I think the biggest challenge, Well, it depends entirely on what you're on,
what your profile as an investor is. You know, I think if
you are an endowment or you are a mutual fund, it's trying to find
or trying to work out whether by diversifying, by diversifying geographically, by diversifying
away from uber megacap. You know, everyone talks about the Big seven,
but globally it's twenty to thirty stocks that really matter in the entire equity universe.
You're listening to Carrie. Let'sa's Financial Survival Network where you get valuable information
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And welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your host, Carrie Lutts. Well, we love getting newsletter writers on
the show because newsletter writers, as a lot, and I know a lot
of them, really have their own unique point of view on things, and
they really have insight into things that ordinary folks might not have. We just
came across one that I want to share with you and it's called Nutstuff nut
stuff dot co dot UK. William Nutting, you are the proprietor of the
site out of the UK, and you have a rich history in the financial
sector and then you decided to write about it and here we are. So
thank you for coming on. Appreciate it. If anybody has a question for
William or myself, shoot me an email kl at carrie lets dot com.
So well, like you kind of backed your way into the newsletter writing thing.
I think a lot of people start out in the financial sector and wind
up writing newsletters. How did you wind up doing this? The Kerry Hi,
I'm great to be on the call. I mean, I was a
weirdo. I never went to university. I went to school, went to
the morning school from the age of seven. I think my parents loved me.
But I went to going to school from the age of seven and I
ended up in I kind of fell into the financial services industry after leaving the
military, and I was naturally I think I graduated towards or gravitated towards equities
because it was stories and it's still of reflected real life, and so you
know, I sort of I developed a way of understanding how an equity portfolio
should somewhat reflect your interests and the things that you think are relevant and interesting
in life. And then twenty five years later I'd sold institutional research, which
was increased to me, I think, becoming unintelligible, conclusionless perfectly hedged,
realistically correct, and to be honest, most of it was utterly useless if
it was the restaurant industry, ninety percent of a guests thrown away uneaten if
it was the food in the restauran industry. So I kind of basically started
writing my own and with the backing of some incredibly loyal institutional clients and some
well known people in London who managed money very effective for many years, I
launched that stuff. And the whole idea was to really write something not once
a week or once a month, but much more than that, like two
to three times a week, that connected the real world and the financial world.
And it was designed not to have everyone agree with me. It wasn't
designed to be consensual. It's designed to make you question, make you think,
make you laugh, and make you money or save you money. And
when I say, save you money. If you're sitting with someone who manages
your money, uh, it's it's It gives you a bunch of tools to
say to them, how do you you thought about this? Why are you
positioned there? Why are you sitting in the cave at everyone else's city?
And why are you not thinking about X, Y Z? And so I'm
you know, I try not to offend, but I try to provoke,
and I think to provoke intellectual thought, to ask questions what if? What
if? What if? It's just an incredibly useful thing to do. And
I think it was Nikolai Tangen who on the Norwegian sort of wealth fund.
He said, you know, bide him sending the alpha in his experience,
came from being contrarian. Well, I'm by nature a contrarian, but I
hope I write in kind of with reasonable English comprehension, and I write in
a in a in an a legend, in a in an understandable and logical
way. I don't. I tend to avoid financial babble speak. Okay,
I'll buy that. And yeah, we kind of came about it from different
the different sides. I was a lawyer. I like to say I'm America's
top recovering it Atorney and you know, I kind of got into this financial
thing because I just saw like a lot of garbage out there. So,
so your opinion, what is the number one challenge facing investors worldwide in seeking
out good returns and hopefully providing for your retirement or for your future. What
do you think the biggest challenge is there? I think the biggest challenge,
well, it depends entirely on what you're on, what your profile as an
investor is. You know, I think if you are an endowment or you
are a mutual fund, it's trying to find or trying to work out whether
by diversifying, by diversifying geographically, by diversifying away from uber megacap You know,
everyone talks about the Big seven, but globally it's twenty to thirty stocks
that really matter in the entire equity universe. Can you versify away from those
stocks? If you can, then I think there's a tremendous opportunity in special
situations, small cap as a situation. There's an opportunity in crypto and goal,
there's opportunities in in uranium and commodities. There's huge opportunities in emerging markets
x China. So I think such, I think those are the challenges.
