Nick Train on Long-Term Investing: Patience, AI, UK Equities & 40 Years of Lessons

So welcome to the latest Moneywise UK podcast. I'm George and I'm your host and today I'm really delighted to be talking to Nick Train. Now Nick co-founded a Lindsay train back in 2000 and he has more than 40 years experience in investment management. He's the portfolio manager of the Finnsbury Growth and Income Trust and the Trust celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Obviously hasn't been running it for 100 years but it is the anniversary. He also manages UK equity portfolios and jointly manages a global portfolio as well. Now I guess this conversation continues something that I set out to do this year which was fewer podcasts but kind of conversations with people who I think have particular interesting stories. They have experience and they have perspectives to share so I'm delighted that Nick agreed to come along to this so Nick welcome and thank you so much for joining me today. I always love to start what I say is to get to know the person behind the kind of investment philosophy or just get to know the person. So anything I say please correct me as we go through but I think you spent 40 years in investment management. So what originally attracted you to fund management and what is it about investing that still excites you today? George thank you thank you for the introduction. I hope that it's a pleasure for you for your for your listeners. Yeah I mean Finnsbury as you say 100 years old I just lapped 26 years of responsibility for that investment trust so it's it's almost a quarter of the history of that of that company. I'm very proud of that actually. I like longevity. I like durability in the things that we invest in and yeah I'm a little bit proud to still be in situ after that period of time. Yeah no it's a good question and I mean the job is so privileged in a way because because it allows you to be curious about the world curious about history curious about the future and to try and derive judgments and forecasts from that just natural curiosity that I guess everybody has about the world that we live in. I just happened to have been paid for it and I feel yeah very privileged for that. I mean I do think there's a couple of other factors here and one that might sound a bit sort of pejorative or disparaging to myself or maybe other participants or professionals. What I would say is whatever anybody says about investment it is speculative it is speculative prices in the market know pretty much everything that can be known already and therefore it's only what is unknown that is going to move things in the future and that makes it necessarily speculative and I just observe in everybody and also in myself people enjoy a flutter do you know what there is this gambling instinct clearly deeply embedded in the homo sapiens and again you know I say it's been a privilege you know what fun to have been paid obviously you've got to deliver results over time but what fun to speculate about the future the more disparaging aspects personally maybe is that I recognize in myself a certain streak of maizoliness do you know what I mean I like the sense of accumulating wealth for my clients obviously but you know I'm participating in that I like this idea of wealth compounding over time I like the sense of owning even if it's only partially owning something of enormous enormous and enduring value I mean so for instance I mean we've had my god we've had a very very tough time over the last three years with our investment in Deagio I mean it's just in horrendous but before this tough period for Deagio and still today there's something in me that thinks on behalf of my clients we own a piece of Guinness and a piece of Johnny Walker and one in every three bottles of fruit sold around the world you know that goes to Deagio shareholders benefit as well I just that sense of owning something of extraordinary scarcity and long-term value psychologically that's been important to me as well and I think has been a motivator how about that for an answer I like that can I push back on something which in which maybe we'd work and cover further on and and and perhaps it's a unfair question and I do agree with you is that you know I've said in previous podcasts is I do have a financial advisor and one of the reasons why I have an an advisor is that I used to enjoy buying shares and and and do and I think you're right it's a it's a little bit of gambling isn't there it's like well maybe I can you know do really really well if I buy the share and and I just felt for me that wasn't a healthy place to be but I think it is it's one of those things I think I do want to talk to you about is that is there are we going to a stage where people go to know what just safer for me to buy the index you know rather than you know saying like you know it's such a hard one isn't it it's like as you say Deagio or whatever if I could just buy a FTSE 100 couldn't I and and away I'd go and how do you feel about that because that must be something that maybe you've been challenged on particularly because of this period of time where it's been difficult well I too have a financial advisor and with the growing complexity I've said more of of of tax um I felt that I you know that's not my expertise I definitely valued the advice I've received from an advisor about organizing mine my family assets so absolutely and the second thing I would say is that fundamentally particularly in this polity of the United Kingdom I think that individuals exposure to equity is tragically low you know I really wish more people in Great Britain had exposure to the stock market and and to a degree to the UK stock market because I just think it would be so beneficial for the economy but also probably for people's long-term um