Light mailbag as we pre-recorded early in the month. But always a few things to talk about. Small things come in good packages! Happy Labor Day Weekend to all USA Fools.
Host: David Gardner Producer: Desirée Jones
Rule Breaker Investing
August 2024 Mailbag: Dancing Through Life
Shortest mailbag ever? Possibly. It's what happens when you record a month-end mailbag before releasing some of the month's podcasts. But whether we run long or short or somewhere in between is often a function of you. Yes, you. And what you send me. Or in the case of this month, what little time I gave you to send me. Nevertheless, good things come in small packages. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing. It's the Rule Breaker Investing Podcast with Motleyful Co-Founder David Gardner. And welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Thanks for making a little bit of time for us on your weekend. It's very rare for me to record a mailbag as a weekend extra. But that's exactly what it made sense to do this month. Especially because earlier in the month, I got a cancellation from one of our authors. And I managed to fit him in earlier this week. CT Nguyen graciously fit us in and joined us this week. And I decided, you know, he needs to be an author in August, not an author in August in September. And so we used our normal month-end mailbag slot for CT Nguyen. And I decided, let's just park this mailbag on the weekend. If you're in the United States of America, you are, I hope, on holiday. It is Labor Day weekend. Happy Labor Day weekend to all my fellow Americans. But about a third of us listening to me are from somewhere else around the world. I hope you're enjoying your weekend. And so just to review where this podcast went over the previous four weeks, we started with of investing and the fools I sing. That's how I chose to kick off authors in August having had a cancellation. I always had a plan B and that was simply to bring back the various poetry, the poems, taking many different forms over many different years that have popped up on this podcast. I'd saved them and I thought that would be a fun podcast to do one day. And it made a lot of sense to kick off authors in August with my many fellow fool authors. You, many of you, thank you for taking the time over the years to send in some poetry. So we kicked off with of investing in the fools I sing. And then we got to our three authors this month. And the first was Whole Foods founder John Mackie and his book, The Whole Story. We then went to a completely different kind of a book. Let's call it experimental fiction from Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman and his book sum. Of course, we talked a lot more about a lot of other things besides just his book, which was also true of this week's podcast. Games with CT Nguyen, his book Games Agency His Art was a wonderful platform to launch from and just to discuss games and how they come into our lives and how they help enrich our lives and often improve our perspective around ourselves and the world at large games having been played for thousands and thousands of years by our species. So thank you again to all three of my authors, John Mackie, David Eagleman, and CT Nguyen, my authors in August here in 2024. Well, I usually kick off mailbags with hot takes from Twitter X, which is exactly what I'm doing this weekend. Except this is going to be the majority of the mailbag. I'm really going to focus on four tweets that came in and make that the bulk of this weekend's mailbag. Let's go to the first one. This one came in from Eugene Ng at Eugene Ng_VCap. Eugene, you wrote, "Thank you to David Gardner at David G. Fool for re-sharing by prior Rule Breaker Investing Mailbag poem from November 2020. It was shared on the recent Rule Breaker Investing Podcast, the August 8th episode of Investing in the Fools I Sing with other Fools, including David is truly such an honor to be sharing the stage. Let us all incorporate, Eugene, you write some version of vision in our investing portfolios. And thank you again to Eugene Ng who calls out at Amit Samani. Amit, thank you for pointing out that podcast to Eugene so you can come back and listen to it. Investing in our vision, a big theme for him and his work. And certainly for me and my work and what we do, I think for many of us listening to me as we invest. We invest with vision. In fact, principle number one of the Rule Breaker portfolio. I have six portfolio principles and the first of them is the most important. And it is simply make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. I truly believe you, dear listener, all of us are going to maximize our returns. And I mean not just financial returns, but yes, I mean your happiness return, your fulfillment, your enjoyment in investing, you're going to max that out. If you truly make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. And I don't say for your future or the future. I remind you that you are part of all of our future. And every little thing that we do when we spend money or invest money is a blow for freedom. It is, I guess more aptly, it is helping shape the future that all of us will live into. When you spend your dollars at that store, not that other one, you're helping that store benefit. When you're designed to buy that stock, not this one, you're pumping up their balance sheet and prospects a little bit more, not that other one. Every one of us, there is a one-to-one relationship between the dollars that we spend and the dollars that we invest and the world that we are living into. So make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. You know, two other things I want to mention very briefly about portfolios. The first is that I think most of us should have a stock portfolio of at least 20 stocks. That's because another of my Rule Breaker principles, this one is one of my Rule Breaker habits, is never to start a new position at greater than 5% of your overall portfolio. So I often hear of people who decide to go all in or go big with one stock. They might have a 10 stock portfolio, but they've got one new idea and they put 30% of their money into that one stock. I think that's a mistake. It might work out for you. It's not a great habit to get into. More often than not, you and I are going to do much better if we don't allow any new position to start at more than one 20th 5% of our overall portfolio. And if you cue to this approach to investing this Rule Breaker approach, that means by definition, as you start your portfolio, you should have 20 plus stocks in place. Now, not everybody feels like they have the money in place or necessarily a brokerage firm that would allow them. We all have different brokers that would allow them to buy fractional shares, which is often what allows you to build up small positions in bigger companies. So not everybody can necessarily start right there with 20 stocks, but I hope you get the overall