Podcast Episode 50: The Humble Brag

How often do you think our process has worked out in our favour and how often have we missed the boat? Find out in this week’s episode of Barenaked Money when we look back over the past fifty episodes.

Episode Transcript

BARENAKED MONEY PODCAST: EPISODE 50

The Humble Brag

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.

Josh:
Hello, everyone. Barenaked Money here, Collin and Josh get naked as usual. And Colin, you were just telling me about your viewership of Billions last night. What were they launching?

Collin:
Well, it was funny because, again, in prepping for this podcast and… I’ll let the cat out of the bag, is this is a “I told you so” podcast. So we’re going to revisit some things that make us look smart. There’ll be caveats in there. We don’t always look smart, but we’ll be talking with that a little bit, but it was part of what brought it to mind was I was watching an old episode of Billions because I’m way behind. And for those not familiar, it’s a HBO special based on a bunch of guys running hedge funds and all of the nefarious things they get into. But anyway, the big part of the story arc was about a SPAC they were trying to launch and I said, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding” because SPACs are something, special purpose acquisition corporations, that we’ve combated on in the past. Is that not right, Josh?

Josh:
Yeah, we were able to. We’ve done about 50 podcasts now, I think, and we were able to go back through the archives and pull out six or seven points where we’ve looked smart over the last year and a bit. So this is it. This is all those smart moments condensed into one.

Collin:
Yes. Well, my favorite’s… Going back to the SPAC thing, my favorite SPAC was the Shaq SPAC.

Josh:
Actually, I regret that I didn’t look up how the Shaq SPAC is done.

Collin:
Anyway, for our listeners, a SPAC is basically… It’s a blank check fund. It’s a pool of money put together for no specific purpose to take advantage of a special opportunity at some point. And I think there’s a defined time horizon. You got to put the money to work in two years or something, but it’s kind of a “close your eyes and open your mouth” kind of investment. You’re going to get a big surprise. So, they were really, really hot there for a bit. I mean, when Shaq gets involved, Shaquille O’Neal, the basketball player, they must be a good thing. Right, Josh? What was the most popular SPAC you saw?

Josh:
I don’t know. There’s been so many that have come across the desk. I don’t even know. But just to take it back to what you’re talking about “I told you so” thing, so we regularly will raise some red flags when something smells a little fishy. And this podcast is to revisit some of those things that we’ve raised that red flag for over the last year plus, and just say, “How did we do? Were we right to raise the red flag? Were we wrong? Is the jury still out?” So one of them… And we’ll talk about some that have really played out in our favor, SPACS. Yeah. Just to elaborate on what you’re talking about, this is basically you’re giving somebody money and they’re telling you that at some point in the future, they’re going to take that money and invest it in something. They’re not telling you what, they’re not telling you how long it’s going to be, they’re not telling you what industry it’s going to be and where they’re going to find this company or what they’re going to pay for this company. They’re just going to tell you that there’s going to be a deal at some point. So I don’t know how this makes sense for people, but when money’s flowing and money’s coming easy, people are willing to bet a lot of money on seemingly a little promise.

Collin:
Josh, you don’t want things to make sense. You want things to make dollars.

Josh:
That’s true. That’s true.

Collin:
So did these make dollars? Did you find any evidence in the wreckage?

Josh:
Well, some of them have. There’s been hundreds or thousands of SPACs over the last couple years, so yeah, there’s some in there that have done okay, but… As our industry does, once there’s something that’s hot, they launch a product around it and they charge people money to invest in this product. So there have been SPAC ETFs, exchange traded funds, that have been launched over the last couple years. And I looked at what’s called a passive SPAC ETF. So, it doesn’t try to pick specific SPACs… It’s hard to say specific SPACs to invest in. It just kind of invests in all of them. And in the last year, that ETF is down 40%. So, yes, the market’s down a little bit over that period of time, 5% maybe, but this SPAC ETF is down about 40% over that timeframe. And so the post-merger SPAC… We mentioned that you’re writing somebody a blank check, they’re going to go out and buy some company or make some investment on your behalf at some point in the future. So the ones that have actually gone and made an acquisition of some sort, they’re down 65% from their peak last year, and that’s according to Bloomberg. Sure, some people have probably made a little bit of money on this, but the majority of people have lost money.

