BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 8

Inflation's Impact, Supply Chain Disruptions, Toilet Paper

Speaker 1:

You're about to get lucky with the Barenaked Money podcast. The show that gives you the naked truth about personal finance with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, portfolio managers with WLWP Wealth Planners, iA Private Wealth.

Colin White:

So Josh, bunch of talk about inflation. Good thing, bad thing, necessary things, scary thing, apocalyptic thing. There's lots of different versions of this out there. Why don't you lead us through a little bit of an exploration of the potential impact of inflation from an investment perspective?

Josh Sheluk:

Right. We're going to cover a lot today. Inflation from an investment perspective is going to be one of them but you're going to make sure that we don't forget what this actually means in practical terms for people as well. So I will kick it off on the investment side of things. And I'm just going to start with something that a lot of people have been talking about for the better part of the last 10 years now, really, since we went through the big recession that we had in 2009. And that's that the government is printing money, this whole idea of printing money, I used air quotes there for our listeners, and what that means because people are thinking, "Okay, if you're printing money, that's necessarily going to lead to inflation." There's a direct line between the two of them. And so I guess I'll just start by debunking this little bit.

Josh Sheluk:

The idea of printing money is basically, as we know the government, the central bank, they have control over how much money, how much physical paper money or money in the bank for example, is in circulation to some extent. And so this idea is that if they're putting more money in circulation, that's going to devalue the currency hence leading to inflation. And there's some real economic theory behind that. The value of our Canadian dollar, for example, is just a supply and demand thing. So if you increase the supply of the Canadian dollar, economic theory posits that should decrease the value of this and then hence everything costs more money to buy. But what we've seen over the last 10 years is this massive printing money, again, quote unquote "printing money" thing that has not led to really much inflation at all over the last 10 years.

Josh Sheluk:

And so what really happened was central banks put this printed money into the banks. The actual retail banks and commercial banks like you and I would go to to take our money out, whether that's TD, RBC or another one. But the banks didn't actually lend out a whole lot of this money. And we can debate all day about what the reasons for not letting this money work, but I think it was a combination of people, one not wanting to borrow the money, to spend on things and banks, knowing that at some point they're probably going to have to give this money back to the central bank so they don't want to lend it up. So the fact that this money was printed, it doesn't really mean that there's going to be inflation unless you see this money actually get into circulation.

Colin White:

And when you say the circulation Josh, that comes down to something that again has started to geek out, the velocity of money. If you give somebody a bunch of money and they just put it in the bank and leave it there, that's not going to drive up the demand for pretty much anything. So not only is money have to get air quote, print it, it's actually got to get used for something and that's not a straight line, at all.

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah. There's a million things that really go into inflation. And I'm probably exaggerating when I say a million, but not by much. So this idea that government prints money, we get inflation, uh-oh, that's a bad thing, that's way too simplistic. And there's so many different relationships that are out there that you need to consider before we can draw that direct line. So we talked a lot about theory and that's kind of boring for a lot of people but there are some things, some other factors that have, I guess, a more tangible link to inflation. And one of the things that you wanted to make sure that I brought up was wages and how wages to people and employment, I guess more broadly speaking, actually flow into inflation. So let's just take it at its most simple level.

Josh Sheluk:

More people employed that means more people have more money to spend. They go out and buy more things, higher demand for things should lead to inflation, all else equal. So there is a direct link between number of people employed and the thought that at some point with a higher number of people employed, lower unemployment rate, there should be more inflation. And part of that is a wage's discussion as well. So as more people are employed, it should get harder for businesses to find qualified workers, which means they need to pay those qualified workers more to attract them. So for example, if you're working at local McDonald's and Wendy's down the street says, "I really need somebody to flip burgers here. I'm going to offer an extra five bucks per hour for anybody that comes and works for me from McDonald's." Well, that person that's getting five bucks more an hour, they're going to have more money to spend on things. And again, higher demand for goods, generally speaking should lead to inflation.

Colin White:

Yeah. And I saw something you watch, when unemployment rates are really low, labor participation is really high, but then the little bit of spill over that can happen is all of a sudden there's such a shortage of labor here. All of a sudden, you see things begun to be outsourced. And that's where you start to see call centers showing up in different parts of the world or Canadian tax returns being done in different parts of the world. Companies, when it gets to a certain point, it gets too hard to find labor in one location, all of a sudden there's a financial incentive for them to do. So again, if that labor is a little bit cheaper than that can be slightly deflationary, right?