The challenges are but unfortunately, a lot of the places that are most exciting
and most interesting I described as kind of they're the shop glasses. And the
problem is the money management industry. Because it costs as much to manage five
hundred million as it does to manage five billion, you end up in a
situation whereby everyone really wants to invest in the same buckets. And actually,
I think the most exciting area of the market tends to be the shot glasses
of market capitalization. And so I think I think the conundrum is being able
to have a mandate to diversify into kind of more. What I describe as
more isstry place in the market. And you know, maybe there are others
out there who are much smarter than me, who can who can who can
ascertain you know, a value add on metaverse or a value add on Doo
or a value you know. I can try and do that, but I
think my time is best, so maybe focusing on other bases. Okay,
So what the area of the investment landscape most excites you at this particular moment
in time. Well, I think it's the what if on geopolitics. Actually,
I think it's I sort of stand back and answer that question by saying
that as we go, as we've gone from an era of free money,
and in an era of free money, you know, it takes free money
economically as negative real rates. That's an environment where you buy lottery tickets.
That's was Kathy Wood at arc Stream. Environment. That was technology companies,
dog walking apps, that's you know, all the companies we've talked about,
you know that that that were growing like a weed. It was eyeballs in
the tooth thousands, you know today it was you know, meteoric sales growth.
But in reality it was from Amazon downwards, companies that created great products,
that had huge growth, but were ultimately probably never going to make any
money. And so it was great when money was free because they had access
in capital. Right now that money is no longer free, I think we've
gone. We've gone to a world if you if you look at kind of
mad lost pyramid of needs, you know, all that markeup market capitalization was
sitting at the top of the pyramid. It was aspiration and and and and
feelings and emotions and such and I think we forgot that, we forgot about
the needs we've got, about the really basic needs. You know, egg
and old living in a cave. What did they really need? You know,
they needed heat, light, food, Well maybe not power, but
you know the equivalent of power. And so I describe it as you know,
the the the market would reward would a data center company and give it
a multiple of twenty or twenty five times sales because it was growing super fast
with great customers. And yet they forgot that the data center company was actually
plugged into a coal fired plowdstation, you know, or an angle or a
gas brand plowds station. And so I think, you know, when I
look at where the opportunities lie, I think it's understanding of the world has
changed. The world has changed to a wilder positive rail rates. It's only
the opposite in Japan. And I think in that environment, companies that are
going to be successful are pre castro yielding companies, deep company companies that have
repaired themselves, and companies that are ultimately selling stuff that we're all going to
need and use increasingly more right. And conversely, those companies at the moment
are a tiny bit of the investable universe, and and and investment weights and
on. My bet I guess is that you know, along with country specific
areas like that Arabia and such like that I think will increase their waiting in
the global benchmarks. I think of all of these companies that I'm talking about
in these areas that I'm talking about, will will also become increasingly bigger bits
of the index. Ah. So, so growth in the years ahead,
is that going to be rare real growth or I'm I'm I think completely not.
I'm massively excited by the next two billion people that are going to join
the global You know, what I'm excited about is that if we have you
know, everyone talks about regime change in the in the eastern places. I'm
excited by becoming regime change in the West because I think if we end up
with regime change in the West, you know, hopefully we can start through
embrace common sense in when they comes to investment spending, capital expenditures as a
ratio of GDP to go up massively. And so I think, no,
I think, I think, you know, the next ten years global GDP
will We'll go from one hundred and five one hundred and ten trillion to one
hundred and eighty trillion, and I think there will be a trifecta of contribution
to that, you know. I think it will be you know, it
will be the US, it will be you know, the rest of the
world, and it will be you know, China and Japan. And I
think those growth drivers are going to be huge and hugely exciting for those that
are willing to look and invest where the growth is coming from, you know.