Collin:
Well, and it’s always the people who made money are going to be the ones that everybody wants to hear about, and so that can’t give the space a little bit more gas to keep going. And I told you, Josh, I’m going to suffice all of these proclamations of “I told you so” with so far. Now, is there a possible resurgence of SPACs in the future? There could be, but again, you’ve got to get comfortable with the “Sure, I’ll give you my money. Let me know if anything happens” attitude. I can’t see a big percentage of the population or a considerable amount of assets being comfortable with that equation.

Josh:
Yeah. It’s harder when the market is not going well. When things are going well in the market and it seems like money’s flowing easily like I said, people are willing to write these checks a lot more. A lot more willing to write it than they would be at a time like this when things are a little bit tougher, for sure. And now the other thing where people are making money on this stuff is whoever is sort of launching that SPAC or running that SPAC, they’re what you’d call sort of a general partner. So, they’re going to get paid when they find that deal and they’re going to get paid a percentage of the proceeds or whatever that go through. There’s people making money off this stuff, and when you write those blank checks, you got to keep in mind that people have motives that are not necessarily to maximize your dollar longer term.

Collin:
Yeah. No, I mean, they’re getting paid to launch these and they’re getting paid a fee to run these and they’re going to get paid a fee on successful completion of these. They’re going to get paid. So, if there’s something left over at the end for you, then that’s great. They’re a high trust investment. Let’s put it that way.

Josh:
Yeah. Yeah. To trust somebody you’ve never met before with thousands or millions of dollars. Great idea. But the next one here-

Collin:
[inaudible 00:07:01].

Josh:
Yeah. This one I know is near dear to your heart because you’ve been on this ship for… I don’t know how many years now, but the cannabis sector.

Collin:
Yeah. Since there was a ship, I’ve been on the ship, so I can then… It’s in the archives somewhere. I did a cross Canada tour to all our locations at the time about investing in marijuana and much everybody’s disappointment. I made fun of it because back in the day, when this launched, it was an idea. Marijuana is going to be legal; therefore, you should invest in it. No, no, no, no. You want to invest in things that make money. And right out of the gate, there was no evidence that there was money to be made. There was nobody who could show any credible financial results or any credible financial projections that they were going to make money at this. So, on that basis, yeah, I was making fun of it and I continued to make fun of it. And there was an ETF, again, an exchange trade fund, that launched at height of the mania or close to the height and it went public at $10 a unit, and it peaked at 21 or 22, I think, was its-

Josh:
25. Yeah. I was looking at it. It was right around 25. I don’t know if it hit 25, but it was very, very close.

Collin:
Yeah. Again, if you got in and it went up to 25, now the problem is when it did that, you were convinced it was going to 50 and you hung on. And last time I took a look, it was trading at four something. It still has not been, to my knowledge… I keep rather close look. There hasn’t been a real successful financial story anywhere in the marijuana sector. There’s nobody making money at it. Then I tell you who else is not making money based on anecdotal evidence. The black market is even making money now because the market’s become so crowded. The whole marijuana sector as a business venture is… I’m not even going to call it dead because, again, that sounds too final.

Collin:
There may be a way to make money in this in the future, but I think I’m going to declare victory on my skepticism over the launch of the marijuana industry and how there’s no money to be made during the launch. I’m going to declare victory, but that’s not going to preclude us from seeing somebody enter this space and actually make money at it. What I always suspected is at some point, when the market gets developed well enough, somebody’s going to buy up, I don’t know, 50,000 acres in Texas and be very efficient at growing marijuana and flood the market with high quality, low class product and make money at it. Well, Amazon it or Walmart it, and that’s when you could be looking at somebody that, “Hey, this could be an investment.” But yeah, I’m going to be bold enough to clear victory here because I was mainly making me fun of the launch of marijuana.

