Vitaliy Katsenelson stops by The Business Brew to discuss investing and his new book; Soul In The Game (see https://soulinthegame.net/).  Vitaliy is an amazing writer who discusses investing and life.  You can find his writings at https://contrarianedge.com/.  We hope you enjoy this discussion.  
No detailed show notes on this one. 
This episode is brought to you by Bastiat Partners, a a new breed of investment and merchant bank that specializes primaries, secondaries, and co-investment opportunities in the private markets.  Bastiat caters to a unique coverage universe of 250+ family offices, VCs, and crossover hedge funds. While sector generalists, the Firm specializes in fast-growing technology and technology-enabled businesses, advising companies on primary capital raises and creating liquidity events for founders and early investors via secondary transactions. The Firm also advises fundless sponsors and GPs on co-investment opportunities. Bastiat Partners was founded nearly a decade ago by Nader Afshar, a former senior investment banker at J.P. Morgan, and is headquartered in Los Angeles.
See https://bastiatpartners.com/.
Securities offered by Hollister Associates, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC.  Bastiat Partners and Hollister Associates, LLC are not affiliated companies.


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Album art photo taken by Mike Ando. Please see https://www.mikeando.com.
Thank you to @mathewpassy (on Twitter) for the show production.





Vitaliy Katsenelson - Soul In The Game

Welcome to The Business Brew

This podcast’s mission is to dig deep into the thought patterns and analysis of investors and business people. The podcast stemmed from Bill Brewster consistently feeling like he was listening to prepackaged material while listening to podcasts. Instead, he wanted long form, in depth, discussions about finance, capital allocation, and the psychology of investing/business. 

Bill is a private investor. He cohosts the podcast Value: After Hours with Tobias Carlisle and Jake Taylor. Tobias, Jake and Bill met at a Berkshire Hathaway meeting and formed a lasting friendship.  And, as it turns out, people really like the podcast. 

While Bill tries to replicate Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s thought processes, he is heavily influenced by Bill Miller III, Stan Druckenmiller, and others.  This podcast is his attempt to dig deeper into other investing/business philosophies and share the knowledge with the world.  

We are interested in interviewing portfolio managers, Wall Street sell side analysts, buy side analysts, private investors, owner operators, and anyone that is willing to go in depth about running a company/division.  So, if you are interested in participating please email us with the subject “Guest Appearance.”   

Disclaimer:  Bill manages a portfolio under the name of Sullimar Capital Group.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.  Nothing in this podcast or on SullimarCapital.Group is investment advice.  All information in this is opinion based, potentially biased, and requires verification. 

Bill and his guests make no representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, completeness or reasonableness of the information contained in these podcasts. Any assumptions, opinions and estimates expressed constitute the participant’s judgment as of the date thereof and are subject to change without notice. Any projections contained in the information are based on a number of assumptions as to market conditions and there can be no guarantee that any projected outcomes will be achieved.  This podcast does not accept any liability for any direct, consequential or other loss arising from reliance on the contents of this presentation. 

This podcast series DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICIATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY ANY SECURITIES MENTIONED OR DISCUSSED. Seek the your financial, tax, legal, accounting, or other advisor’s advice before making any investment decisions.  We are not your fiduciary or advisor.

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Charles Lemonides, founder and CIO of ValueWorks LLC, stops by The Business Brew to discuss his investment philosophy. Charles started his career as a high yield bond analyst. Over time, he gravitated towards equity. In this episode he says "I find the best investment opportunities are where you can find something that is a real growth opportunity but it is selling for a value price."


Today, ValueWorks LLC, tends to run portfolios with 25-30 long securities in them. Charles tries to have 15 "very, very different" bets in each portfolio.  


We hope you enjoy this conversation. 


John Hempton on "When do you average down?"


Detailed Show Notes:
5:15 - Best investment setups/opportunities


7:30 - Conceptual position sizing


9:40 - ValueWorks different vehicles and philosophy


17:45 - How Charles built his firm around a philosophy


20:00 - Why Rivian may be a value investment


28:20 - Comcast 


31:00 - How Charles manages different types of theses? 


35:00 - Where are we in a market cycle?