And I always say to people that you know, what's exciting for investment
and the areas that are exciting for investment perversity, the same sort of places
that you would want to send your godson or your god daughter if they asked
you about where to go and they year after, you know, between school
and university. Not that you really do that in the US, but over
here we have the concept of the gap here and you know, i'd be
going to some of the more writing part of the world. Yeah, we
do that too sometimes. So so you think, so regime change in the
West, what does that mean we become more capitalistic unless you know everything's got
reliant upon government? Is that what that is? Well? I think if
you look at if you look at where we come from and where we've got
to today with this era of free money. You know, it's we didn't
we never really picked up that, we never fixed up the house where money
was free, and so we found ourselves in a situation with you know,
all the entitlement, all the deck, you know, declining growth mm hm
and and and uh. And it's a fairly dubious forays into trying to wag
to wars in foreign places there are finally being seen for what they were and
and I think the combination of all those things is coining a longer term weakening
of our position in the eyes of the part of the world whose eyes are
being opened by the fact that they now are chronology and the will have telephones.
And so I think to be I guess the takeaway point is to be
really excited and to be really positive. You almost need to take your crop
out of the West and go and put yourself into the Stans, for example,
or start countries in Africa and Lightningmibia. And I think if you go
to some of these dynamic places that have no old people, they have incredible
demographics, they have no debt, they have no entitled one, and they're
embracing capitalism. I think that's that's what I think is really exciting right now.
So you think the worst has had its run in and now it's the
rest of the world. Well, I mean I think, yeah, I'm
never going to write I'm not going to writ job of the United States.
And I think you know that if you put a gun to my head and
ask me about you know, what what what what? What's happening in the
States, I'd say I think little to know, maybe shallow recession and unwindening
excesses that you see and feel in Miami or New York or what have you.
But I think core America, no, I think Core America has had
you know, huge, huge wage growth, and Core America is, you
know, I think, is on fire and will have huge dynamic growth in
the next you know, in the next five to ten years. So so
no, I don't think all but I but if you think about things politically
and the margins in Washington, New York, in London, in Berlin,
in Paris, in Madrid especially, I would say to you, yes,
I think I think you know the what's happened, you know, what's happened
in the last ten to twenty years. You know, we are now being
seeing a very big reversal, and you think that's a good thing. Huh,
Well, I think it's a wake up call. You know. I
don't think it's a good thing. But I also don't think that it's a
good thing to wish for a decimated Russia. You know, I don't think
a good thing to think are a combetative China invading Taiwan, which I just
don't buy. You know. I think everyone needs to get on and do
business together, and I think hopefully the lessons are progressively being learned. But
you know, military invasions, you know, I don't achieve anything positive.
All they do is end up with an unacceptable level of death, which is
something we should all want to avoid. Yeah, they never go exactly the
way you think they're going to go do there, there's always a little surprise,
like being welcomed as a liberators right, didn't quite work out that way?
Son't always. But when you look at China, Okay, so I
think in the UK you have a better understanding and a better perception of what's
going on there. But basically from what I view on the my sources is
that they're having an economic collapse. But more importantly than that, they're having
an infrastructure collapse. I'm sure you're well familiar with tofu dreg projects and they
call them rotten tail projects. It looks like basically eighty percent of what they
built in the past twenty thirty years is pretty much collapsing. Why have that
right? Yes, I think we're all hearing that. I mean, I
don't sure I have a view on on the on the sofy stuff specifically,
but you know, China is sillic command economy. They the biggest issue I
think with China is youth on employment. And I do get remarkable that,
you know, whether the population is what they say, whether it's one point
four billion or one point two billion, I can't. I think. I
think President g wakes up every day, you know, and he's got only
make me more things to worry about, as I say, than invading Taiwan.
You know. So China is going through a much slower growth trajectory as
you would expect. Yeah, the tree doesn't grow to the sky, right,
the treat of growing the sky, and I don't. I don't know
that it needs to, you know, I think the demographics are the demographics.
