Happy holiday wishes to all of our listeners and subscribers! This week, we’re kicking back from the serious stock analysis and just having a bit of Christmas fun as we look back at some of the highs and lows of 2021. We reflect on our favourite moments on the pod, some of the smartest (and daftest!) things we’ve said, and chat about our favourite episodes and guest interviews. We also hazard making a couple of wild predictions for 2022!
It’s been a great year for Telescope Investing, in no small part due to the listener support and questions we’ve had along the way. Thanks so much for being part of the journey!!
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the Telescope Investing podcast at Spotify, or on your podcast platform of choice
Transcript
Albert: Hi, this is Albert.
Luke: And this is Luke.
Albert: Today is Monday the 20th of December.
Luke: Welcome to the Telescope Investing podcast.
Intro
Albert: It’s Christmas! So we’re taking a break from the usual stock analysis and instead, we’re going to have a bit of fun and reflect on the past year of Telescope Investing.
Luke: Happy Christmas, Albert, and happy Christmas to all of our subscribers. Yeah, today’s not going to be a very serious chat. We’re going to look back, have a bit of a laugh and reflect on 2021, the highs and the lows, and remind ourselves about some of the key moments on the podcast.
Albert: Yeah, it’s been our first full year of Telescope Investing.
Luke: And it’s been a wild year for the model portfolio. I think we’re going to save a full review of that for next week. Try and put the doom and gloom off by an extra week, but this week we’re going to try and have fun.
Albert: So how’s your Christmas going, Luke?
Luke: Pretty good, actually. So regular listeners will know Katrina and I are in Costa Rica vacationing. So we’re still here, about a week into our vacation. We’re due to fly home to London on the 2nd of January, but I’ve got to be honest, we are thinking about extending through till start of February. Basically, 11 separate friends in London have all got COVID right now. No joke. It’s ridiculous.
Albert: Wow, I didn’t know that.
Luke: Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Nobody you know, I don’t think, but yeah, a ton of our friends. And so crikey, just want to avoid the chaos to be honest. And London looks like, well, England looks like it’s going to go back into lockdown. Boris seems to be putting it off pre-Christmas but it’s going to happen soon afterwards, I think. And interestingly, and these are probably wildly inaccurate because of the different testing regimes, but would you believe the entire country of Costa Rica currently has six times fewer cases of COVID than my London borough? Basically my neighbourhood. Not talking about London. I’m talking about my neighbourhood in London. So it’s not an environment we’re keen to go back to, but let’s see if we can figure that out. Anyway, how’s Hong Kong Christmas playing out?
Albert: Yeah, while you’re sunning in Costa Rica, I’m stuck in Hong Kong and it’s okay, it’s fine. The trees up at least but we’re just seeing friends and having fun. Actually, I spent most of the day playing mahjong with my friends and I just want to give a shout out to my friends, Karen, Anna, and Derek for cleaning me out and now I have a little less money to invest in the stock market, so thanks, guys.
Luke: Well, at least you filled their Christmas stockings with your investing gains.
Albert: Yeah, they were very pleased to take my money.
Luke: Very good. Santa came early with a little gift for them. Actually. I’ve got what I hope is a spectacular gift for my brother, Matt. I’m really hoping it makes its way to his door before Christmas day, so fingers crossed on that one.
Albert: This episode comes out before Christmas so don’t reveal the surprise on the show.
Luke: I shall not.
Albert: So Luke, so we start by just having a general observation of how the year went, how 2021 went for the stock market and also the performance of our own model portfolio?
Luke: Yeah, good shout. It’s been a wild year, hasn’t it? Lots of ups and downs and ups and downs again.
Albert: Yeah, when you look at the graph for the S&P 500 over the past year, it’s more or less a line from the bottom-left to the top-right, and year-to-date it’s up almost 25%. But for growth investors, it’s been a roller coaster of a year and our own model portfolio, which is made up of mostly growth stocks, has been up and down like a yo-yo.
Luke: As have our own personal portfolios. You’re right, my performance versus the S&P does look exactly like a roller coaster and we’re currently with our hands in the air, screaming on the way down the slope.
Albert: I don’t know if you remember, Luke, but at the start of the year, the model portfolio sped out the gate and was up 24% by mid-February and then the first of many corrections happened and it was down 17% by mid-May. But then it started to climb and it was actually up 20% by mid-September, but then a few weeks ago, the stock market took a tumble, at least growth stocks did, and the model portfolio is in the hole again and is currently down 14% for the year.
