Can you see any extreme value anywhere at the moment? No, we are at such an extreme in terms of global credit creation and such an extreme in terms of credit spreads. So there's virtually no difference in the market today between a corporate credit and a treasury. And that, that, that just means that the credit spigot is wide open. So there, there is nowhere in the economy right now is anybody pricing in the risk of default on anything. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to stock club. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by someone who has shaped financial publishing. And indeed, the financial landscape Porter standsbury in 2022, after an incredible career, Porter launched a new financial research firm called Porter and co. He started with a small team, a tiny amount of capital and a deliberate rejection of the copy heavy ads that dominate this industry. Now, less than four years later, it has worked out very well. Porter and co serves over 100,000 subscribers, including nearly 10,000 long term partners, which are their name for subscribers. Porter believes investing success is about survival, risk control, and compounding his firms first audited track record shows market beating returns with lower volatility, particularly in areas where he spent decades building expertise such as property and casualty insurance. Previously, Porter built one of the most successful independent research firms in the world. And in doing so, once again, helped redefine what it means to serve individual investors. Porter standsbury, welcome to stock club. Eminence, great to be here. I really appreciate the invitation. And I look forward to visiting you in Dublin in a couple of weeks. Likewise, Porter, very much looking forward to that. Now, I kicked off. I was low balling your very many achievements. So with your modesty filter turned to zero, would you give me your preferred 60-second autobiography? I started standsbury research in 1999 when I was 26 years old. I started the firm with total capital and of $36,000. We never had a capital call. There was no outside investment. I sold that business in 21 to the public markets at evaluation of $3 billion. And along the way, we reached over a million paying subscribers annually. And I did a whole bunch of things that standsbury research and I'm still very proud of. I think most notably writing about general electrics fraudulent accounting from 2002 until the company collapsed in 2017. I predicted the logical claim to have predicted the global financial crisis. But I wrote about it extensively for about three years and then shorted Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack all into oblivion. So my portfolio was up for 2008, which I think is a pretty incredible accomplishment. And then finally, I would just say that probably like my personal fondest memory and finances for about two and a half years, I wrote fake letters from the chairman of General Motors, telling the shareholders what they should have been told, which was there's no way for General Motors to avoid bankruptcy. Because in 19 of the previous 20 years, it hadn't earned enough money to even pay the interest on its debt. And I got a reply from one of those letters from Warren Buffett, which was a tremendous accomplishment for me. So it's been a long career. And I know that I've done a lot to help individual investors achieve really good results. Mainly, as you mentioned, by learning how to recognize and avoid financial risks. Well, that is somewhat a biography. And I hope you have that letter framed on over your desk. It's an email, but yes, I certainly kept it. Well, okay, let me start at 40,000 feet as I wear. As you know, I'm Irish, I live in Ireland, and consequently, I have a front row seat at the play show that is America. But I've never really lived there as in paid utility bills. I did a stint there when I was a kid in May in 1988. So my understanding of the big picture of the USA today comes from British Irish and American news sources. You, on the other hand, are born and raised in the USA. You've been central in your industry and successful in your industry as we both described for decades. So if America, USA, was a stock, great brand, huge scale, and messy operations, what would be your bull case and your bear case for America in 2026? This podcast is brought to you by Profit, the four minute amongst stock selection system built for long-term wealth creation. It's as simple as this, on day one, by an equal amount of the 10 recommended stocks on the rebalance date, Profit tells you what to sell, what to buy, and you repeat the process. It's that easy. The result, since 2009, Profit has delivered an average annual return of just over 19% with performance spanning multiple market cycles. It has, I performed the S&P 513 out of 17 years, that's 76% of the time, which is virtually unheard of. Sign up today, email