I think the growth is the growth. I'm going to leave it to
people who spend much full time there than I do to have a new one.
Whether whether Chinese property is about to take another leg down. The people
I talk to, you know, say that it's you know, it's manageable,
and I guess it's like everything I look at. You look at the
fundamentals of how bad things are, and then you say to yourself, what's
the market pricing? And what I try to do is I try to look
at the places that are priced for perfection and the places that are priced,
you know, priced to ship put it. You know, So this is
you know, this is on the wild. This is otherfvigial intelligence versus marijuana
and cole. Okay, right, if you look at the valuation of coal
stocks three years ago, well you looked at the back of marijuana three months
ago, you'd never have seen that anyone was ever going to consume marijuana again.
And three years ago you'd never have assumed that we were ever ever going
to consume cold again. Well, the point is, we know in both
cases that's not the case. You walk around any Western city, I'm just
extraordinary how often I small marijuana in London, oh my god, and't know
New York. So you know, there's no mark, there's no market capitalization.
But you know, so when I look at when I look at these
interesting areas, you know, and I guess it feeds into China and China's
coals consumption, and it feeds into the lunacy of of of ESG as some
aspects of the SG and climate control and you know, an attempt to make
make sense of the climate. You know, I guess I you know,
I look at it once again and I say, you know, what's what's
price for what? And I think that's the that's the as investors, that's
what really matters. You know, I'm not going to take a I'm not
taking moral you know, I don't need to take a moral stance on things.
You know, I purely look at I look at how the real world
meets the financial world, and I'm looking for the opportunities. Yeah. So,
so marijuana's consumption continues to increase. Not necessarily a good thing. Certainly,
public intoxication has always been you know, looked down upon and discouraged until
recent times. Now it's it's okay, right now, We're now it's okay.
To be intoxicated in public and nothing nothing to see here, move along,
right, I think that's right, and I guess it's it's a part
of the case of the policy towards you know, enforcing the law, and
probably the governments have talked to law enforcement and said, you know, what
is it that we how do we want to spend our limited resources? And
it's probably not scraping junks out of gutters and worrying about marijuana for personal consumption.
I couldn't agree with you more. But that doesn't mean yeah, but
moral issues aside, it's probably growth business. Well, I think we've gotten
a really good insight, William into who you are and your philosophy towards things,
and hey, guys should check it out. Just tell us where we
find you how we subscribe to your newsletter. So you find me at www
dot nuts self, dot co dot uk. I'm on at Nutstuff Outfit.
On Twitter, I write, I write a weekend piece on a Monday,
and I publish my equity portfolio on a Monday, which is just purely designed
to show you that you know, if it goes down, I feel the
pain, and if it goes up, might feel the joy. But it
approves, I it approves. I eat my own cooking. We're a subscription
business. I charge one thousand pounds a year, which is eighty five pounds
a month. And the way I look at it is it's investmental quality research
for a retail price. And you know, if we, if we,
if we, if we make you questions, think laugh and make money.
You know, we're cheap at the price for the content that we have.
So I look forward and we we give a you know, we give a
month free trial and if you sign up, and I think we have actually
had a Christmas We have a Christmas at Christmas offer on until until until the
new year. So I just have a look at the website and we're in
that. We talk about uranium, we talk about AI, we talk about
all sorts of interesting relevant areas. But as I say, the key thing
I do is I talk about the geopolitics. I talk about how it connects
to the world, and then we're willing to talk about the individual stocks.
And I think, you know, we we do the end to end,
all right, appreciate it. They got a question for William myself k l
at Carrieloods dot com is the place to send it and of course on our
site, Financial Survival Network dot com. The direct link to William's site is
in the show notes to this interview. Appreciate you coming on, William.
It's been a pleasure and we'll look forward to speaking with you again. Carry
thanks so much. Really, I appreciate your time. Thanks for listening to
Carrie Lenz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the
latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,