Luke: Albert, we said we were going to do a jolly episode and we’re going to save all that news for next week. You are giving a preview as to the horror to come, but I don’t any different to any other growth investor. This is the nature of the market, but let’s not get hung up on that. What’s happened for you this year. How has your life changed in 2021?
Albert: Well, I guess one thing I did was complete my food and nutrition degree, and I got notified a few weeks ago that I passed. So woohoo!
Luke: Great. Very good. Did you get a result? Do you get like, honours and distinctions and things? What happened?
Albert: Well, it’s a degree so I got a first-class in food and nutrition.
Luke: Very good. Wow. You get extra letters after your name. Is it like BA hot dog?
Albert: I don’t think I get extra letters, but all in all, the whole course from start to finish, it took me about four years. And the last time I had to study like this was over 25 years ago when I was at university. I have to say it was tough. I guess it’s like getting in shape when you’re 50 versus when you’re 25. It’s possible, it’s just a lot harder.
Luke: I got a tiny taste of it myself in 2021, but not remotely comparable to your four-year degree. I did my grade five music theory exam. So been learning to play the piano for about two years now. It was kind of a lockdown thing. And I thought I’d do a theory exam just to get the understanding up the curve. So I thought I’d jump straight to grade five and it was good actually. I got a lot out of it, but studying for a couple of weeks to really get my head around some of the concepts gave me a bit of a reminder of what it was like in those frightening days in the third year of university, when I’ve been drinking and partying far too hard, and hadn’t been studying enough and exam deadline was impending.
Albert: Yeah, when I started doing exams again, I did get a little bit anxious, but I have to say, I really enjoyed the journey though. And it’s strange when the course finally ended and there were no more assignments or exams, I kind of felt something was missing and I suddenly had all this free time, but I think I’ll give studying a break for a while
Luke: Yeah, good shout. And you’ve got a bunch of learnings that you’ll lose quickly if you don’t use it. So you definitely need to start looking at at least some nutrition investments to exercise those intellectual muscles.
Albert: What about you? What’s happened to you this year?
Luke: Yeah, I suppose a massive life change, right? I retired and now I’m a digital nomad, I think is what the kids call it. So I’m travelling the world, hopefully with the laptop and the microphone, and having fun and continuing to focus on investing and researching companies and stocks. That’s really my lifelong passion. So now I can do it at my own leisure as opposed to squeezing it around the humdrum nine to five of a regular job.
Albert: But you’ve already been retired for about two months now, or even less than that. Do you actually feel different being retired now?
Luke: No, I feel like I’m still working very hard. It is shocking how much time we put into the podcast and managing our own portfolios. So I wouldn’t say I’m feeling stressed out, but I would say I’m feeling busy as hell, and I’m certainly getting some side-eye from Katrina when I’m staring at quarterly reports on the laptop rather than doing holiday stuff.
Guest interviews
Albert: Yeah, it’s be a great year for the podcast, Luke, and one reason for that is that we had some great guests on the show. We started doing interviews earlier this year, starting with Zippy Capital, and since then we’ve had quite a number of guests, and I’d just like to give a shout out to all of them on the podcast right now.
So we had Zippy Capital at the start of the year, and then our friend Duniya joined us on the show to talk about educating your children about personal finance. And then from then, we are Jonathan Rowland, the founder of Mode, Paul Ruppert to talk about cloud communications, Adu Subramanian to talk about Intuitive Surgical, Ronald Wong to talk about financial well-being, Prantik Mazumdar to talk about venture capital, Simon Erickson, the founder of 7Investing, came on to talk about investing in disruptive innovation, and then our friend Renee Conklin joined us to talk about company culture, and finally, Richard Chu joined us a few weeks ago, to talk about health care and health tech.
Luke: And we also caught up with one of my buddies, Karle Kane. He gave us great insights on Unity for our deep dive on that company. And you shouldn’t also forget our junior analysts, Zen and Grace who guested on two episodes.
Albert: I have not forgotten them, Luke. I have a note here to say note big thank you to both Zen and Grace.
Luke: Yeah. That Zen, he came on, helped with our deep dive into CuriosityStream, encouraged us to buy it, and now it’s our worst-performing hyper-growth stock.
Albert: Come on, Luke. That’s really unfair to blame Zen for our own poor decisions.
Luke: But putting that poor decision aside, there are some super smart analysts out there, and I was really glad we had a chance to connect with a couple of them. And actually in some cases, give them a chance to grow beyond their written analysis, their Substacks and their blogs.
What have we learned in our first full year?