savings outcomes to have have greater exposure to equity as as an asset class and absolutely I would not have any compunction about arguing that the the most appropriate first exposure to equity for the average investor is a passive product I mean absolutely I mean if you if you've got no equity having some equity that's already a risk so why take the very considerable further risk of of concentration or just trying to pick stocks I agree but yeah but let's encourage people to own equity maybe I'm not going to get into here possibly because I'm still not sure even now that I've got an answer to it I'm not going to get into the active versus passive for the more experienced investor but all I would say all I would say is that I have felt personally duty bound on a bound throughout my career to invest alongside my clients I own no passive investment the vast majority of my equity investment is held in the the shares of the product that you the the investment trust that you you mentioned earlier and you know I'm a bit disappointed by the performance over the last five years and I recognize that we take risk I hope it's prudent prudent risk but you know you never know but I don't want anybody to ever be able to say Nick Train wasn't taking the same or even more risk than I was and I you know I felt that That's really been an important principle. If I'm here seeking to justify a fee that's higher for a passive fund, and I'm seeking to justify that fee by taking more risk than an index fund, then my goodness, I need to be fully exposed to the downside as well as to the upside on behalf of my clients. Does that make sense? No, and I think it is a really powerful thing because I think people are too polarized as to say one is right and one is wrong and as you say, even if you're right at the start of your journey, just having some equity exposure is good and whether that is through a passive or whether you take a step into active, it's really more about encouraging people to go into there. I do—well, this has been valuable for me throughout my career. Peter Lynch, the great fidelity investor in Miguel and I ran, Peter Lynch wrote a book. It's probably out of date now, in a sense, but he wrote a book called One Up on Wall Street. And in One Up on Wall Street, Peter Lynch argued that the man or woman on the street in many ways has as good an access to winning investment ideas than the highest paid analysts at investment banks. And his argument was, you know, if you see a product or a service that you think works for you, then it's highly likely that the company that's delivering that product or service is going to be a good investment. And maybe you'll have a sense of that before the Ivory Tower analyst, do you know what I mean? And again, yes, let's agree, everybody at the start of their journey passive is right. But that doesn't mean that smart people, responding to their own perspective of the world around them can't also make very, very good investment decisions, even if they're not so-called professionals. I wouldn't want to discourage people from backing their perceptions of the world. Yeah, of course. Putting all of their net worth into just two speculative ideas, that is a terrible idea. And I think that's such a good lesson, isn't it, is like, you know, if you see something and you think, yeah, that's a really good idea, and I'm using it. And I think then why wouldn't you? One of the, sorry, I feel, you know, I'd rather listen to this, that wasn't a question that was on here. So I just threw that out. But it doesn't lead onto this next question. And again, I'm not sure. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I do think that when we look at the UK and we look at it against the US, is the UK stock market sometimes characterising this kind of old economy, relatively low growth, and obviously we've seen it share of the global kind of market diminish as the US becomes a larger part of the index. Do you think that's fair, and what do you think investors may be overlooking? No, I do think it's fair. Because, you know, I do, you know, I'm a patriotic Brit, as well as being someone who runs UK equity strategies, and like so many, I've wondered, how is it that the UK's contrived not to participate? It has a bit, but not to participate as fully as it might have done in this extraordinary period of wealth creation that's been led by the United States. And, you know, one looks at that, that division that was made, it's actually 10 years ago, almost exactly 10 years ago, British institutions sold out of ARM. They sold it to the soft bank, the Japanese, soft bank subsequently listed ARM on NASDAQ, not on the London stock market. If ARM had remained a London listed company and its share prices performed as well as it subsequently has, today ARM would be the second biggest company in the UK stock market. And that's a huge chunk of value that, in a sense, the British economy, British investors have missed out on from a British company, you know, it's still a headquartered in Cambridge and all of the intellectual properties there in the UK, but somehow our stock market, our institutions didn't want willing to back it all, were happy to take the takeover offer. Yeah, it is a disappointment. I, you know, I think, you know, your question is absolutely pertinent. And, you know, in a way I find it difficult to rebut it, certainly relative to the not very adequate returns that I've generated over the last five years, but what I would say is that, the question I asked myself is, can I construct a portfolio made up of London listed UK companies that offer my client access to the big money-making themes in global markets? And actually, I think we can. And I think that there are any number of truly world-class business franchises listed on the London stop market very often with