Colin White:

So again, to Josh's earlier point, this does get really nuanced really quickly. But labor it's just something that's a little bit closer to people to understand that again, if somebody down the street offered you an extra 10 bucks an hour to do the same job because they were really, really, really in a tough spot, that's inflation and that's how it feels, that's how it looks and that's how it can move.

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah. And you mentioned deflation, so that's sort of the opposite, right? Inflation, average prices in the economy or countrywide going up, deflation opposite, then happen average prices going down. And it's unusual to see sort of persistent deflations were right across the board but there definitely have been some aspects of that over, let's just look at the last 10 years. And one of the reasons that you mentioned that has directly tied into deflation is globalization. And there's been an uptick in globalization for several decades now. And again, you mentioned it, if you can get cheap labor elsewhere outside of the country, then that's going to have somewhat of a deflationary pressure on the economy. The other thing that I've been reading a lot about recently is that there's been a real sort of cap or restriction on labor units over the last several decades.

Josh Sheluk:

And that also has led to a little bit more power for b...

BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 7

You Could Win, Either Way

Speaker 1:

You're about to get lucky with the Bare Naked Money Podcast. The show that gives you the naked truth about personal finance with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, portfolio managers with WLWP Wealth Planners, iA Private Wealth.

Colin White:

Welcome to Bare Naked Money, the Next Edition. Today, we're going to get into something that's pretty topical. Something that as a part of a regular conversation we have with our clients and something that's also very topical in the media right now. Well, who am I kidding? This is always topical. Real estate. There's so many different ways to look at it. Trends are so important and it seems to be super red hot right now. So let's get into it and see if we can help you understand things a little bit better. So Josh, why don't I throw it to you and you can make maybe a few observations that are pretty high level with regards to some of the data that we're seeing.

Josh Sheluk:

Thanks Colin. So thanks for the intro there. As I think everybody right across Canada knows right now, and actually in a lot of parts of the world, real estate is just booming. And I think this is the first time anyway, for me in the last several years where I can really look right across the country to every one of our clients, everybody that lives in Canada and say, "What's going on in your market?" And everybody's like, "Well, real estate is way up. Real estate boom. Real estate' crazy. Either I can't find a place to buy. I'm looking desperately. I can't find one to buy at a reasonable price," or, "Oh, I'm looking to sell my place and I'm breaking the bank," because it's looking great for some of the sellers that are out there. And this is kind of continuing a trend that we've been seeing over the last couple of decades, where Canada as a whole, when you look at the average is just booming from a real estate perspective.

Josh Sheluk:

And I saw some charts recently that compared it to other countries, other major industrialized countries and Canada is far and above a lot of those other countries, whether it's UK, US, other countries in Europe, et cetera, et cetera. So we've seen this trend. We've seen this trend for awhile, but now it seems to be coming to a head and going faster than it's ever been in terms of some of those rapid price rises. And I think the first time since COVID, what we were seeing for the first time is that some of these non-urban areas, known as the sprawl is sort of leading the charge, whether it's just outside of these urban areas or more rural areas. So spilling from the suburbs to the rural area. So I think there's a lot of reasons for this and we can dive into some of these, but why don't you take us through a few of your observations for what you're seeing out there in terms of what's actually driving this trend?

Colin White:

Well, as a member of this team who doesn't live in Toronto, I can attest that areas outside of Toronto we're seeing the same thing. Nova Scotia is just off the charts. Halifax proper is ridiculous to getting 9, 10, 12, 15 competing offers on one property. It's selling 50% over market in some cases. It's a little scary, coming from the Maritimes to see that kind of thing happen because it is really unprecedented in my lifetime that we've had that kind of interest from literally all over the world. People trying to get to Nova Scotia. And we've got clients who had plans about maybe liquidating property at a certain time or buying properties at a certain time and this is the kind of event that pushes plans.

Colin White:

Now, we've got some people, myself included is considering selling a property in the not too distant future going, "Oh, should I hurry my plans? Does that make any sense right now?" And that's a legit question. We've also got people who were expecting to be buying properties right now and they're now going, "Should I wait because things are awful." I'm going to be making some pretty big compromises potentially here on the value that I'm going to get on picking up the property.