[email protected], and if there's a discount going, he has it. I think the bull case is very obvious. I think to everyone, it's the largest market in the world. It is remarkably culturally cohesive, considering the diversity that we have. There is a profound respect here for the rule of law, and for the basic tenets of human rights, you have genuine free speech here, you have due process here. Generally, wherever you go, the United States, your safe and your property is safe. So I think those things are very easy to understand. What I think is harder to really understand is the insidious growth of the welfare state here, beginning of course with the new deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and then expanding enormously in the 1960s under what was called the Great Society Programs of the President, Lyndon Johnson. The worst aspect of those things has been the growth in entitlements. Those entitlements now make up 80% of all federal spending, and those that spending alone is in excess of tax revenues. We've come to the point in socialism where we've run out of other people's money, and we've been living on the printing press, and living on enormous amounts of debt. It's true that our economy is very large, and it's capable of sustaining a large amount of debt, but that still has limits. And so I think just my judgment alone, I think that the huge moves you've seen in gold and silver this year are the markets pushing back and saying that America's credit card is finally really tapped out, and you guys need to make some very important structural reforms, or else there's going to be severe consequences for your borrowing costs. And I think I'm probably way out of consensus here, but I think that it's inevitable that the Treasury will default. And when I say that, what I mean is not necessarily that they won't pay the bills, but that there will be another technical default, like there wasn't 33, and like there was in 1971, where what you're being paid back is in clearly wildly inflated dollars, so that the promise to repay you becomes meaningless. So the parallel between GE, which looked bulletproof right up until it wasn't, and today's long term, or long-dated US Treasuries, is very strong. So if you would you say it's time to start selling Treasuries and buying gold? I have said for quite some time now that Treasuries are uninvestable. And of course, as you know, ever since I wrote my documentary The End of America in 2011, I've been urging people to keep at least 25% of their portfolios into gold. And so funny, because back then you would not believe how widely mocked I was. Everybody thought that advice was completely bonkers, but of course gold is dramatically outperformed, stocks, and just about everything else in that period. When I personally started buying silver in 2006, I wrote a hold newsletter back then. I'd love to send you a copy that explains how America's entitlement spending was entering a doom loop, and that default. Well, not why not why not happen anytime soon would be inevitable. And so I started buying silver when it was $2.00 an ounce. Unbelievable. I actually recall you, you being a bull, a gold bull, when Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed piece for Fortune Magazine, which I'm sure you know, which was, I think it was entitled, I was titled, why stocks be golden bonds? And he wrote a piece about that if you took every piece of gold known on the earth and melted into one giant big cube or we fit on a baseball triangle. That's what it's called a baseball triangle. And he said that they did that. Thank you, baseball diamond. And he said that the economic output of the equivalent value of companies was always going to be greater than the economic output of that square of diamond. And I mean, see, I've got gold. And you were calling the opposite. And I do recall that you nailed that. I just want to say, I think that I think the thing that Buffett never understood about gold. And I, this is conjecture. I've never spoken to him about this. But I think the thing that Buffett misses is similar to what a lot of people don't understand about gold is that if you, if you do a deep dive into the theory of money and you try to understand what is a perfect money, you actually need something that does not have an other use. So, so people say, oh, Bitcoin's useless or oh, gold is useless. You can't do anything with it. Silver is an industrial metal. Well, ironically, that is what actually makes it the most appropriate form of money because therefore its supply is very stable. And that, that ability to to conduct trade globally without a intermediary is incredibly valuable. And that's why I've also been very bullish on Bitcoin. I actually believe that Bitcoin is a better form of money than gold. And so I think it will have a much larger value in time. Yeah, very good point. And I would agree with that. And as a stock's only purest, I've never really given gold a whole lot of thought. Like all I know is that about 100 years ago, John Maynard Kean said that gold has one great merit. It cannot be increased that well, which is your point. Governments may print paper money, but gold remains stubbornly beyond their control. And I think everything you've just said is a is the 100 year later reflection of that insight. Last December, moving away from gold for a minute, you pointed out the time magazine had named the architects of AI, Zuckerberg, Mosque, Jensenheng, Sam Altman, as its 2025 person, our persons of the year. Then in a subsequent blog, you put forward that AI is real. It's world changing, but the stocks around it may be in a bubble. So for an ordinary everyday investor listening to this, how are you staying involved in something as transformative as AI without getting caught owning great companies at terrible prices? That's a very important question for everybody right now. And my staff and I have worked furiously on these issues for the last three years ever since ChatGBT came out. And it reminds me very much of when my career began in 1999 when I launched the Stanford Research from my apartment. The internet was transforming industries across