digital assets, digital strategies that it's not difficult to look at them and say, you know, you are as competitive at what you do as anything listed on NASDAQ. And then you look and you think, well, the one thing that's different is that your valuation is rather different from the comparable NASDAQ one. But I don't know, I certainly don't feel, you know, we've got a big holding, again, it hasn't done very well for the last three or four years. We've got a big holding in experience, I don't know if you or your listeners know experience, but, you know, that is the world's biggest credit rating agency, including the biggest rating agency in the United States. And that company has more proprietary private data on more individuals in the world and more businesses in the world than kind of any other entity. And Xperian is aggressively using its technology capabilities of which are very considerable technology prowess to utilize harness AI tools to derive even more value from that data. That's a London listed company. It's the biggest of its type in the world. It's got a unique data set. It's got a huge opportunity presented by AI and yet the shares haven't done very well. I've got to think that's a big opportunity, but. I'm going to jump across a couple of questions, though, because you talk about AI and everyone talks about AI, I don't know. And it's fascinating because I think some of the companies that you own and are probably thinking more about right-moons, perhaps it's a perception of the markets that they're a victim of AI, whereas you've kind of argued, obviously, to that, what do you think? Because you talk about Xperian and I think you've talked a lot about right-moons as well. What you think the market is misunderstanding, because I guess the market is so focused on it, is that everything is about AI and everything is going to be changing because of AI and our whole world is changing, isn't it? I will try not to that, and perhaps I was ahead of myself referring to Xperian's strategy vis-a-vis AI, but the point I wanted to make about Xperian is that, as you say, there's a perception that the UK, it's not my phrase, is Jurassic Park, and it's just the industry of the 20th century in graceful decline, maybe too high a proportion of the UK stock market, even today, you could characterize in that way. But if you are a stock picker, and you don't have to be, but if you are, you can find a business like Xperian that I don't think I'm imagining this, that that is the global leader at what it does, 23 out of the 25 biggest financial institutions in the United States rely hour by hour on Xperian's data and software services, it's an extraordinary global franchise that just happens to be listed on the London Stock Market, and I wish there were more of them, but that's the key. I do have a lot, I can and maybe even should say about right move and/or AI. I mean, I don't want you to say step by step, let's not say yesterday, I think it was yesterday, and Propic announced a major joint venture with Salesforce in the United States. And Salesforce's share price was up 20% or something on the announcement of this big strategic combination of Claude's AI brains with Salesforce's myriad of semi-captive corporate customers and the incredible and constantly replenishing business data on Salesforce's cloud platform. Putting the two together creates a lot more value for Salesforce but it also creates a lot of value for Anthropic Claude because it could take decades for them to access that business data and that client network. I mean, who knows how long it that might take them. So are there other businesses in the UK that have comparable deeply embedded digital relationships with their customers. And huge data sets that smart AI could extract more value from. Well, yes, there are. I mean, experience is one. But right move, right move is another one. You know, if you've got 90% of all time being spent on a real estate portal in the UK being spent on right move, then no LLM, chat GPT, no one can have the same insight into what's going on between UK individuals' interest and aspirations in the real estate market and the estate agent who lists the properties. I mean, it's just a unique space where put it this way, I'm not at all surprised that right move has invested over the last couple of years and as a result, somewhat depressed its profitability. Right move has invested in a service that it calls ask right move, which is essentially chat GPT in very broad terms chat GPT but for the UK property market. And you know, you don't know, you don't know for sure, but you know, who's got the right to win delivering conversational AI powered search to, you know, millions upon millions of UK individuals. Is it chat GPT or is it right move, which already has this incredible place where all of the inventory is and all of the attention is right move share price has fallen over the last 12 months partly because of the investment that they have been making in their own AI capabilities. But and maybe, you know, her might to say, you know, you have to learn to be humble when share prices go against you, but I my colleagues crucially the company itself don't see any impingement on their business as yet from LLNs, but they do see significant greater engagement both from agents and from customers as right move is deploying its own AI tools. I just think the upside if right move can execute, it's very, very great. And yeah, it's worth having an investment in. And I guess this comes to a doting back to another question is you run this very concentrated portfolio. I think I'll just look at the fact that it's kind of up in front of me. I mean 84% is in the top 10 holdings. And what gives you the confidence to kind of put so much capital behind relatively few businesses and then how do you how do you