Colin White:

So, again, this is one of those events that can push your planning around a little bit and rightfully so. This is not something to be ignored. This is of a magnitude that matters. If you're going to have to pay 20, 30% more for a property right now, that changes your thinking. That changes your timeline. Now, if you're going to own it for 20 or 30 years, maybe it doesn't matter as much. But if you think it's going to be something you want to liquidate in the next few years, maybe you got to think a little bit harder. Maybe those three, five-year time horizons are a little scarier than they once were. So yeah, there's a lot of angst out there now, but I tell you, it's getting overridden by just pure mania in many respects. So yeah. So I think this is a truly across Canada problem, no matter what side of the desk you're sitting on. So why don't we get into some of the reasons behind it, Josh?

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah, yeah, sure. So, well, elephant in the room, right? I think everybody knows one of the main reasons is COVID things going on. We have a global pandemic and what we saw early on was the market froze because people didn't know what the hell to do [inaudible 00:05:08] and people couldn't go see places. So, there was an immediate kind of, "Okay, let's pause for a sec. Let's see what's going on here." But you've seen things spill over now and they're going great guns. So with COVID I think one of the trends that I was talking about is really been driven by COVID and that's, COVID is pushing people out of the urban areas. So you're seeing this spillover, this sprawl from core cities, maybe condo living to some of the more suburban, house, low rise stuff, or some of these more rural areas as well, because what we've seen over the last year, a lot of our jobs can be done remotely.

Josh Sheluk:

You and I are not in the same place right now doing this podcast. So we've all discovered, I think, that we're a little bit more able to work outside of our office. And a lot of businesses have decided that, "Hey, my staff can work pretty effectively from home. Maybe I don't want to, or need to pay $50 a square foot for an office building in downtown Toronto." So that is part of it for sure.

Colin White:

Yeah. And the other thing is, is that if there's more than one member of the family has got to work from home, your home is not as big as you thought it was. And maybe you're not as close to your family as you thought you were, so you put two or three members of a family working from home, that house can get a lot smaller than it used to be, in a hurry. So there's a lot of pressure on, "Hey, we need more space." And I think you went through a little bit of that, Josh.

Josh Sheluk:

Oh yeah. I'm sitting here in a two bedroom condo and we converted our second bedroom to an office. Would have been pretty hard to convert our first bedroom to an office too. So fortunately I've been able to go to the office most days, but I think your point is valid that people are rethinking what they need from a place. I was just looking at an Instagram post the other day and talking about how people more at the top top level of the income spectrum are looking for something where they have more leisure space or leisure activities that are doable from their home, their property as it's outside of the realm of what most of the people listening to this podcast are looking for, but full si...

BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 6

See Saw on the Canadian Budget

Speaker 1:

You're about to get lucky with the Barenaked Money podcast. The show that brings you the naked truth about personal finance, with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, Portfolio Managers with WLWP Wealth Planners, iA Private Wealth.

Colin White:

Welcome to Josh and Colin's SeeSaw on the Budget. This is what I see, is that what you saw? So, Josh, I'll throw it to you first. You tell me what you see and I'll tell you what I saw.

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah. We're going to do things a little bit differently today. So normally we sit down and hash out a little bit of a rough outline for what we're going to talk about. Today we just said, "Well, let's talk about the budget. You come up with five things that were interesting to you. I'll come up with five things that were interesting to me, and we'll sit down and we'll talk about it." We'll discuss, no preparation whatsoever. So we're throwing ourselves in here cold.

Colin White:

And you're going to go first, so impress... And I know for a fact, you've got more than five things on your list. So don't lie to our listeners.

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah, well, it's tough. I know we both pored over 739 pages of this federal budget. Every word, we looked at it in detail. Every footnote, every note in the margin, and we both had tons to talk about. So, we both have more than five things on our list, but we'll try to keep it concise for everybody. So, first and foremost, I think this is maybe the most significant sort of long-term part of the budget. And that's some of the reform and the push that they're doing on childcare. And so, just at a very high level, what they've said is that over the next five years, they want to push for a $10/day cost for your children in daycare. And, so that's over the next five years. By the end of 2022, so let's say a year and a half from now, they want to see a 50% reduction in average fees for childcare over that period of time.

Josh Sheluk:

I think this is awesome. I think this is extremely important. I think childcare, speaking to people that I know that have young kids that they're dealing with this, I think it can be exorbitantly expensive. And I think economically speaking, I'm going to put my economist hat on, we want people to be working. And the fact that childcare is so expensive is a disincentive for some people to work. It's better off for them to stay home and just take care of the children than it is to go out and get a job. And that has some real implications for the economy as a whole. So from the idea of, this should get more people out there making more money, spending more money, more tax revenue, et cetera, et cetera, bolstering the economy, I think it's a lovely thing. What do you think, Colin?