Josh:
Yeah. Well, with that ETF down 50% from where it was five years ago, yes, some people made some money along the way, but I think you’re pretty safe to claim victory on this one. Again, there’s probably going to be a company at some point that makes money off of it. It’s a commodity product, marijuana and cannabis. Yes, there’s different… Whatever. I don’t know a whole lot about it. There’s different strains and different ways to grow it and different flavors, if you want to call it that. But at the end of the day, it’s a commodity product. And what you see with most commodities is that they move in cycles and companies will make a lot of money from time to time and then make no money for long stretches. You see this in oil, you see this in gold, you see this in nickel, copper, every natural resource that’s out there that is based off of a commodity.

Josh:
And as you said, at some point somebody’s going to come along and purchase up a whole bunch of land or gobble up all these competitors for pennies on the dollar and build one sort of large consolidated player that does maybe have the scale, does maybe have the capacity to actually turn out some profits from it one day. But even, I think, the largest player certainly in Canada is Canopy Growth. And last week, their CEO said that he sees a clear path to profit and the stock got crushed. I don’t know. The market’s telling you something. Aurora Cannabis was down 40% just last week, in case you’re trying to bottom feed on some of this stuff. It’s probably worth just letting it play out a little while longer before you even consider it.

Collin:
Well, it’s always darkest before daylight, but there’s also the expression, “It’s always dark just before the light gets shut up forever.” So, yeah, [inaudible 00:11:28].

Josh:
But both things are true.

Collin:
In order to mitigate some of the feedback, I know when to get from people in my world anyway. There are different strains of cannabis. To say it’s a commodity may be a stretch, but they also don’t have any pricing power in a regulated environment. So, I think that’s the main aspect [inaudible 00:11:49].

Josh:
Yeah. Well, there’s different types of oil, too, but at the end of the day, it’s still commodity. And I guess this is what a commodity is, is the market is setting the price for the product. You’re not differentiated enough where you can go out there and charge whatever you want for the product or increase your prices in the face of the rest of the market going down. That’s very challenging.

Collin:
Yeah. No, absolutely. I just wanted to stand up for the people who are going to give me feedback on that particular point, because I can hear them right now. You put the next one on the list, Josh. And this is like beating up a piece of dirt. I mean, I don’t think anybody thought this was serious, but we did have our fair share of meme stocks over the last year. We can’t be calling meme stocks dead. I mean, the factory still runs. They still trim them out.

Josh:
Yeah. Well I think the Reddit forum is still up as far as I know. And some of these stocks, well, one in particular, GameStop has actually held up pretty well. It’s just kind of shocking to me. It’s still up 500% or something like that from where it was before this whole mania caught on. But again, as our industry does, once there’s a marketable product out there, they will create it. And the meme stock ETF is down 50% since it launched.

Collin:
No, no, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t read that note. You’re kidding me. They’ve launched an ETF based on memes?

Josh:
Oh, yeah. It’s actually called meme. That’s the ticker. It’s meme.

Collin:
Oh. A little bit of me just died inside, Josh.

Josh:
You should know that this was coming. I don’t know why this is surprising.

Collin:
I wake up optimistic that everybody’s going to get smarter one day. Do you have any idea how much money is in this? Is there any idea of the size of it?

Josh:
I’ll look it up here while we’re talking. I was too embarrassed or too scared to look.

Collin:
That’s astounding. And what does it take to qualify as a meme stock? Is there a meme catalog that they pick from or the meme screen?

Josh:
There’s got to be something. There’s got to be something I don’t know.

Collin:
Is Morningstar launching a meme index?

Josh:
They must be. They must be. Yeah. Well there’s an index somewhere because that’s how they put together these ETFs, right? They track an index of some sort, so…

Collin:
You know who gets paid? The person that come up with the index, person that launch the ETF, and the person who runs the ETF.