distinguish between genuine conviction and emotional attachment to an investment. And it's quite interesting actually kind of when you talk about right move is that it's very easy for us to turn around and go, well, actually, you know, what a bad investment that's been. But as you've spoken about it and actually it's often what we don't see that is actually where the opportunity potentially lies, isn't it? So and I guess, you know, I don't know, I'll let you answer this really, but I guess the advantage of our concentrated portfolio to some extent is that actually it does get you to know those businesses really well. But it would just be really interesting to to get your, yeah, to get your perspective around that. Well, I am Michael and so we were both, we were both exposed to Warren Buffett at a formative time of our careers. And, you know, that, that was such a, I spent such a valuable exposure for me. But that framework that that barks your half-a-way investing framework, it was such a revelation to me. And really, all I've ever wanted to do subsequently was to try and replicate that to the best of my abilities, which I, you know, has been proven I'm not in Buffett's league. But that's what I've wanted. That's what I've wanted to do. And yeah, you know, that one of the value ads for Buffett has been avoiding, sorry to use his silly word, diversification. I mean, there's issues with running highly concentrated portfolios. Believe me, there are issues with it. But one of the almost certain ways to deliver mediocre returns is to have a highly diversified portfolio of low conviction holdings, which you often don't know very well. I would say. And yes, you're absolutely right. The Buffett view was you don't need many investments. And as long as you have investments in substantive, easy to understand, robust businesses that can get through periods of difficult trading, because every business will have a period of difficult trading at some point, then that's the basis for an investment strategy. So to the extent that I wanted to quote, copy, or on Buffett, that portfolio concentration, that was a key tenet of his approach. I mean, the other thing I'll say, and I don't know, I'll say it because I think it's interesting, and it might strike a bell with your listeners. I mentioned a great fidelity money manager, Peter Lynch. Another great fidelity money manager, closer to home, Anthony Bolton. And I always remember reading Anthony Bolton's book where he described stockpicking as like walking along pebbly beach. He said, like walking along a pebbly beach, every time I turned over a pebble or a stone, he said, there was an investment idea hiding underneath that pebble. And I read that, and I thought, goodness, that's not what it's like for me at all. You know, for me, it's like, I'm walking on this golden sandy beach, and I walk for 50 miles, and every so often, there's a huge rock stack standing on the beach. This is vast boulder. And I think, oh yes, that's an investment idea. But they didn't, they've just never come very often for me. And I suppose I felt that I needed them to be really, really obvious. And that's another reason why I've ended up with concentrated portfolios. And I get, I keep jumping from questions questions, because there's another one I was going to ask you, but I want to ask you, because I think this goes on really, guess there's two questions that kind of run into each other really now from what you've said. And I love that kind of finding those big boulders. And one of the questions I was going to ask you about patients, but I'm going to leave that one to the next one. But your philosophy is kind of about owning quality businesses for very long periods, but valuation obviously still matters. And it's really nice to hear your passion around the companies and the companies you hold. Even if they have, you know, not necessarily done what you would have liked them to have done recently. How do you decide, when this big bolder, how do you decide when a wonderful business has certainly become too expensive or when a fallen share price represents a genuine opportunity than a warning, I guess. Listen, I guess the honest answer is I don't know and I don't know probably anybody who knows. You know, it is intensely frustrating when you own something for a long time and it does really well and the valuation goes up a bit and then it has a difficult time and it can unravel some of you, you think my goodness, you know, what an idiot I am, why didn't I sell that or reduce that holding at the top? I believe me, that's been higher in our thinking over the last few years. But at the same time, at the same time, at the same time, it's so, so, so important. Good to great businesses that can compound steadily over time, that the upside is so much greater than can be characterized by saying, oh, it should be trading on 17 times earnings and it's now trading on 24 times earnings, perhaps I should sell it because it's now on 24 times earnings. This is not a fantasy. If you look back at great business franchises over time, the right PE multiple for a great business at any point in time, probably ought to be 90 times earnings. You can actually work that out because you can look back and see the extent to which it's persistently surprised and done better than people expected over time. And listen, no investment approach is foolproof. Everything has flaws. But you've got to think about what your biases are and my bias, our bias has been to say, the world is a very big place. There's a huge opportunity particularly in digital businesses run your winners, because actually, actually, objectively, even if you look at the United States stock market, there aren't so many obvious winners. There's a lot of mediocre businesses out there. Now, it's a perfectly valid investment