the world so quickly and really small amounts of capital was able to disrupt businesses that had existed for hundreds of years. The best example of that is there was a single newspaper in the world that was profitable 10 years after because the internet transformed the way that we share and publish information. And that was very obvious to me. Among the things that we did was we shorted the America's largest newspaper which was a business called Gennett. And the paper was called the USA Today. But anyways, my point is that what I think investors really sometimes forget is that for every new Google, there's 50 businesses that Google put out of business. And so one thing I think is, again, it seems kind of obvious, but it's very important is that I'm long Apple and I'm long Google. I think that Google has the best overall technological suite in the world. And I think that they will win the AI race. They have the hardware, they have the best software, they have the best engineers, they have the best R&D. And their reach is uniquely broad. So they have AI already into automated cars. They have AI and into all of their systems. If you type in Google search, it's AI now. They're really uniquely positioned and they have a partnership with Apple. And this is very similar to great tech combinations. I've seen in the past. So Apple is going to handle the branding, the marketing, the distribution, and they're the best in the world at that. Google's going to do all the hard tech work. And that partnership is going to be way more valuable in 20 years than it is today. So I think that's a simple thing for investors to get their heads around. I don't really need to know more than that to be successful as an investor. And if I am retired and I'm worried about volatility, then I would also say for every dollar that I'm long Apple and Google, I want to be short 10 cents of things that Apple and Google are going to put out of business. So look around what is very likely to go the way of the dodo because of AI and find those things and have a hedge portfolio. Now I want to be really clear shortings not for everybody. And if you decide not to, you'll be fine. And if you do decide to short, please notice I'm saying 10% short versus a dollar long. So there are some guardrails. But I think that if you look at my track record from 1999 until today, in my model portfolios, typically we were short between 10 and 30% of the portfolio. And that really did reduce our volatility dramatically and provide some really nice, uncorrelated returns, especially during bear markets like you saw in 2020, like you saw in 2009, like you saw in 2001. We might swing back to a few big names later on on the podcast, but certainly Apple and Alphabet as a twisted pair for the long run is a great way to play the AI mega trend. If I change direction just slightly, Porter, you wrote a great post arguing. And I loved this. I truly loved this article. I say to our listeners to go to your website and read it and they get a moment, but you wrote a great post arguing that corporate spin-offs are one of the most consistently underappreciated opportunities, investing in investing because you explained that the market really usually misunderstands them and gets them wrong at that moment. And you went on to make the point that when a company spun out of a larger parent, many shareholders are either in different sellers, index funds can't hold it, active managers are kind of uninterested. It feels like the unwanted child, analysts, coverages usually tend, et cetera, et cetera, and all of that pressure pushes the price down. And then you explained that spin-offs also avoid the hype of IPOs, and then all the other downstream things like management usually benefit from a low initial valuation and so on. But most of all, the point you are making in that blog post was spin-offs often undervalued destruction caused by bad mergers. So to get to the question, are there any on your radar today? Are there any corporate spin-offs, breakaways, divestments, or you can just smell value where the rest of the world has looked at it and said, I don't know, I think it's dead. That is a great, great question. For those of you who haven't thought about this very much, watching high quality spin-offs and waiting for them is one of the very few ways of getting alpha for free in the markets. And when these happen, there are really two important things that you need to look for. One is obvious. You want to look for a spin-off that has a very high quality core business, right? You don't want to, you don't want to, you know, if a company is ejecting the bad bank, that's not the one to buy. So you need to at least pay attention to whether or not it's a core, it's a good, you know, it's a good business. As we turn on equity above 20%, do they have consistent revenue growth? Is it a business that you can understand? Is there a mode? Those basic things all need to, you got to check all those boxes. Like you would with any other investment. But the most important tell is number two, where did the parent company CEO land? Oh, yeah, yeah. If he goes with the spin-off, that's the one to buy. Oh, that's excellent. And inside, I never thought of, I never thought that one. That's the one to buy. And the excess returns in those situations are very substantial, you know, average return is like something like 22%. So, you know, roughly double the market. And I was for a short while, the Chairman and CEO of a public company, market-wise. And I can tell you, when you