Josh:
Yep. Anyway, down 50%. Most of these things have lost a lot of money. From their peak, they’ve lost probably even a whole lot more than that. It’s just we made fun of it at the time. It’s crazy to just go on an internet forum and everybody just banded together and decides that this is what they want to buy, but that’s what happened. Maybe we’ll be smarter the next time. I don’t know.

Collin:
Well, that doesn’t go in the bucket of investible ideas. In order for an investible idea to make sense, it’s going to be investible. There has to be a path that’s rational. If you’re going to bet on your rationality then, well, I hope you’re having fun.

Josh:
Yeah. Now there’s a number of these red flags that we’ve raised over the last little while, where I think jury’s still out. And for me, one of those things is cryptocurrency, Collin.

Collin:
I think the jury has come back and emphatically said, “No.” Again, I think the red flags we’ve pointed out have kind of a little bit come to fruition. Again, it wasn’t a great store of wealth during this pullback. It does not replaced gold. The hype has proven to be far more than the practical uses of it. And the more I dig and the more I read as to how narrowly held the vast majority of this is, it really does wreak of an old fashioned Ponzi scheme. And because of the secrecy around it, you can never be sure. And I’m sorry, I can’t buy into something that’s this opaque, that there could be nefarious things behind. Because, again, it was the… One of the exchanges came out, Josh, and let everybody know that if they actually went bankrupt, that everybody was going to lose their deposit. That was fairly recently.

Josh:
Well, that’s not opaque. That’s transparent. They’re as naked as we are.

Collin:
That particular aspect is very transparent, but I mean that whole idea… I mean, that would be like your bank saying, “Yeah, if we go under, all of your money, the savings account here goes away.” If you’re going to function in a space where that’s the reality, I can’t see that getting a whole lot of Main Street acceptance.

Josh:
Yeah. Well, we’ve seen a couple go away, basically go away. Couple of these coins go away over the last little while. The Luna and Terra are the names that you’ll hear written about out there. So, these are cryptocurrencies that basically have gone from a hundred to close to zero over the course of a week or two weeks. And this is what we’ve been talking about in terms of the risk with some of this stuff. You just don’t know. There’s no track record, there’s no history, there’s no proof in the pudding of what this stuff is going to be longer term. So, if you’re throwing money at it, your chances of ending up at zero are… They’re there. They’re significant.

Collin:
Well, are those the coins you referenced… Are those in the family of stable coins that has been launched?

Josh:
Yeah. So you and I here are talking a little bit of nonsense here. We don’t really understand everything that’s going on here, but, yeah, stable coins. The value of these ones in particular are supposed to track the value of the US dollar, up and down. And they had some decentralized, which is sort of the big concept here. These are decentralized. There’s no influence or touching of the way that the mechanism works by any individual or outside party or institution. So, it’s supposed to be, again, totally decentralized. It’s all kind of automatic to run on its own, which sounds great in principle, sorry, in theory, but when you actually apply it, what we’ve seen is, yeah, the stuff can still blow up. So, they’re supposed to be tracking the US dollar sort of one for one or whatever the peg was. And when that broke, when things broke down, the whole thing collapsed. So, the whole idea of decentralized being more stable, well, not always.

Collin:
Well, yeah, the whole peg thing. I mean, again, assume as the market senses that there’s a system in place, somebody’s going to trade against you. And all the way back to long term capital management in the 90s, right? There was an arbitrage play. They were always trading on some kind of arbitrage opportunity or some kind of imbalance in the market. Basically when you peg a currency to the other side, there’s going to be an imbalance that you’re trying to overcome, and there are going to be sharks out there that are looking for that. And if they sense weakness, they’re going to take you down. And that’s why these things are really untenable, especially when there’s no oversight and very little transparency as to what’s going on. Now, I think I’m going to be bold, Josh. You have this in the jury [inaudible 00:19:26] category. I think we’re winning this one. Unless there is a new significant iteration in crypto, I think we’re right. I don’t think there’s anything here to see. Anybody who makes money in this [inaudible 00:19:38 making money going to Vegas.