Albert: Yeah, these are the episodes that I relisten to the most, as they’re the ones that I think I learn the most from. But what do you think you’ve learned most from doing the podcast?
Luke: I suppose, it’s a stupid thing, but something I’m definitely conscious of now is filler words, ums and ahs and you knows, and even in normal conversation, they’re suddenly hurting my ears when I hear them coming out of my own mouth, which I’m still finding impossible to stop.
Albert: Yeah, you don’t notice it when you speak, but when you listen during the editing, they really stand out.
Luke: I suppose the other thing as well is I’ve learned that running a podcast is actually quite hard. I don’t know about you, I’m spending something like 20 hours a week in research and then post-production, that edit is difficult. It’s basically a part-time job.
Albert: We did on those separately to answer these questions and I also put down that learned that recording a weekly podcast is a ton of work. We’re quite a small operation, Luke. It’s just the two of us, and we do our own research, writing, editing, and publishing. And same as you, I’d say on average, I’m spending about half the week doing stuff for Telescope.
Luke: We’re not paid to do this job, Albert, but we do get the intrinsic value of having to be much more transparent and objective with our analysis and our investment decisions. And that is going to pay us off in the long run.
Albert: Yeah, I’d rather get paid though!
Luke: You know, some weird thing I’ve learned that I might bear in mind if we ever launch a podcast again in the future. And it’s that when we hit a magical 52 episodes, suddenly I started getting inundated with emails from potential guests asking to come on the show and I’m not convinced many of them really listened to those 50-odd episodes. I think they just filter in their podcast platforms for content and so maybe a growth hack would be to fake 52 episodes and start your new podcast with episode 53.
Albert: Do you think they’re just waiting for podcasts to stay around for a year and then they know you’re probably here to stay and they contact you?
Luke: Yeah, maybe. There’s seems to be a whole industry around connecting podcasts and guests.
Albert: Doing this weekly podcast is a ton of work and I can’t imagine doing it any more often, and one of the podcasts that I listen to, it’s called Snacks Daily, and it’s a podcast by Nick Martel and Jack Kramer. And they’re currently taking a two-week break for Christmas, but they do a daily podcast of 20 to 30 minutes. I suppose they’d been doing it for a couple of years and they have their routine, but I can’t imagine doing that every single day.
Luke: Yeah, hard work. As you say, they’ve got a team around them doing the edit, hopefully surfacing some research for them, but they did a behind the scenes video episode once, and I found that fascinating just to see what their process looked like.
Albert: Yeah, I saw the same thing on YouTube. It’s definitely worth a watch for anybody starting out on a podcast.
Luke: So, what else did you learn from doing the pod this year, Alb?
Albert: Well, one of my goals with Telescope Investing was to become a better investor and having to record a podcast really pushed us to do the research at a much deeper level than we did previously. And I guess the more you know, hopefully, your decisions to buy or sell are more informed and have a higher chance of being correct. But there’s only so much you can do by yourself, and there’s a whole community doing research that you can learn from. And I joined Twitter quite late. I only joined late last year and I think you told me about it. I was a bit sceptical, but I was really surprised by FinTwit, the community on Twitter that talk about personal finance and investing, and there’s some really smart people out there sharing information on Twitter. Yes, there’s still a lot of crap and trolling going on, but overall it’s an extremely valuable resource.
Luke: Yeah, totally agree, it’s great. I joined Twitter in March 2008 and I remember thinking even that was probably a little bit late, took me a while to get my head around it, but I’ve just been a consumer as opposed to a producer really for my first 10 or so years. And we’re definitely trying to contribute now. Give back a little bit to the FinTwit community, having got so much fantastic analysis over the years.
Just before we move on, one other thing I’ve learned as well, perhaps, as I looked back through all of our episodes this year to prepare for today’s episode, was maybe to not take too hard a line on any topic. I think everything is grey and maybe I’ve been a little too anti-Buy Now, Pay Later just on general principles to date. And I think I’m going to try and put some of those feelings aside and understand what it is about the business model of companies like Upstart that other analysts find so appealing.
Albert: Well, it’s funny you mention Buy Now, Pay Later, because I remember reading two reports. . I can’t remember the details exactly, but I think one said that the volume of Buy Now, Pay Later has exploded in the last year, especially over the recent Thanksgiving sales. But then again, I read another report that said for Affirm, that does Buy Now Pay Later, a large number of their customers have already defaulted on their loans.
Luke: Well, let’s see, I was very firmly in the camp of this is a bad industry encouraging reckless spending and that might still be the case, but it’s probably very grey and I think I need to perhaps, see past my personal principles a little bit and try and understand whether objectively these companies are good or bad investments.