approach to say, I'm going to trade the shares of mediocre companies. That's a skill and some people really, really good at it. But we own relics. We've owned relics for nearly quarter of a century. At its peak, the shares over the period we don't do, at its peak, the shares were nearly eight fold. Fantastic. Sadly, over the last two years, two and a half years, the shares of not quite halved, but they've fallen a long way. We haven't sold any. And it's now only quadrupled over the period that we've owned it. Terribly disappointing. But the really fundamental question, how many companies in the UK stock market, certainly of any size, have quadrupled over the last 20 years, surprisingly few, and could relics resume its success as a share price? Listen, relics's business has going from strength to strength during this period of derating. The business is growing more quickly, currently, than ever before, and yet the shares have derated from understandable reasons. But I'm not saying we're right. I'm not saying we are right about relics. I'm not saying we're right about the investment approach, but a business like relics, particularly in the context of the UK stock market, that's where it's proven over a quarter of a century its ability to generate wonderful returns from its owners. Why would I get shaken out of that? What would I buy instead? That's the way I'd think about it. Now, I'm just going to say, if this is of interest to you or anybody, I keep mentioning books. Jeremy Siegel, stocks for the long run, classic book about why you should commit capital to equities over time. In one of the earlier editions, it's not in the most recent edition of Stocks For Long Run book. In one of the earlier editions, he did a study of companies that had demonstrated the ability to grow their revenues, their sales, at between 5% and 8% per annum, not very rapidly, not very exciting, but just a persistently grown 5% to 8% per annum. He worked out on a post-hot basis, scientific statistical basis, that companies that have got the ability to grow in that steady, remorseless compounding rate deserve price earnings ratios of 30 or 40 times earnings. Now, you know, they're much more valuable than you might think. When we first bought Diaggio, it was being valued at about 14 times earnings for exactly that sort of steady growth. And we took the view that Diaggio really worked for us for 20 years, by the way, that that was a classic example of a Jeremy Siegel type, steadily compounding business, easy to understand, clearly the best brands of its type in the world. And we can come back to Diaggio. But just so my framing was always, well, if Diaggio gets to 40 times earnings, maybe it's too expensive, I mean, it never did, but that would have been the framework. What I feel a lesson is that the growth businesses of the 21st century are digital businesses, and that means that their requirement for stuff, things, capital, it's lower, you know, that just isn't so much physical stuff in these growth businesses, which means that they generate even more cash out of their businesses than a Diaggio is able to do. And it does seem to me, therefore, likely, that the best digital businesses deserve even higher valuations than we might have described to a Diaggio. So, sorry, maybe I'm rambling here, but you asked a question about, do we think about value? Yeah, so there is a framework, but there's also a bias, and the bias is to say, if you own something really, really good, fretting about short-term valuation is likely not to be that constructive. Yeah, and I do feel, and I'd never wanted to go into this to kind of push on on performance and the stuff, and there's slightly refrain this question, because it talks, really talks about our own human biases, is that, you know, anyone who's looking at that, that's trust, and they look at, since you've owned it against the benchmark, and it's done phenomenally well, and there's been a short-term, you know, what I've used, a short-term period, which has really affected those numbers over five and ten years. But I want to ask this question really, is that, you know, you hold it for a long time, you've got really low turnover, and then there is this sense of a human bias, how do you know when patience is still, and you kind of talk twice a little bit, I just want to dig into it a bit, how do you know when patience is still the right response, and then when evidence is telling you that your original thesis is wrong, how do you kind of tackle that, because I think that, I think that's for anyone, isn't it, that's for you, for me, you know, we all have our own biases, don't we? We do, we do. So individual examples, I don't know how valuable it is to approach it from that perspective, but let's just say, okay, so so so relax, which we've owned for a very long period of time, and the shares at their worst earlier this year had halved from their peak, and that's a massive bad outcome and a big surprise for us, we weren't anticipating it, and you know, there's some soul searching as you can imagine as a result, but when you look at how relics business has performed over this period when the share price at its worst had halved, the growth rate of the company, if anything, had accelerated, and we've got to be humble enough to recognize when a share price does something like that, you got to say, well, why and could we be wrong? And I don't know, I mean, we could be wrong, but the share price is a signal, but it's not the whole signal. You've also got to consider how the company is performing as a business and how the company is performing relative to its stated strategy aims. And I think in the case of Relics, the company is at least meeting if not exceeding our expectations for its development as a business. So I've never had an instance thought about about