Josh:
Maybe. I guess I would just… I’m hesitant to claim victory or anything, even to say that I’m winning right now, because I remember when Bitcoin was 15,000 bucks or something several years ago. We had a little pool at the office and said, “What is Bitcoin going to be worth?” I think it was three months from that point poin time. And I had guessed 3000 or something like that, and it’s 30,000 today. Even though it’s dropped more than 50% over the last few months, it’s still 30,000. So, I’m willing to suspend a claim of victory or winning at this point. I have said before and I still do believe that there’s going to be some areas in this space that truly turn out to be lucrative and really game-changing. But I just… As you said before, this isn’t investible. I don’t think this is investible right now, because I don’t know what those areas are going to be and I think there’s… I don’t know how many coins now. 6,000, 7,000 coins? I think most of these are worthless still. So, we’ll see. We’ll see. I’m not willing to plant my flag anywhere yet.

Collin:
Well, there’s [inaudible 00:20:51] to remember that a decision is right or wrong based on the information available at the time we made the decision. The outcome is not a good or bad decision make. So, as much as we’re prognosticating here… Again, there’s no information currently available that would lead me to believe this is investible or anything you should have in your portfolio at this moment.

Josh:
Yeah. Now, this one… It’s going to trigger me, Collin, so you got to talk about real estate.

Collin:
Yeah. Josh, just take a breather, get your stress ball out, whatever it takes. For Josh… And again, for those who haven’t heard… I’m not sure what order the podcast will come out, but Josh has posted about his final foray into completing his real estate purchase. So, he is a little bit damaged right now. For those listeners who’ve been listening sequentially as we’ve gone through, we recorded the podcast back in April when Josh was embarking on his buying of a house. And it seemed that the landscape had shifted a little bit because the numbers that had come out from March were looking very, very strong, but his experience in April seemed to be a little bit different, which is… We commented that the numbers that get recorded are trailing and you don’t exist in last month, you exist this month.

Collin:
So, we have seen, since the recording of that podcast, a few signs… I wouldn’t call it weakness, but plateauing. There’s some of the errors come out of the bubble over the last little bit. It’s been a combination of things. It’s been a combination of people’s attitudes maybe are not quite as strong interest rates have gone up a little bit. Banks are being a little bit more concerned about valuations… And again, to be clear, not to repeat myself over and over and over and over and over again, we’re not saying real estate’s terrible. We’re just kind of poking a little bit of reality into “it’s not a sure thing and it’s maybe not the best thing and it has weaknesses.” So again, buying a house to live in for 20 years? That’s a human dream and that’s nesting and that’s all kinds of wonderful things. Buying a house you want to flip in the next two or three years? There’s a whole lot of hair on that right now.

Collin:
There’s a whole lot of things that could make that a little bit challenging, and surprisingly so because, again, if you’re going along, behaving as if things are the way they were last March, you’re liable to be a little bit surprised with how unsimilar things are. Just be careful, have your eyes open. I’m going to steal part of the other podcast and I’ll say it rather than Josh say it, just so it sounds different. Keep in mind the lender’s going to do an appraisal, and just because you are crazy and you’re going to move into your dream house and you’re willing to pay $5 million for the property, it may only appraise at four. That’s going to cause you a problem. And it’s also a really good warning indicator that maybe you’re being a little bit over enthusiastic in picking up that property. So, I think the real estate market has started to soften a little bit. Where it goes from here, I think, is going to really depend on what continues to happen with interest rates, for sure, and what people’s sentiment is towards things. Maybe we all finally have the headline from [inaudible 00:24:12] that night where they said that zero shares [inaudible 00:24:14] on the S&P 500 to Vegas, everybody finally has what they wanted.

Josh:
Absolutely.

Collin:
Maybe everybody finally has the host they want and it’ll all slow down.

Josh:
Yeah, of course. So you talked about Bitcoin sort of being a store of value and hasn’t really proven to be the case. It’s been just as volatile, if not more. Actually, well more volatile than stocks, the new gold Bitcoin. Well, how about the old gold? We’ve been a little bit cautious on that as well, right, Collin?