Worst and best episodes
Albert: What do you think has been our worst and best episodes this year, Luke?
Luke: I suppose we should call out the infamous video episode where we recorded the entire episode and your toilet door was open and the loo in full view over your left shoulder, that’s probably our worst output.
Albert: That’s cheating, Luke. That wasn’t this year, that was last year.
Luke: Okay, I’ll tell you what, probably the worst episode was one we didn’t do. So do you remember, we both planned to review Terry Smith’s book Investing for Growth on the podcast? And we both bought a copy. I think even Duniya brought a copy and we banged our heads against it for a month and then we threw in the towel and we didn’t do the episode.
Albert: Yeah, I didn’t get past chapter three.
Luke: Yeah, I’ve actually brought it with me on vacation and I think I’ve read maybe 10 pages at the pool and then gone ugh, this is just so repetitive. Terry, I apologize if you ever hear this in the future, it’s actually a good book and you’re a super-smart guy and there is a ton of wisdom in there, but when I’m reading the same thing for the third time in consecutive chapters, I think the anthology aspect has done me in.
Albert: Yeah, I agree, Luke. I couldn’t get through it.
Luke: What do you have down as our best or worst episode, Albert?
Albert: When I look back, I think the run or three back-to-back interviews back in September, where we interviewed Prantik Mazumdar, Simon Erickson, and Renee Conklin over three weeks were some of our best episodes. But the reason is not really us, it’s them sharing their expertise for our listeners.
But as for the episodes that we did just between the two of us, I think episode 26: the Telescope Investing Principles stands out and is often the one I recommend to friends. And the reason for that is that episode really made us think about how we invest and then formalize it into a set of principles. Our investment style is going to constantly evolve and our investment abilities are hopefully improving over time, but I think these principles should continue to apply and keep us from blowing up, as they say.
Luke: Yeah, totally agree. That’s also the one I share whenever someone asks me about the podcast. It’s a good start here. And I think even that is good distilled wisdom that we’ve taken from many, many other sources. It’s just how we’ve kind of pulled it together into the Telescope framework.
Albert: Yeah, and two other episodes that were related to these principles were episode 24: risky investments and also episode 30: what we’ve don’t invest in. I think these episodes combined really outline our approach to investing.
Luke: Yeah, agree. Agree they’re good. I had to re-read the show notes for what we don’t invest in. I’ve got to be honest, now that I don’t have my company compliance rules hanging over my shoulder, I’m slightly tempted to start playing around with options. Am I allowed to say that?
Albert: No, Luke. I think you actually said on the podcast that you’re going to use me as your compliance department
Luke: Are you banning me from using derivatives?
Albert: I will reject all requests to invest in options.
Luke: Okay. Hold me to that then because I’m definitely tempted.
Albert: Just go down the bookies and put a bet on the horses.
Luke: Well, actually in Costa Rica, I managed to find a poker game the last two nights and I was a little bit drunk when I dropped in on Saturday night and I think I played reasonably well, but I lost a ton of cash. And so, yesterday evening, the poker room messaged me and said, oh, Luke, there was a seat open if you’d like to join it. I think that is definitely a sign that they think you’re a fish.
Albert: Was that message sent by the other players?
Luke: Yeah, it may have asked for it. But I drove down, drank coffee and sparkling water, and got the majority of my Saturday night money back so maybe they regret sending that message.
Albert: I think you usually play poker slightly drunk so nothing unusual there.
Luke: I do almost everything slightly drunk, Albert! It is the Christmas season. Actually, I’ll be honest, we did talk about perhaps one of us being a little bit tipsy because it will be the end of the day, depending on what time we recorded, but we’ve decided not to do that. I’m actually feeling super-opposite of that because you delayed us by an hour so I managed to get a quick run in before we started the recording.
Albert: Oh, good stuff, Luke.
Luke: So what do you think was the worst episode that we recorded this year?
Albert: I think the worst episode that we did, I would say was probably episode 39: stock therapy, in which we’ve talked about the crash in growth stocks that happened at the time. I wouldn’t say it was a terrible episode, but it was essentially an excuse for us to talk through that disappointment with our once high-flying model portfolio and console ourselves that we’re investing for the long term.
Luke: You know what, I’ve got that same episode as my answer to the best episode because I really like the fact that we were down big year-to-date at that point, and we were honest and transparent about it. We weren’t doing smoke and mirrors on the numbers and trying to make the model portfolio look good. It was in the hole and we were straightforward about it and we were committed to our path of trusting our 20-odd years of experience to see us through that dark time. And we’re back in a slump right now and again, we can lean on that experience to not panic and not emotionally trade.