when you have access to all the companies information, you know who all the players are, you know, all the people, you know, all the products, it is not hard for you to pick out the winners and segregate them. Wow. So, that to me, the spin-off where the CEO leaves with it is like the ultimate insider by strategy. Yeah. And to answer your question, I'm not currently targeting any spin-offs at the moment. There is a spin-off that we invested in late last year that is at the end of its orphan stage, I believe, where the CEO after the spin-off not only left with the spin-code, but he also invested more than $50 million in the open market in the shares. And that is a new and current recommendation. So, I hate to be cheap, but I've got I've got to save some of them for my subscribers. But yeah, it's an it's an incredible story. In fact, I wrote this in December of last year and I said that I believe this this opportunity will be the very best investment that I make in my career. That's very. Where does someone go to find that? So, just let's come on the photo and we're all twitching. I was ready to go. Where do we sign up? Well, you just go to porterandcompanyresearch.com and that's all spelled out. So, you know, porterand company not porter and co porterandcompanyresearch.com. You can sign up right there and you'll find it in my recommended portfolio and my product, which is called the complete investor. And it's from December. I'll give you a little tease about it. It is an irreplaceable business that has over a hundred years of operating history in the United States. And it is the third most profitable business in the history of the US capital markets behind only Philip Morrison Vulcan materials. It's a very, very good business and no one's ever heard of it because it was recently spun out. And so, no one's heard of it. It's not an any index fund yet. It's completely an orphan. It's a really incredible story. Okay, FOMO at ten porter. You've written extensively about fear and greed and indeed human behavior. In your view, what psychological trait most clearly separates investors who manage to compound wealth from those who are constantly resetting to zero and losing their nerve you might say? That's a very important question and it's very underappreciated. To be a successful investor, you have to have an incredible amount of emotional reserve. If you're the kind of person who, you know, who spooks easily or who falls in love with things, it won't work very well for you. You need to be, you need to be, um, spock-like if you recall the old American television show, Star Trek, you need to be, you need to disengage from your limbic system and you need to make sure your frontal lobe is in control at all times. The other thing I will tell you is great is this is just an incredible truism that I learned from one of my mentors. Investors are people who buy from pessimists and sell to optimists. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, that's what they're going for for sure. So, yeah, you have to have, you have to tilt a little towards the optimism. But it's astounding to me if you look back at the history of the capital markets, you know, the capital markets have survived World War One, World War Two. They survived the introduction of nuclear power, including nuclear bombs. They've survived the Cold War. They've survived, you know, Coca-Cola is, in my opinion, far safer to own than a US Treasury bomb. And if you ask me, do I want to have a million dollars in Coke stock or a million dollars in gold, I tell you a million dollars in Coke stock all day long. And it's amazing that even though these things are absolutely abundantly clear and obvious to anyone who even looks at it for 10 seconds, it's still amazing how many people manage to lose money investing. It's to me, it's just shocking. It ain't that hard. Well, that's a lovely segue into a stock that a few weeks ago, I pitched here on stock club podcast and then I saw you mentioned it recently on X and it is waste management. I would just constantly raise their dividend. I think you said there was, I don't have it for me, but you kind of alluded that there's very few businesses as class as waste management. Is it a business you own in your portfolio and would you buy today? A great question. I can't really speak to it today. I haven't looked at it in detail lately, but I have been an investor in waste management companies for some time. I use them in my portfolio in replacement of bonds. So I don't like investing in fixed income. Because of the constant inflationary risks. So instead, I invest in things like property and casualty insurance companies, which are big, they're just big portfolios of bonds with an underwriting unit on top. And I invest in things like waste management, auto parts stores, other things that have operations that are so fundamental to the economy that nothing can happen without them. And so in that regard, their earnings are much more reliable and much more similar to a fixed income coupon than the earnings would be in a lot of other types of businesses. Great. Great answer. I understand that in general. You're quite skeptical of home builders. If I'm right, that's an investment because they're very capital intensive and usually debt heavy, cyclical. Is there any home builder you particularly like? Yeah, you know, what's interesting is that's becoming less truth. So for many, many, many years, for many years, one of my great investment case studies and the lessons that I would that I would