selling out of that, selling out of that, that asset. I think that if, if Relics is next set of results, the company says, oh, well, our growth rate has slowed and it's slowed because there's a new AI entrant and it's taken away 5% of our customer base. Now, that would also be very bad for the shares, but that, that you would have to fundamentally reconsider. So, so the drive, the drivers got to be the performance of the business. Sometimes it's experience, listen, I don't know how this goes down and I don't know that it's right, I don't know that it's right, but I've sort of with clients amongst ourselves, we've set to ourselves, if you, if you had to put 100% of your wealth, I know this is a complete, you know, fantasy, but if you had to put 100% of your wealth in one of two companies, for the next 20 years, and you couldn't sell at any point over that 20 year period, and the two companies were Nvidia or Diagio, which one of the two would you commit all of your wealth to on the 20 year view? Now, no one's going to, fortunately, has to answer that question and maybe the answer is to own both of them or neither of them. I don't know, but what you do know about Nvidia is that it is in a rash padley evolving technology and they've done extraordinarily well at riding the wave of that technology, but who knows, who knows, but then I look at Diagio, which, okay, it's had, I mean, Diagio's revenues are disappointing, it's not like they've collapsed or anything, I mean, it's a tough time for the company, but what's the likelihood, the Guinness and Johnny Walker and Tancare and Captain Morgan and Lagavulin, what's the likelihood that they're still going to be being consumed, probably in higher quantities in 20 years time? I don't know for sure, but it seems quite likely that there truly is a durability in those cash flows from that company, and I put it this way, I think it's a more difficult question to answer than people might think looking at the very recent share price performances. Yeah, I mean, the next two questions, you'll be glad to know, I'm not going to push him that, but I think for anyone listening, I think you're actually spot on, it's very easy for us to look in and go, oh, well, you know, this is what you should have known or what you should have thought or what, but actually, I think throughout this, you know, I've come across somebody who's very passionate about what they do. I think patience is a really difficult one to decide because, you know, if you think about, and I guess, you know, again, it's an unfair thing, it's like, you know, I can't remember what the average holding was in the 50s, but it was something like seven and a half years. Nowadays, the average holding period is something like less than five months. Now, obviously, in the 50s, trading on a stock market was a lot more difficult than it is today, but even so, you know, that questions, what our average attention span or what our patience is as individuals, you know, we flip and flop, don't we? And I think this trust is not there to be one that chases returns. And I think that's where your skill comes into this. And there will be periods where, perhaps, it's out of favor. So I just want to kind of put that as kind of for people listening to it, is I think just bear that in mind. I want to talk to you about investment trust. So hopefully, this is, this is a way, a way from from that side, but things regret for an income trust to say, celebrating 100th anniversary in 2026 from a fund manager's perspective. And I obviously, you have funds and you've got the investment trust. What is the investment trust structure, allow you to do differently? And how should investors think about things such as discounts and gearing? I think the most important thing for for me and for us has been the the semi eternal nature of the assets, the savings that we've been entrusted with us. I mean, you know, the company does do buybacks. The company has issued shares in the past that makes it look a little bit more like an open-ended fund, but fundamentally, people perceive it as an eternal pool of capital. And that, I think, it just it's just encouraged us for good or for ill to invest with the patience that that you've just referred to. And you're right. It's it's I think it's the longer that you're invested in an excellent business, the better your chances over time of owning fantastic returns. You know, I think, again, I have to be so humble at the current circumstances, but I do think that for many investors, they're they're thinking in terms of how do I make the next 30 percent? That's a perfectly valid way to think about investment, but I mean, genuinely, we're thinking about could we treble or quintuple our investment in these companies over a five, seven, ten-year period? That does happen more often than maybe people recognize if you are invested in a value-creating company with a with a growth opportunity that so that's the effect that that we're looking we're looking to capture. Maybe I don't want to get into gearing and and and discounts because I mean, it just varies for individual for individual and for individual company to individual company, but I tell you what I do think is a very attractive characteristic of investment trust in general is the combination of having a non-executive, non-executive directors who have got a regulatory responsibility to generate the best possible returns for shareholders who will be looking out on shareholders' behalf on expense ratios who will be looking out for obvious incompetence from their portfolio managers. You've got someone on your side with the board of an investment trust arguably you don't have with a with a with a fund and you know there is the ultimate sanction like any publicly listed company a very poorly performing poorly managed investment trust