39:30 - What stocks do you want into a top?


44:40 - What makes Charles tick







Charles Lemonides - ValueWorks

Consuelo Mack stops by The Business Brew to discuss her career in financial media. Consuelo hosts the show WealthTrack, a show Bill has watched and/or listened to for years. This conversation will help Consuelo's fans understand more about her early career and how she developed WealthTrack.  


Bill was very happy Consuelo said yes to coming on the show.  His only regret is messing up Ed Hyman and Ed Yardeni in the conversation.  He hopes both Eds forgive him. 


We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Consuelo Mack - Host of WealthTrack

Hunter Hopcroft, Managing Director, Portfolio Solutions at Armada ETF Advisors, stops by The Business Brew to primarily discuss REITs. Hunter is quite a thinker and the conversation veers into other parts of markets such as AI, how the economy is changing and more. You can find Hunter's writing here: https://www.lewisenterprises.blog/


Bill pinged Hunter after someone (on the Twitter machine, so you know it's factual) made a comment that REITs are inherently bad investment vehicles. We hope this episode is informative and realistic about the investment vehicles.  You may learn:



  The vast difference between market cap weighted public REIT allocations and private sector real estate allocations
  Why public market REITs have less leverage than their private peers
  A theory about why Blackstone bought $AIRC and what the true cap rate was
  Whether dividends are better than academia believes



As always, we hope you enjoy the show.  Thank you for your time! 

PS.  Reach out if you are interested in sponsoring the show.  You can contact Bill at bill@thebusinessbrew.com.


Detailed Show Notes: 
3:00 - Hunter transitioned his career around an interest in REITs


7:00 - Private and public markets own basically the same assets


10:00 - How private markets create a lock in for RIAs that may help the RIAs' multiple when they sell the business


11:00 - Negative features of REITs


17:00 - The downside scenarios for multifamily housing


20:30 - What can dividend growth do for a portfolio?


27:30 - How Hunter thinks about the different REIT asset classes.


30:00 - The difference between private real estate allocations and public market market cap weighted allocations


41:00 - The different valuation methodologies to analyze $AIRC


48:00 - Why are private market cap rates still healthy relative to public markets?


52:00 - Hunter's view on markets and where they are right now


56:00 - Some riffing on AI


1:04:00 - In defense of Marty Whitman!







Hunter Hopcroft - In Defense of REITS (and Marty Whitman!)

Elliot Turner, Managing Partner and CIO of RGIA Investment Advisors, returns to The Business Brew for a great conversation. To start, Bill and Elliot discuss what Elliot learned from the period of 2021 to now. They then discuss some specific stock ideas, thoughts on portfolio management, and much more.  We hope you enjoy. 


Note:  This episode was recorded on April 3, 2024.  Bill owns a small position in Fevertree (established after recording) and a basket of positions in some smaller life science companies.  


Detailed Show Notes:
3:00 - Learnings 
10:30 - Prioritizing health to lead to success
14:00 - Was it an everything bubble?
22:15 - Fevertree discussion
37:40 - Thoughts on position sizing
44:30 - Incentives in finance papers
49:00 - A great NVDA story
55:00 - Is life sciences similar to tech after 2000
58:50 - The 3 forces that make life sciences and biotech interesting for humanity
1:08:00 - Is The Street focused on the wrong things?
1:16:20 - Maravai
1:25:00 - Thinking about patent cliffs
1:29:00 - High costs of failure and why that may be a good opportunity for existing suppliers





Elliot Turner Returns

Darren Fisk, Founder and CEO of Forum Investment Group, LLC, stops by The Business Brew to discuss his real estate investment firm, strategy, and thoughts. Darren focuses on multifamily real estate. His background is in lending and he added an equity focus during the GFC.  This conversation covers lending, insurance, how to think about development, and more.  


Darren's father in law taught him that "Cash may be king, but cash flow is queen."  Thus, in the beginning of Forum they were focused on cash flow.  Today they are willing to develop real estate as well. 


Forum's investment structures are through LLCs as opposed to an LP/GP structure, which is interesting.  We hope you find this conversation enjoyable. 

Vitaliy Katsenelson - Soul In The Game

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