always present to groups of investors to help them understand why capital efficiency is so important. And what I mean by that is a company that can generate a billion dollars on a capital base of 100 million is worth a whole lot more than a company that has a capital base of 10 billion to generate same billion in profit. And you want to be in the asset light business because more of the earnings will be able to be recycled into share repurchases or dividends instead of having to be invested in the business to continue to grow it. These things are these things when you think about them for a second, they're pretty obvious but when investors price earnings, they mostly ignore capital efficiency. So you might see a capital efficient business trading at 15 times earnings and a heavy capital business trading at 15 times earnings. That doesn't make sense. You're much better off buying the capital light business. And the example that I would always use is the share the home builder called NVR. And I've been an investor in NVR since 2007. Ironically, I said, look, we're going to have a huge housing crisis. And when NVR trades below $400, which it will because it's going to get sold off with all the home builders, that's when you should buy it. That stock today is around $8,000. So NVR is very different. This is now going back almost 20 years. What made NVR very different at the time was it was the only home builder that did not invest in land. And it didn't invest in land because it had gone bankrupt in the early 90s because of its land portfolio. And when it emerged in bankruptcy, the new owners absolutely verboten to own land. And so it was the first capital light home builder. Now since then, many of the home builders, including the major national home builders, have begun to spin off their property portfolios as they separately traded wheat. And then they have become much more like NVR and the asset like category. But even still, the NVR is still the leader in that model where 99% of all the homes they build are on somebody else's lot. And so that's why what I think you might have seen in the past was me being critical of the other home builders. But it wasn't really about home building per se. It was about the business model, the asset heavy model versus the asset light model. I took something, our three core concepts from something he wrote, I'd say about a year ago. And the first thing you said was asset allocation matters more than picking stocks. So like I used my Germany across all the various assets. The second thing I took was matching risk to your time horizon and temperament is really important. And the third thing, which brings me to my question, is be patient most of the time but aggressive when value is extreme. And on that, on that last one, can you see any extreme value anywhere at the moment? No, unfortunately, we are, we are in the, we are at a period of time, which is, you know, we are at such an extreme in terms of global credit creation. And such an extreme in terms of credit spreads. And as a result, all evaluations are extremes. Yeah, it's very, very difficult to find any good value today. And that kind of says to me, Porter, I'm sorry, that there's, there must be some dangerous financial narrative as being sold to ordinary investors at the moment. Well, there always is. Yeah, they're always that is true. There's not, there's not much better business in the world than, you know, selling schlock to investors, unfortunately. That's so true. So, um, okay, let's change gear for one millisecond. What's your favorite band and musician? I'm going to get you. This is kind of changing your, your frame of mind as we move into that. Oh boy, that is just so tough. Um, I love, I love, I love music. I love all kinds of music. I think the best, the best songwriter or the last, you know, whatever couple of decades are, are either Post Malone or Chris Isbel. Sorry, Jason, Jason Isbel. I don't know if you ever listened to Jason Isbel, but he's a, just a incredible singer songwriter. And I think that he was, I think, that means last night I'd sell him in the audience. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's a, he's an incredible talent. But yeah, I love all kinds of music. And I think it's, it's interesting that, that, um, Post Malone's music is both, can both be rap or can be folk country. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. It's fascinating. Okay. Well, that's the gear in your mind changed. And I'm, that's getting you warmed up if you like for a game called Steeze's Game in the World, byholder or cell. But here's the thing, you can go byhold cell or pass if you're just, it's outside your knowledge at the moment. So I'm going to name a company with zero research and preparation and just your intuition, you go by cell or pass waste management. Okay. So hold on though, because, okay, okay, let's put the parameters in place. Well, when you say buy, what's your, what, let me, let me, and along portfolio, would you buy shares and along folio if they were locked away for 10 years? Okay. So these are, this is a 10 year long term buy. Okay. That makes it a lot easier because then I don't have to worry about valuation. Yeah, exactly. So you kind of, we're speaking to the business model management team, discussion, absorb. Okay. Yeah. Waste management, the store was. Sure. Absolutely. One of the highest quality businesses in the world. Tesla. No, so, cell, interesting, intercontinental exchange, pass. Lockheed Martin. Bye. Berkshire Hathaway. Cell. Amazon. On