Colin White:

Oh, it's a fabulous idea. Like cinnamon farts and bubble gum trees. But the problem is, you're pushing on a rope. You got the government trying to overstep its mandate because this is largely something that's done at the provincial level. And a lot of what was in the budget, from what I read, involves the provinces also ponying up. So the federal government's going to kick in, but then the provinces have to agree and kick in. Provinces don't necessarily have the money, because they're trying to pay for that whole healthcare stuff. And to have a five-year plan, when you have an election coming up next year, come on. Just stop that. You get to have a one-year plan. That's all you get. And then if you win the election, you can have another year. Don't pick the five-year plan when you got to win your mandate. I fully agree.

Colin White:

And I think that childcare should be less expensive. We need to support the families in the workforce. That's absolutely... You can't be a human being and think that's a wrong thing, but the way that they're trying to do it makes no sense. I hope that this moves the rock. I hope that they're able to actually make some progress on this because you're right. This is a very valuable thing. It should be important. We should pay attention to it, but we got to be competent while we're paying attention to it. We can't just announce things with big dollar figures and the years that we don't have control over. That's not helping.

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah. Well, and that is very true. I think what's made me a little bit more encouraged on the subject is that they're taking from the model that Quebec has put in place. And the Quebec model, by everything that I saw data-wise, has been fairly successful. And one of the good data points is that the number of women in the workforce, the percentage of women in the workforce in Quebec is much higher than the rest of Canada. So obviously they're doing something right there and stealing from that model or borrowing from that model makes some sense, but, maybe you're right. Maybe it should be the provinces that are looking after all these. And having it regulated at a federal level is just going to work out to be a mess, as so many other things.

Colin White:

We will see.

Josh Sheluk:

Yeah. So what's first on your list?

Colin White:

Well, the first thing on my list is something that's not on the list. There were no changes to capital gains inclusion rates, and there were no changes to the taxation of your principal residence. So sometimes the biggest thing in the budget is what's not in the budget. So that was the number one takeaway I took. Now listen, if you will all write this down. Stop trying to figure out what comes next, because you are going to worry about... In the entire history of the human species, worrying about anything has never made it better. Anticipating things long before they happen are going to cause... And this is just another example, and think about it. They're a year out from an election. They're not going to do something that's really hugely unpopular, and they're certainly not going to do it suddenly. And I've got other points about that, but I'm not going to steal my own thunder. So Josh, what say you?

Josh Sheluk:

Well, we came into this knowing that there'd be some overlap in what we had on our list. And it took only two items to get to it. And it's funny. We both had something on our list that wasn't on the list. So, we just spent way too much time together, I think is what it comes down to. But, this is something we talk about a lot, you and I, especially over the last month or so. And it's just, you can't or you shouldn't maybe spend too much time planning for something that hasn't happened yet. And as we could both agree, tax planning is extremely valuable and makes a ton of sense, but trying to speculate on what one government or the next institutes, in terms of tax code, tax law, that's going to be an impossibility, and you're going to end up banging your head against the table more often than not.

Josh Sheluk:

So, I think if we look at the situation a little bit longer term, I'm actually not surprised that they didn't introduce something this time, because an election is probably coming up in the next year or so. And jacking up people's taxes before an election, probably not a recipe to get reelected. So the ...

BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 5

Transcript

Announcer (00:00):

You're about to get lucky with the Barenaked Money podcast. The show that brings you the naked truth about personal finance with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, Portfolio Managers with WLWP Wealth Planners, iA Private Wealth.

Josh (00:24):

How are you Colin?

Colin (00:26):

I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Josh (00:28):

I'm ready to get naked? How about that?

Colin (00:32):

Well, I'm not sure that that's going to make it past the editor, but you know, good swing.

Josh (00:37):

So what are we talking about today?