Albert: Yeah, as I said, it wasn’t a terrible episode, but it was just us moaning for about 30 minutes. And shortly after the episode, growth stocks started to recover again and the model portfolio was doing fine by September. But as you said, it’s taken a dive last month and the model portfolio is in the hole again.
Luke: We’ll have a chance to be honest and transparent next week when we review the whole thing.
Albert: I think I’m way past therapy now. Just give me the morphine
Luke: Well, the only other episode I listed as among the best was clearly the episode where our listener, Simon’s wife said I had a sexy voice.
Albert: Again, Luke, that wasn’t this year, that was last year.
Luke: Somebody said I had a sexy voice this year. I can’t remember who it was.
Albert: I think you’re losing your memory, Luke, in your old age.
Most fun episode
Luke: Well, what was the most fun episode do you think then?
Albert: I think our answers for this are going to be the same. Clearly, our most fun episode was our one-year anniversary party for episode 52, with our friends, Duniya, Ramesh, and Matt. And I’m not saying this just because I won the quiz.
Luke: Convincingly won the quiz. That was definitely my call out as well, but maybe in terms of serious content, I would say the episode we both had the most fun on was our interview with Renee. We three are great mates and it was really good to shoot the breeze, have a chat with her and learn a ton of stuff about corporate culture at the same time.
Albert: Yeah, I agree with that was also one of my favourite episodes as well, and neither you nor I are experts in that area and it was great for Renee to come on and share that with us.
Luke: Yeah. I agree. Our corporate culture in Telescope Investing is diabolical. We definitely need all the help we can get.
Most accurate or innaccurate prediction for 2021
Luke: So one other question we thought we’d try and answer on today’s show was what was our most accurate or inaccurate prediction in 2021 on any of the podcasts? I found a doozy that literally had me goggling at the notes and going, what were we thinking? Do you remember our deep dive of Kahoot in episode 15? Now, to be fair, this might’ve been 2020, not 2021, but it was pretty close. In the show notes for the Kahoot episode, we said Kahoot has a market cap at the time of recording of 3.3 billion US dollars. A 100X from here would give it a market cap of $336 billion, very optimistic, but not unrealistic. What the hell were we smoking? $300 billion for a company that does a quiz game for kids.
Albert: Well, in hindsight, that sounds eminently ridiculous, but I don’t know, at the time, it felt like a good company and one that would continue to grow, but yes, 300 billion would be outrageous for this kind of company.
Luke: Yeah, perhaps a symptom of growth stock fever. I suppose we were recording our hundred bagger episode. So we had to say something like that, but yeah, wildly unrealistic.
Albert: Talking about speculative growth stocks, we did a deep dive into Nanox Imaging back in March of this year and that’s been one hell of a ride since then. In the episode, we’re debating whether this was a complete scam or a revolution in medical imaging. And we weren’t sure so I think you put out a poll on Twitter, asking your followers whether they think it’s real or vaporware. And we weren’t alone in thinking that Nanox had a great future as 98.6% of your followers that replied to the poll said, it’s real, the FDA will approve.
Luke: Yeah, one smart guy or girl said it’s vaporware, you’re doomed. Should’ve followed them. That one is in my portfolio, so that’s down 53%. Well, I think we’re just hanging on, right? We’ve got fairly small positions in these companies. I’m just going to let it run and see where it ends up.
Albert: Yeah, I think we got the position sizing for these correct. It’s about 0.5% of my portfolio. I think it’s the same for you and I think that’s the way to play it. If a company is that speculative but has a very big potential upside, you can invest in it, but don’t overinvest in it.
Luke: Yeah, exactly. I remember getting into a bit of a Twitter war with some guy who was very pro-Nanox, and he picked apart our one-pager stock review. And I think we’ve been quite balanced in terms of putting positive and negative points about the stock. And this guy had just laid into maybe like one of the negative points. You can’t get so emotionally caught up in a stock investment, you have to be able to see the objective truth.
Albert: Yes, absolutely. I remember that Twitter exchange and it was quite amusing from the outside.
The smartest or stupidest thing the other person said in 2021
Luke: So moving on, this one could be an amusing question for us to answer. What’s the smartest or stupidest thing we think the other person has said in 2021?
