Podcast #51 – Digital payments with Jonathan Rowland
The use of digital payments is expanding across the globe, but the transition to a digital financial system is still in its early stages. Fintech companies are receiving heavy investment, as agile companies find new ways to innovate in the payment space.
In this week’s pod, we’re delighted to be joined by Jonathan Rowland, founder and executive chairman of Mode, to give us an inside view on the rise of digital wallets, and the convergence of Open Banking and cryptocurrency in retail.
Podcast #50 – Financial education for your children
Back in episode #12 of the podcast, we talked about investing for your children. At some point, your children will leave the nest and take control of their own finances, and we believe that financial education early in life is a big advantage in navigating the world of money and investing! This week on the podcast, we’re joined by our good friend, Duniya, to talk about how parents can prepare their children to manage their finances responsibly and successfully.
Podcast #49 – CrowdStrike deep dive
This week, we deep dive another stock in our 2021 model portfolio, CrowdStrike. It seems that hacking is constantly in the news with disturbing reports of spyware infiltrating our devices and ransomware attacks against government agencies, corporations, and public services. CrowdStrike aims to protect these systems from hackers with an advanced cybersecurity platform powered by artificial intelligence and modern security foundations.
Podcast #48 – Bad advice!
Bad advice is all around us, financial or otherwise, and it is sometimes difficult to separate the good advice from the bad. We asked our listeners about the bad financial advice they’ve heard or seen, and in the pod this week, we discuss some of the doozies we received. Some anecdotes are relatively trivial, but some are more serious with potentially ruinous consequences. We look at them from both sides and see if there is anything we can learn from them. We also have a couple of gambling stories because that’s just fun!
Podcast #47 – Integral Ad Science deep dive
An early pioneer in advertising, John Wanamaker once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” In today’s world of digital and programmatic advertising, content is created at a rapid and growing pace, driven in large part by the exponential growth of social media and video, adding new dimensions to trust in the marketing world. Advertisers are increasingly focused on brand reputation and they want to ensure that their ads appear in contexts that match their values, and also that they’re seen by eyeballs and not algorithms!
On this week’s pod, we deep-dive another potential hypergrowth stock, Integral Ad Science (IAS), one of the emerging leaders in ad viewability, ad fraud, and ad safety and suitability.
Podcast #46 – Model portfolio Q2 review
It’s time for the half-year review of our model portfolio, a collection of 15 stocks that we selected in January as our core investments for 2021. The sell-off in growth stocks earlier this year made for grim reading at the end of Q1, but many of these stocks have rebounded – ten of the stocks in the model portfolio are now up from our start date, with nine of them beating the market (S&P 500).
Unfortunately, a couple of big losers are dragging down the overall return. While it’s probably too early to declare that “growth is back!”, our portfolio performance at the end of Q2 is much closer to the benchmark of the S&P 500 index. In this episode, we dig into some of the key stories and updates from the portfolio.
Podcast #45 – DocuSign deep dive
The world is moving to the “anywhere economy” where workers have the option to do anything from anywhere, and a key capability enabling this megatrend is the use of digital agreements and e-signatures. This week, we deep dive into DocuSign. Already the global leader in e-signatures, DocuSign are expanding their capabilities to support the entire life cycle of a digital agreement with their ‘Agreement Cloud’ suite of services.
Podcast #44 – Live long and prosper
On this week’s pod, we discuss the megatrend of an ageing population and some of the investing opportunities (and risks) this trend creates in society
Podcast #43 – Dear diary
Just over a year ago, when the coronavirus pandemic was beginning, we both started investing journals, to capture our thoughts about life, and the investment opportunities presented by the rapidly changing environment.
In this week’s pod, we revisit some of our journal entries from that period of wild volatility and uncertainty. We saw early signs of the types of businesses that would benefit from stay-at-home orders, and we make some predictions and some investments based on our forecasts of how the business landscape would be impacted. It’s now one year later, so how did we do?
Podcast #42 – Trupanion deep dive
On this week’s pod, Luke & Albert take a look at another hypergrowth investment opportunity, the US pet insurance company, Trupanion.
Trupanion is North America’s largest publicly traded provider of pet insurance. It has focused exclusively on pets during its two-decade operating history, and currently insures over 940,000 cats and dogs in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Puerto Rico.