Collin:
Well, that’s a bit more of a moving target because I hear the theories all the time and I’ve had dozens of people talk to me about how Gold’s obviously going to $5,000 an ounce and all these other big theories. And they seem to hold together because they’re looking at fiat currencies and monetary policy and the lack of faith in the system, all the rest of it. At the end of the day, none of that’s happened. I mean the scariest days we’ve seen on the market, I watch it. I’ve got gold on my ticker and I watch it, “Oh, this would be a day that Gold’s going to shoot up dramatically.” It really hasn’t. It hasn’t done what people told me it was going to do. It hasn’t done what I think people expected it to do. It’s held its value. It hasn’t gone through a precipitous decline, but it’s still not back at an all time high. So, you’re holding onto something that’s trading roughly where it was 10 years ago, Josh.

Josh:
Yeah. Yeah. 2011. I was looking at the price chart. It hit this price point right around 2011.

Collin:
Yeah. So I mean… I would guardedly say that, yeah, it’s maybe held up a little bit better over the last year, but for an asset class to only really add value once every 10 years is probably not something you want to have a whole lot of weight. It’s like having that one bear in your portfolio that does really well once every seven years. Do you really need that around?

Josh:
Yeah. Highly volatile. And as you said, it’s flat over the last year and inflation’s at the highest point in the last 40 years. So if you think it’s really protecting you from inflation, I don’t know. The tie doesn’t seem to be as close enough that it would need to be to make it super valuable. We have to admit some wrong spots as well, Collin. There’s lots of them. I’m sure people can find a few more. But for me, the biggest one is Tesla. I’ve been bashing Tesla for five-plus years now and look pretty stupid doing it.

Collin:
Oh, I don’t think you look stupid and you could still be right at some point, but…

Josh:
Well, at some point you can’t just say it took so long to get there and I’m right. You’re just wrong, right? This is the thing where they say, well, yeah, I could call a bear market forever or a recession every year. At some point I will be right, but that doesn’t mean I’m really right. It just means that eventually it’s going to happen. And if I’m wrong five times out of six and right the sixth time, I can’t really claim that as a victory. Let’s be real.

Collin:
Well, I’m in Josh’s fan club. I would call you that you’re the winner and I’d give you the star and everything in that circumstance. But no, I think that the Tesla thing is… They’ve done the completely improbable and I would stand behind… If you had bet on the series of events that it took for them to hit this point, I would call you optimistic, because, again, there’s a bunch of leaps of faith that were taken there. And God loved them [inaudible 00:27:49] they landed them and it was one of those ideas that it’s executed well. So, again, congratulations to them. I guess it’s funny. One thing that sticks in my craw is I’ve heard Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos comment about how wonderful it is they’ve grown their companies because of all the wealth they’ve created for all of the investors that have invested with them and how many billions of dollars that they’ve created.

Collin:
Just want to remind Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos that was normally at the expense of mom and pop shops and other businesses all around the world. To say you’ve created something and nothing is a bit of an exaggeration. You destroyed a lot of other businesses with your success and, I mean, that’s the way the world functions. But yeah, I wouldn’t call them benevolent creators of [inaudible 00:28:38] but they have done some neat stuff.

Josh:
Yeah. Congrats to them on that one. I’m a slight victory if Tesla’s down 35% this year, but it’s still way up over basically every other timeframe. So, yeah, it’s been… Can we say it’s the exception that kind of proves the rule? A lot of the stuff… We’re not saying unequivocally that it’s going to blow up and go to zero. I think what we’re trying to say is you just got to be careful with it because there’s a chance that this ends up really, really badly. And as we’ve said multiple times, it’s more about hitting for average than hitting for home runs, right? If your one out of 10 works out well and the rest of the nine work out at zero, then you’re probably no further ahead.