Albert: Oh, let me start this one. And I’ll start with the smartest thing you said, Luke, to be kind. And there’s some recency bias here, but in our Disney deep dive a few weeks ago, you revealed on the podcast that you had trimmed some of your positions in high growth stocks in order to derisk your portfolio now that you’ve retired. And I don’t think you mentioned it on the podcast, but I know you went through your portfolio and compared the price to sales ratios with the revenue growth rates for each of your stocks and determined the stocks most likely to drop in a stock market crash. Well, since then, the market has crashed and you’ve reduced the damage to your own portfolio as a result. You were very lucky with the timing, but you were smart to do this.
Luke: Very kind of you say so, Alb. I think that was good timing and we do try to avoid timing the market. I think I did get lucky as you say. The plan there was really just to take some risk off the table because suddenly I had the prospect of no pay packet at the end of the month.
So I trawled through your Twitter history actually to try and dig out the smartest or the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. You play it incredibly safe. You’ve had 195 tweets and there is literally nothing salacious in there whatsoever. Do you never drink and tweet?
Albert: I don’t, Luke. That’s very dangerous.
Luke: But for me, and we’ll start with the nice stuff. I think there’s no one specific smart thing you’ve said. You are generally a very smart investor. I think the thing that I’ve learned from you this year is this recent conversation we’ve been having around growth versus income and dividend stocks. And I think I had a very hard line against that and you put up a very good defence of mature companies paying dividends in our dividend debate many episodes ago. And I think some of your wisdom there is coming back to bite me. And so definitely, I’m going to start building a bit of a safety portfolio alongside my growth portfolio.
Albert: Yeah, I remember that. And I think it’s fair to say that the structure of your portfolio depends on a lot of things like your own tolerance to risk and also your age, your time to retirement. And we’re not in our twenties. We’re very much middle-aged and there’s less time ahead of us than behind us. So I think it’s time to start de-risking your portfolio and maybe start thinking about what you would do if the market crashed before you retire.
Luke: Well, I don’t know if this will count as you making a stupid comment or me, but I definitely am not looking at my life as I reached the very end of my forties, thinking there’s less time ahead than there is behind. I’m planning to live to a thousand, Albert.
Albert: I’ll take that bet, Luke.
Luke: So what about the stupidest thing we’ve each said?
Albert: Okay, I’ll start again. And I think the stupidest thing that you said was definitely when you said that you thought sea levels would rise by 150 meters by the end of the century, in the quiz that we had in our one-year anniversary show.
Luke: Yeah, I knew you would pick that.
Albert: You were essentially predicting Waterworld. The actual answer was two meters, which is already pretty catastrophic.
Luke: How did I know you are going to say that? Yes. Feel free to lay into me. There was definitely something about 50 meters, whatever. I don’t know. Anyway, let’s not dwell on that. Maybe next year’s quiz, I actually do some research. I don’t know about the stupidest thing the other person has said, but your comment when we did a biotech episode about being jealous of guys with attractive eyes getting the attention of the girls during lockdown due to mask-wearing. That still makes me giggle. You sounded genuinely jealous of those guys with sexy eyes.
Albert: That’s because it’s genuinely true!
Favourite pop-culture references
Luke: So something we pick up on the pod from time to time, we end up chatting about pop culture, favourite movies, TV shows, books. So we thought we’d reflect on what our favourite moments around that aspect of the podcast have been this year. And I’ll kick us off here by just calling out your absolute obsession with Marvel. Alb, I like Marvel, but it’s time to grow up. You are literally obsessed with Ironman.
Albert: Well, I actually finally caught up with all the Marvel TV shows on Disney+, and I really like them, but I agree, it’s really hard to recommend them to anyone other than a Marvel fan
Luke: I will say still can’t believe that you did not like Scott Pilgrim vs the World. That’s one of the greatest movies of all time.
Albert: Let it go, Luke. Accept that it’s not a good movie. You’re telling me to grow up, that movie is one of the most juvenile movies I’ve ever watched.
Luke: It is awesome! It is an awesome callback to eighties and nineties video games. It’s the movie that Ready Player One should have been.
Albert: Well, let’s get onto more quality TV and movies and the one thing I really enjoyed this year was I made my way through all five seasons of Better Call Saul on Netflix. And when I started watching this, it didn’t really grab me and in fact, I gave up and then left it for a few months. But I’m glad I went back and tried it again. And this time, I stuck with it and after five seasons, I really love it and I can’t wait for the next season. Supposedly the final season.
Luke: Yeah, it’s awesome. I love Bob Odenkirk and especially his new movie, Nobody. He’s just hilarious in that.
Albert: I don’t want to give it away, but I love the fight scene on the bus. I think I rewatched that scene about 10 times.