Colin (00:39):

Well, there was some news came out, uh, actually a couple of weeks ago. Now that kind of caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Canada pension plan, investment board, or as an organization, I've got a lot of respect for seeing them speak and read a lot of their stuff and other people in terms of the Canada pension. Uh, now the Canada pension is envy or the industrialized world because it's actually a publicly funded pension plan. So we actually have funding behind it. It's not coming out of tax revenue. So there's a very sizable amount of money being managed on behalf of all Canadians. And there's some really smart people making those decisions. But the news was that they had dramatically underperformed their benchmark, the most recent period. And there was a bit of a fall of people were flocking to, and trying to assign all kinds of blame and what mistakes they made in the sand. And the other thing, and it brought to me the topic of, Hey, let's talk about benchmarking. Let's talk about indexes. Let's talk about what those things really are because they so often good misused and misapplied and in general life. And so you're a real smart feller. And I figured that if I asked you the question, so, you know, what an index is, you might be able to start the classroom. What Is an index?

Josh (01:53):

Yeah. So a lot to unpack there and an index at, at a very, very basic level. It's just a set of rules that define a basket of investments. And where does this set of rules come from? And we've been talking about it a little bit this week. It's not like the set of rules is handed down as a gift of God, to the people or anything like that, right? Somebody is out there an individual, you or me an investment individual, a group of individuals, somebody is coming up with this set of rules that defines what this index is. And again, index is just, just a basket of securities.

Colin (02:31):

And normally what they're doing this, like, Hey, everybody's talking about marijuana. We need a marijuana index. How are we going to do that? So it tends to be very opportunistic when they have those conversations. It's not just a academic procedure where they're going to go through and try to have an even hand over the whole space is once everybody talking about what can we sell? Ooh, let's have a marijuana index. And then they put together their set of rules and everything else and they make it look like it did come from the hand of, yeah,

Josh (03:00):

Yeah, you're right. And these indexes, they've just been proliferating over the last five, 10, 15 years, because as you said, there's an advantage or advantageous sort of point of view one creating an index because then they could go sell this index and use it to create investment products for the people. So I heard on a podcast this morning, which I don't know if I entirely believe this number, but there's 3 million indexes out there in the world. That seems like an absurd number. I don't know how that could be possible, but even if it's 300,000 or 30,000, that's still a hell of a lot of indexes.

Colin (03:38):

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that is as they become more popular and as this whole conversation about beating the index, you know, there's more and more on, on main street, it's more taken as, you know, a good commentary on something and then more and more people come to the come to market with them. And I know it's been fascinating to watch some of the product that's come out lately. So the major index is Josh. I mean, maybe you can give me your comment on what percentage of that are our rules and how much discretion around there. And again, there's discretion the rules too, but you know, it's, it's not just a mathematical equation that puts a stock on an index.

Josh (04:13):

Yeah. So the major indexes you're talking about things like the TSX composite or the S and P 500 did the TSX comp, is that we'll reference it a few times throughout this conversation. And it's just a representation of sort of the largest companies in Canada, uh, the S and P 500, the 500 largest companies in the U S uh, you know, give or take, uh, and there's rules to be included on these indexes. So again, somebody is coming up with these rules, how much, uh, for these, these sort of broad based indexes, how, how strict are the rules? You know, there, there's a couple of defining things like they have to be filing quarterly and annual reports. They have to meet a certain size to be on that, that index. So for the ...

BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 4

Transcript

Announcer

You're about to get lucky…with the Barenaked Money podcast. The show that brings you the naked truth about personal finance with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, Portfolio Managers with WLWP Wealth Planners, iA Private Wealth

Colin White:

Welcome to the next installment of Barenaked Money. Josh and I are going to take on the topic of do it yourself stuff this week, or this month…today. 

Josh Sheluk:

Do it yourself, everything Colin? Or I think we're going to be a little bit more focused than that, right? 

Colin:

Okay. Within the financial world, point taken, I'm glad you're here to keep me in line. Thank you. 

Josh:

Yep. Yep. Sounds good. No problem. That's what I'm here for. So, one of the things we're going to do is to highlight some of the do it yourself areas where, you know, may be worthwhile to go down that path and some of the pitfalls or trouble that you may find yourself in. If you're doing a little bit too much, do it yourself. 

Colin:

Then when Josh and I were preparing to have this conversation, we talked about our personal inherent biases and the fact that, you know, we're advice, givers, therefore we're biased. And of course, my question is when do you stop being biased and just start being right? So, you know, we'll explore that. And obviously you're listening to people who give advice. So, you can take this with a grain of salt, but well, we'll set forth a little bit of a case and some examples as to, uh, what you can and can't get away with on the, do it yourself side and where it doesn't…maybe it does not work. 