Collin:
Well, again, we’ve often said the secret to creating wealth is not about hitting the home run, it’s about never blowing up, right? It’s not about hitting the one right thing, it’s about never getting it completely wrong. I mean, there’s a principle in Nassim’s book they’re… The Black Swan talks about Barbell Investing. He’ll take 90% of your assets, put it [inaudible 00:29:48], take 10% and swing for defenses. Sure. I mean, that’s pretty complicated, difficult way to get an average return, but there’s some efficacy to approaching things that way. But our comments and we’re pretty much in lockstep on this are going to be about avoiding the big blowups. If you, as an individual, can avoid any big blow up in your portfolio, and by blow up, I mean something going to zero permanently or having a permanent impairment, then, yeah, you’re waiting the averages in your favor. At the end of the day, that’s all we can do is wait the averages in your favor to say there’s a guaranteed anything. You want a guarantee? Buy a toaster. They come with a new toaster, if you need one. They just don’t exist in the marketplace. There’ll be promises out there like, “We’re going to peg this to the relative valuation stuff.” There’s all kinds of promises out there, but they’re [inaudible 00:30:46] and not always something you can count.

Josh:
So looking back at this conversation and all the things that we talked about, what do you think we’re most likely looking back on five years from now and saying, “Ah, remember what we did that ‘I told you so’ podcast? Damn, that was stupid.” Which specific investment or asset do you think we’re most likely to feel that way about?

Collin:
There’s a path forward for Tesla to continue to be successful and more successful, more revolutionary. I think there’s still a path forward for Tesla for this point, but we picked some real drags here. Marijuana could turn the corner, but I wouldn’t say we were stupid to say at this moment in time, but marijuana is something that could turn the corner. It could become an amazing business at some point in the future if there’s a revolutionary provider out there. I hope meme stocks are dead. SPACs are too specific to a point in time, I think those are dead. Crypto may still be around and that would surprise me in a painful way.

Josh:
You said it would surprise you if crypto’s around?

Collin:
In any meaningful way. If you’re still talking about it as an alternative, I’m not sure how long the alternative band way it can run, because right now everybody’s, “It’s alternative.” If you wake up 12 years from now, it’s still the alternative to nothing. You at least have to change… I would hope you’d have to change your story.

Josh:
Yeah. See, I think that’s the one for me, the one bucket where I think there’s going to be something that comes out of there that’s a massive win, I think, out of crypto. I don’t know what it’s going to be. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I think we’re going to look back in five years from now and say like, “That was an awesome one.” More like kind of the Amazon emerging from the tech bubble. Yeah, you’re going to have hundreds that just blow up and end up at zero, but something’s going to emerge as sort of a real player.

Collin:
I think, more likely it’s going to be music streaming came out of Napster.

Josh:
Sure. Yeah.

Collin:
The original company that launched it was… Well, that was a crime, but the underlying technology actually revolutionized the industry.

Josh:
Yeah. And now you have Spotify, right? And that’s a multibillion dollar company. So, I think something like that’s going to happen. Like I said, it’s not investible at this point.

Collin:
Yeah. In our humble… Oh, can we say humble opinion, Josh?

Josh:
No, not on this podcast. It’s not that humble. [inaudible 00:33:16], I guess. The humble “I told you so” podcast. I don’t know if that works or not.

Collin:
I told you so brackets so far.

Josh:
Yeah. There you go.

Collin:
Well, thanks everybody for tuning into the latest edition of the Barenaked Money podcast. As always, we are looking for feedback. If there’s something you want to hear about, please let us know. Josh and I are pretty much willing to tackle anything in the financial space. And if we’re not, we’ll find somebody on the team who is willing to tackle whatever you bring forward. We’d be fine with any kind of suggestion you want to bring forward. Josh, do you have anything you want to ask for audience?

Josh:
Just don’t ask us to do 30 minutes on marijuana stocks or SPACs. That’s all I ask.

Collin:
All right, there you go. It’s been recorded. Thanks, Josh.

Speaker 1:
This information has been prepared by White Leblanc Wealth Planners, who is a portfolio manager for iA Private Wealth. Opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the portfolio manager only and do not necessarily reflect those of iA Private Wealth Inc. iA Private Wealth Inc. is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. iA Private Wealth Inc is a trademark and business name under which iA Private Wealth Inc. operates.

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