Luke: Yeah, absolutely. It’s awesome. But look, I love Better Call Saul as well. It’s such a brilliant twist on one of the best side characters in Breaking Bad, and I love where it’s going. It’s ended at quite a dark place, so I’m really also keen to see where the next season picks up.
Albert: Yeah. I can’t wait for the next season. And I’ve been rewatching Ozark on Netflix as well. I think this is just a coincidence that they’re both based on the drug trade, but I really love Ozark and season four’s coming in January, so I’ve been rewatching it from season one to get up to speed.
Luke: I might rewatch season one, actually. So a bit of an embarrassing confession, Katrina and I were vacationing for a couple of weeks a few years ago, and I think we ended up watching the In-Betweeners. I think I had one random episode on and we got obsessed with it and we’ve seen it before we ended up watching, I think all three seasons plus both the movies and we missed dinner at least one night of that two weeks because we were just having hysterics at this crap on TV. So maybe something a bit better quality if we want to do a bit of TV watching, if we’re staying in Costa Rica for a month, perhaps Ozark is the way to go.
There’s a pop culture moment coming in two days. So Matrix 4, Matrix Resurrections is just about to hit the cinemas and I will be being a bit sad and catching it at a cinema in Costa Rica because I can’t bear the thought of seeing spoilers by mistake before I get home.
Albert: Would you believe that I watched the first Matrix film for the first time on a plane on a tiny five-inch screen.
Luke: That is a travesty! That’s like listening to a Hans Zimmer or John Williams movie on tiny crappy headphones. That’s one of the two movies in my life where I’ve gone back to the cinema the next day to watch it again immediately, just to fully appreciate it. The other one was Pulp Fiction.
Albert: Yeah, I think the Matrix strikes me as the one film that I really wish I had watched at the cinema. Actually talking about the cinema, for obvious reasons, I haven’t been to the cinema much this year and only saw the usual blockbusters, like Fast and Furious 9, Black Widow, Shang Chi, and No Time to Die. And I think I’d say they’re okay, but I’m not sure I could recommend them wholeheartedly, but one film that I can recommend was Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve. And before I watched this, I knew nothing about the story. I hadn’t read the book or watched the David Lynch movie, but this movie was amazing. And I’m not sure it would have the same impact watching it at home, but I really wish I had watched it on IMAX and not just a normal cinema.
Luke: Yeah, we call caught that plus the Bond movie at the giant IMAX in London. Well worth seeing. Look, I highly recommend the book. I’ve read it three or four times. Don’t read past the end of book three, it really goes off-piste but the first three books are fantastic.
Albert: I think he told me they’re about a thousand pages each. I don’t think I have time to read a 1000 page book.
Luke: I’m halfway through Game of Thrones book three, and that’s a slog but very rewarding. You shouldn’t be treating reading as a chore. It’s a pleasure, Albert.
Albert: Obviously you’re a much faster reader than I am. And I want to give a shout out to two podcasts that I’ve been listening to for several years now, maybe over 10 years, and that’s the Filmcast and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. These are essentially where I get my entertainment and science news respectively.
Luke: Yeah, both good. Also in my regular listening list, along with the All-in podcast with Chamath, Jason, Sacks and Friedberg. That’s really good. That’s where I get my news these days.
Our silly predictions for 2022
Albert: Actually speaking of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, one thing they do is a silly prediction for the next year, so shall we do some silly predictions of our own?
Luke: Yeah, okay. I’ve got two predictions, both somewhat serious, but let’s see. So the first one is NFTs, which we’ve been a bit sceptical about in the past. Here’s my prediction. They’re going to find a real-world implementation for tracking ownership of some physical good. Maybe in an emerging market country. Don’t know if it will be like property, art, something like that, but there’ll be proof of ownership using an NFT in 2022.
Albert: Maybe, Luke. I think that’s a very reasonable use case. And on the other side, I’m predicting that the NFTs on digital art will probably crash and people are going to get bored with the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Luke: Yeah, that seems like a kind of faddish implementation of it, but it takes random things to help technologies get a foothold so who knows. What’s your prediction for 22?
Albert: As for one of my silly predictions, I think you mentioned it earlier that one of our first hyper-growth picks was CuriosityStream, a streaming service dedicated to documentaries and educational programming. Unfortunately, the stock has not performed well as the number of subscribers is not growing as quickly as hoped. But they have over 3,000 titles, Luke. And when I open up Apple TV, they’re really short on content, especially documentary style content. Last time I looked, CuriosityStream has a market cap of around $300 million, which is basically a rounding error for Apple’s cash pile. So my reckless prediction is that Apple will buy CuriosityStream.
