 27:55.573
but people don't invest in my fund to pick turnaround names
27:55.607 --> 27:59.811
that could be three to five years because I don't have the patience.
27:59.811 --> 28:03.948
Okay, fair enough. Just round that out as we close out
28:03.948 --> 28:06.384
here with why this particular type of fund.
28:06.384 --> 28:10.388
While you're watching markets get thrown all over the place a little bit
28:10.388 --> 28:14.693
on the CapEx story, I mean, on a few other stories as well
28:14.693 --> 28:18.430
within there, why do you want to own a very concentrated US stock fund right
28:18.430 --> 28:21.266
now?
28:21.266 --> 28:26.438
I think you'd want to own a concentrated stock fund because there are a lot of
28:26.438 --> 28:30.475
potholes on the road, and sometimes this market just
28:30.475 --> 28:34.579
kind of runs with a theme too far and you need
28:34.579 --> 28:38.917
to make sure you keep in mind not only growth but
28:38.917 --> 28:40.885
at a reasonable price.
28:40.885 --> 28:45.090
I think if you do those two things it excludes a lot of stuff that could really
28:45.090 --> 28:46.091
hurt you on the downside.
28:47.058 --> 28:51.162
If I stick to what I say I do I'm giving you
28:51.162 --> 28:53.965
growth but I'm also ...
28:53.965 --> 28:57.936
as I tell people at presentations, number one job for Steve every day is
28:57.936 --> 28:58.937
stay employed.
28:59.938 --> 29:03.975
As I look to stay employed for another 20 years I try
29:03.975 --> 29:07.278
to make sure that I don't own things that are toxic.
29:07.278 --> 29:11.249
I think when you buy a big basket of things I think you're buying
29:11.249 --> 29:15.854
some toxicity that I think I do a good job of keeping out of your portfolio.
29:15.854 --> 29:17.689
Fantastic. That's a great message.
29:17.689 --> 29:19.657
Steve, thank you very much for joining us.
29:19.657 --> 29:23.194
It's great to see you again and have a good summer.
29:23.194 --> 29:24.229
Thank you, Pamela. Good to see you too.
29:25.130 --> 29:27.198
Thanks for watching or listening to
29:27.232 --> 29:29.434
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