can be taken over and you know that that's that's a valuable that's a valuable sanction as well so sorry you know I I'm not sure funds versus investment trust I'm not sure it's a complete slam dark because there are advantages to both but those are what I would say for investment trust. Yeah and this whole journey and I think it's been good for you going through this this conversation but I've come out so much that you sort of said it and I think there's a lot in there that I've kind of taken I think that last comment you just said about you know it's very easy at the moment is that if I bought Bitcoin 10 years ago I would have made a fortune and I've bought in the video and I've never pronounced it correctly but anyway if I bought that how many years I would have made a fortune and I think that's what people I remember in the 90s is that on average your returns will probably double digit now you can value inflation was quite high etc but you were getting double digit returns but then all of a sudden towards the end of the 90s you could get a hundred percent returns on on things and I think our mind goes well 10 percent isn't enough so we want a hundred percent and so I think when you were saying about that kind of 30 percent it's it's almost like thinking and you talk about history and stuff like and learning so coming onto this last question is that I think this is such an important one is that you're someone who has so much experience you've gone through so much so many I mean 40 years years of investing is incredible. When you think about, you know, first investment I ever did was in 1987 when I bought M&G's UK Recovery Fund just before we had the fashion 1987 and then, you know, and then I've seen, you know, 2000 and I've seen 2008. So, you've obviously lived it, you've breathed it, you've been in there. What you believe about successful investing today that perhaps you didn't understand when you started or maybe, you know, maybe it's maybe it's the same when you started as it is today, maybe we just view it differently. I mean, this this may be a reflection of the the business that I started out in, but a learning for me. I don't sense that what I'm about to say is as relevant as it might have been in my mind 25 years ago, say or 30 years ago. I would say a really, really important learning still, though, is that the companies that you're invested in matter so much more than macro economics. When I first started out, partly the company I was working for, but partly the whole investment discourse seemed to be about inflation and interest rates and the money supply and not about what the assets, well, the actual assets that the companies that you're investing in, what they owned and what the prospects were for them. And I mean, that that was a big buffer learning, you know, for me, and I guess I still think that I still think, yeah, the caliber of the franchise you're invested in matters much, much more than, you know, you know, I think it's ironic, isn't it that the UK stock market has actually had, I wish we'd done better, has had a reasonable run under a labor government. I mean, you know, you're told all of the politics, the politics are going to be unhelpful, but actually, except with the benefit of hindsight, it's very hard to pin moves in stock market on political, particular political parties. I mean, it somehow doesn't seem so relevant. I guess this is a backward-looking comment and maybe it's my last comment. A backward-looking comment is that probably, you know, let's see how much longer I do it for. I mean, you know, we need to have some investment performance, we really do, but I've been doing it a long time and probably, probably there were six big ideas in the course of that 40-plus years, and that's all it took, six big industry or individual company ideas. Now, there are other people probably more successful than me who probably had 6,000 ideas over that period. I'm not saying that that's not a way to do it, but it can be done with just a handful of big ideas. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You know what? That's the saying, and I said it, you know, some's going through here. What you've come across to me is someone who's very humble. I think you've taught very honestly, you've taught about patience. You've been honest in the journey, and you know, I would point people to that longer-term performance because it is phenomenal, and yes, you know, if you're humility coming through here about, you know, you know the pain of that short-term before and the performance, and it's not like you're sitting there going, you know, it doesn't matter because it's actually, it does, and you're invested in it as well. So I just want to say, look, thank you. Obviously, I don't want to push you too much on that side, and I just want to thank you because I think you've been really, really honest, and I'm going to come away from this with lots and lots of learning from that. So yeah, I just want to say thank you, and anyone who is listening to this to the money-wide podcast for the first time, or whether you're regular listener, please do share, because I think this is a great one to share, and it obviously helps us to get a wider audience, and I'll give a link to the trust, but I'll also put a link to some of the books that have been mentioned as well, and I'd like to think learning is such an important part of any investment journey. So thank you so much Nick, for yeah, just being really, really open on this. Well done Georgia, it did turn out to be a pleasure for me. You never know at the start, but anyway, no, thank you, I enjoyed talking, and yeah, good luck. Thank you. It's a very underrated component in investment success. You can be, yeah, luck is important as well. Anyway, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you.