Luke: Yeah, okay, I like it, perhaps. I suppose we don’t buy stocks hoping that they get acquired, but that is sometimes how you end up exiting an investment. And given that CuriosityStream is so deep in the hole for both of us, that wouldn’t be a terrible outcome from here.
Albert: Yeah, so maybe it is less of a prediction and more wishful thinking.
Luke: Yeah, maybe. Well, here’s another way where Apple might save you. So my other prediction is that Apple are going to crack augmented reality in the next few months with whatever product they release next. Because let’s face it, it’s been hype and smoke and mirrors up until now, no one’s really got it right. And on the back of cracking it, maybe not in 2022, but over the next year or two as those products roll out, Apple’s market cap is going to double again and they’ll be the first $5 trillion company. And my silly aspect of that prediction is you will continue to not be a shareholder.
Albert: Actually, you just reminded me of one of the stupidest things that I said. I think in our episode last year on our biggest investing mistakes, I talked about Apple and how I didn’t invest, and I said, ” Their market cap is now $2 trillion. How much more can they grow?” Well in 2021, they are up 32% and approaching $3 trillion.
Luke: And you’re still not an investor.
Albert: So Luke, Apple are now worth $3 trillion. How much more can they go up?
Luke: When they release AR they’re going to hit five, Albert.
Albert: And when they released their car, I guess they will be the entire stock market.
Luke: I don’t see the car thing. I know Tesla investors have been super hyped about that for decades seeing the convergence. I don’t buy it, but AR I definitely buy. Those little gadgets, sticking maps and all of their other intelligence in glasses on your face is exactly the kind of miniaturization magic that Apple specializes in.
Closing thoughts
Luke: Well, this has been a much longer episode than we planned, but maybe we should round it out now for some key takeaways.
Albert: Yeah, I think I’ll just start by saying that we started Telescope Investing back in August of 2020, and we didn’t know what to expect or how long we would go on for, but we’ve had a tremendous amount of fun with Telescope and a big reason for this is our listeners, Luke. And it was amazing to find out that we have listeners all over the world and love it when we get feedback and questions from them. And when I look at the listener stats, it still amazes me that we have so many listeners in Denmark.
Luke: And as of the last couple of weeks, we have invites to two different poker games in Denmark. That’s awesome. We’d definitely like to come out and do that some time.
Albert: There’s a trend here league of people inviting you to poker games. I think maybe your reputation for losing money is out there.
Luke: I have lost substantial sums in four different countries now in the last three months. So, yes okay, let’s make it five Denmark. I’ll get my ticket.
Albert: I think we feel that our journey has just started and the road is long and there’s too so much more to learn and to share, and we really hope that our listeners will continue to join us on this journey.
Luke: Yeah, absolutely. We are and will continue to be investors for life. And we’re both the kind of guys who see life as a continual learning journey. And so doing podcasts is just a brilliant way to connect with smarter people and learn and improve. And I’m also really enjoying the engagement with our listeners and our subscribers. We do get some great questions and we have a lot of fun as well.
Quote
Luke: And, Alb, you found a really nice quote to round out today’s episode that I think plays into that a little bit. Do you want to share it?
Albert: Yeah, I found a quote by a guy called Martin Buber, I hope I’m pronouncing that name correctly, who was an Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher, and he said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.”
Luke: Yeah, that’s a beautiful quote, actually, quite poignant. Do you think our journey has a secret destination?
Albert: I think we had several secret destinations so probably.
Luke: I think the key thing is just being open to new opportunities and experiences and seeing where the world takes you and try and enjoy the ride.
Albert: Absolutely, Luke.
Wrap
Albert: Well, that’s all for this week. Thanks for listening.
Luke: Yeah, look, happy Christmas to all of our listeners. And if there is a future topic you’d like us to cover, you can catch us on Twitter, I’m @LukeTelescope.
Albert: And I’m @AlbertTelescope or you can email us at feedback@telescopeinvesting.com.
Luke: And you know what, one of the best ways you can show support for the podcast is to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. And actually, as of this morning, I think you’ll soon be able to leave us a review or a star rating on Spotify, so keep a lookout for that.
Albert: Awesome. And if you have a friend who you think would also get value from Telescope Investing, we’d love it if you just take a quick moment now to spread the word and send them a link.
Luke: Thanks, Albert, it’s been a great year and I’ve really enjoyed our virtual collaboration doing the show.
Albert: Thanks, Luke, and enjoy your Christmas in Costa Rica.