the Berkshire. If, or I should say when, they spin off their property and casualty insurance company, then by, but their operating businesses are a bunch of garbage. Really? That is, that's a podcast onto itself. And I don't want to drag you into grand that you don't want to talk about, but is there any more he can give us? Oh, yeah. If you go back and you look, and I've done those research and I have an essay about it that I'm happy to send you, if you go back and look at every single one of Berkshire's large take private deals. So for example, the purchase of Mid-America Energy. So they've put roughly $100 billion into Mid-America Energy and other regulated utilities since 2000. Their return on invested capital today is about minus 40 percent. Disasterous investment. And no one realizes it because it's private. So it's hidden in the conglomerate, but you can see the facts. If instead you had simply bought what's the biggest, most credible, largest energy company that's publicly traded in the world as of 2000. It's excellent. Yeah. Oh, yeah, excellent. Of course. Right. So in other words, I'm not, I'm not trying to, like, be a rear-looking trader. I'm just telling you, if you, if your choice was, buy the largest publicly traded thing or buy what Buffett's buying. In every case, he gets blown away by the public analog. So think about this. He sold shares of McDonald's to buy dairy queen to take dairy queen private. Would you rather own McDonald's or dairy queen today? McDonald's, of course. Of course. So what I'm saying is what's the largest publicly traded analog? He's buying a quick serve restaurant business. Well, the largest publicly traded analog is McDonald's. He's buying an energy company. What's the largest publicly traded analog? It's ExxonMobile. If you go back and you do that analysis for every single one of his take private transactions, if they had done the public analog instead of the take private deal, then Berkshire Hathaway would be a $6 trillion business or something like that. It'd be massively larger. Another great, another case in point. He spent $55 million buying that crappy Nebraska furniture mark. Remember how he loves to brag about Mrs. B and how sweet she is. Well, what was the largest publicly traded analog to Nebraska furniture mark in 1985? Take a guess. Hooker furniture. Home Depot. Home Depot. Home Depot has made 26% a year since 1985 for investors. So we'd rather have Mrs. B or Home Depot. The reason why Warren Buffett is the world's greatest investor is not because he was a very good investor. He was an average investor. He's the world's best investor because he was investing billions of other people's money. He had this enormous pile of flow. And it's the 70 year runway. Yeah. So he basically, he had the equivalent of 6X leverage in his portfolio. And that is what explains all the app performance. His average annualized return without the leverage is about 12%, which is very average. Yeah. That's some piece stuff. So okay, well, I'm not going to ask anymore because that's a great way to finish the quick fire and I'm going to conclude Porter by asking you about desert island stocks. So would I divulge anything that's privy to your paying members? If you to own just two or three businesses for the next 20 years, just a reminder that profit lets you benefit from successful stock investing without having to constantly think about it every four weeks. It tells you exactly what to sell from your 10 stock portfolio and what to buy with the proceeds. Stick with the process through good markets and bad and 17 years of rigorous testing suggests you'll be very glad you did. Sign up today. I'd start by emailing
[email protected] if there's a discount going, he has it. Okay, I'm up to show. What would you buy and hold today? Philip Morris. I knew you'd say that. Yeah. That's it. That is it. Philip Morris, would you, would you buy a second? Philip Morris is going to outperform everything else. Well, that is one heck of an insight. Give us more. Tell us more. Why? Well, do you know how much if you put a dollar into Philip Morris in 1919 when it first sold securities to the public? You know, how much money you'd have now from that one dollar? This is probably like the rice and the chessboard thing where you double it on every square. I do not know. I'm not going to divulge my mathematical ignorance with that kind of exponential mathematics. About four million. Right. Right. So 16, 16% a year annualized return for more than 100 years. So nothing, nothing in the history of capitalism has made more money than Philip Morris. Nothing else comes close. So just as I put you on the spot by hitting you with names that I didn't prime you with, it's coming right back at me because my heart take, which is based on nothing except, you know, osmosis is that Philip Morris's business is going into decline. I must be wrong. Yeah, I think you're wrong. I think most people just don't understand what an incredible business Philip Morris is. Do you know, do you know who invented the light beer? Constellation, Brian's maybe Philip Morris. You know, I kind of, I should have really said, Philip Morris, considering our conversation. So Philip Morris bought a brewer from Chicago out of bankruptcy in 1971. Forgive me if my dates are not exact, but they bought this brewery out of bankruptcy because it had a formula for light beer. And they relaunched that beer as light L-I-T-E in 1972. And within three years of the launch of that product, it was the best selling beer