Josh:

Yeah. I like the plumber analogy, Colin. If my toilet is, I can look at it a couple of ways I can try and do it myself. I'm not that handy that might end up poorly. I could call my buddy from down the street, have him come over you and I can try to mix it up and figure something out. At some point we may just want to call a plumber and that plumber he's the professional. He's not going to screw it up. He's not going to cause a bigger problem or a leak down to our neighbors, condo or anything like that. So, you have the options that are out there, uh, for something really simple, you know, fixing the float and the, and the toilet. Yeah. Maybe I can do it myself, but something where I may screw it up and cause a bigger problem. Yeah. Professional advice sometimes. 

Colin:

Well, I think there is a good point, Josh, cause it really depends on the magnitude. And if it's a matter of picking one bank account over another bank account, the magnitude of that choice is probably as it should not be that significant. But when you get to putting, you know, your financial future, you know, to risk, then you know, maybe you need to give it a bit more, you'd get more attention. That's a good buddy of mine, he says nobody pretends to be an underwater welder. You know, when the, when the magnitude of messing it up is going to be dire that indicates maybe you do need to have some professional advice and you and I both stumbled across, you know, one institution this week who were, uh, trying to convince people that they should be able to do it themselves. Right?

Josh:

Yeah. So, uh, one that I think a lot of the do it yourselfers out there are aware of Wealth Simple. And we don't really want to pick specifically on Wealth Simple, we've picked on these other, do it yourself type of platforms before but I think Wealth Simple does a lot of things, very, very well. And a lot of things that we're envious of actually, in terms of the simplicity and making things work for people, that's really tremendous. What you had asked me about earlier this week was you saw that Wealth Simple was promoting or advertising the most traded stocks in their platform and showing the three month rate of return of those stocks, what could possibly go wrong?

Colin:

Well see, you and I both know. And I guess most people would realize, that we love lists. Here are the three foods you need to eat right now. Here are the five relationship keys to success. You know, whenever somebody puts a number of things, it puts it all of a sudden it becomes a thing it's like, Oh, I can, I can take in three things. I can understand five things. So Wealth Simple being smart and you're right, Josh, we've, we've talked with them. You know, some of the stuff they're doing is spectacular. They're not dumb people. So, when they came forward with this, yeah, this is how you get attention. Putting out names, lists of stock names with a data point, you know, Ooh, maybe I can do that or, Ooh, that one looks good. Ooh. I bet you that will do it again. But again, it's, you know, they've gone to the zero commission model. They're starting, you know, they're trying to generate a whole bunch of activity. And in order to do that, they need to generate some confidence and give people some ideas. So they're giving people exactly what they want. Here's a list of very popular stocks in our platform would be like, batteries. Here are the top five battery technology stocks traded on our platform. You know, so they're, they're trying to tailor it. And again, it's very successful from a marketing perspective to get people interested in doing stuff. But how effective is it having people accomplish any of their financial goals? And this goes back to, do I have a leaky toilet or do I have a life imperiling situation I need to manage right now if this is you're having a little bit of fun around the edges for entertainment's sake. Sure. Knock yourself out. But if you're gonna bet your kid's education on it, maybe not, maybe that doesn't make so, so much sense. You saw them actually promoting a different service, which I even found a little bit more intriguing.

Josh:

Yeah. Okay. But before I get into that, I want to talk about this list because I think there are a couple of things that are really important to, to mention here. So first, most assets that you can invest in they're priced based off of supply and demand. So if the demand is really high for something, if you find that a lot of people are out there buying it like a game stock, for example, then the price is going to go up. And sometimes that's just justified other times it's not, but if you're looking at a list and you're deciding that I want to buy this thing because other people have bought it, first of all, I don't trust other people that much. Um, maybe I'm a cynic, but, uh, you know, I've, I've been around enough people to know that I'm just not going to blindly trust the, uh, the stranger down the street, especially with my financial decisions. Uh, but if you're buying based off this list of sort of the, the most popular stocks and stocks are priced based off of supply and demand, the demand is high. That means the price is high of these things already. So if you're trying to follow some type of buy low sell high approach, which is kind of the key to making money, it seems to fly a little bit in the face of that. Don't you think?

Colin:

Oh no, no, absolutely. I mean, again, just because it's popular and oftentimes in the investment world, when it, by the time it's become popular, it's, it's probably not the best investment anymore. Like if, you know, we used to use the old expression when you get in a cab and the cab driver asks you what you think about the price of oil. That's probably not the b...