in the world. And what was the name? Oh, what was the brand? Miller. Miller. Yeah. Okay. That is Miller. Miller light. Yeah. So people just they just they people really don't understand what Philip Morris is is the world's very best global branding and marketing business. And it's the best it's ever been. They created Marborough. And they were very savvy about this. In America, the Marborough man was a cowboy. But in Europe, he was an F1 driver. Oh, yeah. It's that's brilliant. It's just so brilliant understanding the different cultures and the different the different ideas of masculinity and the different play. They're they're absolutely brilliant. And the the death of the cigarette is vastly over overrated or whatever overstated. The cigarette volumes are increasing globally, not decreasing. Yeah. And watch watch content. If you watch Netflix, how many people were smoking cigarettes on Peaky Blinders? Probably plenty. I haven't seen all of them. All of them. So it's just these the ways that they find to get their marketing out are still very savvy, very sophisticated. And they're they're just they're just the best in the world at doing M&A around around great consumer products. So what is it now? Four years ago, I believe, they bought something they bought a business called Swedish Swedish match. And the whole history of the Swedish match company is really interesting. If you want to read a good book, go go read the history of Swedish match. It's it's extraordinary. It started by corrupt fellow selling or buying match monopolies all around the world. And I can't remember his name right now. It escapes me. But he ended up he ended up he was it was it was giant financial fraud underlying all this and he ended up killing himself. But Swedish match continued and until it more spotted about four years ago because they had this new kind of nicotine product called Zen. And Zen is a cornstarch infused with nicotine that you put in on your gum in a little package. And so it allows people Swedish. It allows people to enjoy their nicotine addiction without carcinogens. So and you go off to Sweden, you can they're always worried that nicotine patches inside their inside their gum. You could be talking to someone in Stockholm and you're thinking, what's wrong? Are they a boxer? No, they're wearing these little nicotine patches inside their gum. Yeah, we call them lip pillows. Anyways, that part that part of Philip Morris's business is growing dramatically. And they control they control about 75% of the total global market for those kinds of nicotine pouches. They also have they also have this incredible new heated tobacco product called iCOS. i-c-o-s and it's it's the thing to have if you want to smoke in Japan. And it's it's an electronic cigarette, but it actually warms up a tabasco a tobacco stick. And so it gives you the exact sensation of smoking, but it does so without lighting it. And so therefore it doesn't have the same amount of carcinogens as much safer. It's much easier on your lungs, et cetera. And that product iCOS is only now launching in the United States. And 10 years of that product alone will be a, you know, another 10 billion dollar business for them in the US. That is fascinating. I'm so glad we dived into that. Thank you for that, Porter. So that's my desert iron. That's my desert desert island stock. Wonderful choice. I never thought you'd change my mind in such a short period of time on a business that I'd somewhat put into the vice-booker, in decline, not relevant, makes you sick. And even all those different diverse, sorry, related diversifications are just absolutely on point. Can I say one more thing about Philip Moose? Please do. And this this will make a lot of people very upset. But look, I'm a realist. I didn't create this. It's not, I didn't make the rules. I'm just describing them. Okay. You think about how many humans that there are in the world. And think about how many of them are capable of producing anything or compounding capital in any way. Not many. Lots of people are good at consuming. Very few people are good at producing. Very few, remarkably few. There's a reason why 1% of the people own half the world. It's because they're that much smarter and faster and better. They just are. The reason why Philip Moose will always be the highest profits in all of capitalism is because they figured out a way to make billions of worthless people miniature compounding machines. People who cannot save a dime in their lives will find five dollars for a pack of cigarettes every goddamn day. You want to see a mode, want to see a motivator human being go talk to a crack addict. They find a way. And so if you went into Ireland in 1970s, everybody, well, most people were poor. Like they lived within their means. They couldn't go much further than their needs. But everybody smoked. Everybody always had a cigarette. So that is the secret magiciness of what they do. And it is an unstoppable economic force. That's an absolutely perfect ending. Porter, as you said at top of the show, I'm really looking forward to seeing you meeting you in person in a few weeks time at the tail end of March here in Dublin. We'll tell our listeners more about that as we get closer to the date. In the meantime, all that remains is for me to thank you sincerely for joining me on stock club today and happy investing. Thanks, Emma. It was a great pleasure to be here. I look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks.
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