principle, which is you should be making your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future and you should start small with each of your positions. Let them grow big on their own. The winners usually do, and that's the real way to succeed in Rule Breaker investing. And the final thing I want to say before we move on to tweet number two is just you should be able to look up and down your brokerage statement or if you've got your portfolio on your phone, you should be able to look up and down that portfolio and feel confident. Feel like you know these companies, you love these companies. You're looking forward to seeing how they do. You're looking forward to learning more about them. You should not feel disconnected from any of the companies that you're invested in. Now, I have some companies in my portfolio that are dogs and I've just let them wag their tails and bark all the way down to the bottom of my portfolio standings. They're my bad picks. They're the worst investments I've made. And often I just hold on to them. And the good news is by never adding to them, which I never do, they become increasingly irrelevant to the overall performance of my portfolio. So I have to admit, even when I look at my own portfolio, I can't always say I can look confidently up and down that portfolio, but at least I look knowingly. I understand why each of those things is there. And most of all, you should feel some form of magnetic attraction to the companies in your portfolio, presumably because you love them in the first place and what they do in this world, probably for you as a consumer, you appreciate them, but you also appreciate what they're doing in your portfolio and you feel motivated and interested to follow them as they grow into the future. Anyway, there's a little bit more about vision and Eugene, thank you for your tweet. Let's move on to tweet number two. This one of the John Mackie appearance earlier this month on the podcast, Jasmine girl at John Ward. Lisa, you wrote, I really enjoyed listening to this one. Agree with you too, that the Russian writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are great. I also like Torgenev a lot. And that is from longtime fool Lisa and Lisa, thank you for that. You know, it's funny you mentioned the Russian writers, John Mackie called them out when I asked him what's on his reading list, what books has he really appreciated. Again, he is one of the most widely read people. I know now 71 years young. And so I love to ask people like that. What are some other great books that all of us could could learn from? And in particular, after he mentioned his appreciation for the Russian greats, I found myself calling out another wonderful book of the last several years, and that is a swim in a pond in the rain by George Saunders. In fact, I found myself calling that book out a week later with David Eagleman as well. I'm quite happy to say that neither John nor David had heard of the book yet or read it. And yet it is a New York Times bestseller. Many of you will have read it or listen to it on tape. But I'll tell you, if you love literature and you love stories and what makes stories sing and you think that Tolstoy and Torgenev and Chekhov and all the rest are great for very specific reasons, but maybe ones that you don't fully grok, I completely recommend to you a swim and a pond in the rain by George Saunders. I am loving reading that book aloud to my wife, something that we've done for decades. Since before we were married, I read aloud during supper time, she makes supper. She loves to cook. I love to read aloud. She loves to be read to how many books have Margaret and I enjoyed together. And that's the one we're having a great time with this summer. So there's another book plug, a swim and a pond in the rain for those who love literature. I also want to mention that John Mackie was generous with his book tips and I took two away, neither which I'd read before, but both of which I felt inspired to read. One was Bob Solomon's book, Ethics and Excellence. And I think I should read that at some point. I love the title. And then John also called out Ken Wilbur's book, A Theory of Everything. And I remember John saying it really is of everything. So that just sounds interesting to me enough on its own. So a couple more good books to consider and that's part of what makes being a reader so much fun. You read and love a book and it leads you, it might be the person who gave you the book or the book itself might lead you to your next read and you just go like that dancing through life. All right, let's move on next to tweet number three. This one, this one actually is something I reposted. So this was not sent to me. One of my favorite authors, Matt Ridley, who's written a number of books I really love most prominent of which I would say is The Rational Optimist. One of the things I love about Twitter and Twitter X is any book that you've read and enjoyed. If that author is still living, they're probably out there on Twitter X and you can follow them. So a lot of us think that, oh yeah, I'm not going to really use Twitter because I don't want to tweet out 140 words about what I'm eating today or what I'm doing next week. Well, that is one way that people use Twitter, but for me, I more passively read it and follow people, especially authors that I really admire because when they give you a book to read and you read it, that's a gift that will live forever. But even better than that is when you can find the author and get regular communications from that author, things that they're seeing that are happening right now in the world at large. They may have written their wonderful book 10 years ago, but what do they think about yesterday? And that's one of the things I love about Twitter. So this post came from Matt Ridley. He's actually reposting something else from Daniel Smith, but ultimately it's a Walter Lippmann paragraph that was written in 1937. Walter Lippmann, a journalist, I'm just checking his dates, he was born in 1889. He died in 1974. On Wikipedia, it mentions his career spanning 60 years and that he was famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of the Cold War. It's also said of Lippmann that he coined the term stereotype in the modern psychological meaning that we use today. So a very influential and deep thinker, journalist Walter Lippmann. And I love this quote from 1937 from his work, The Good Society. And here it is, channeled via Matt Ridley. And I quote, the thinker, as he sits in his study, drawing his plans for the direction of society, will do no thinking if his breakfast has not been produced for him by a social process which is beyond his detailed comprehension. He knows that his breakfast depends upon workers on the coffee plantations of Brazil. The citrus groves of Florida, the sugar fields of Cuba, the wheat farms of the Dakotas, the dairies of New York that has been assembled by ships, railroads and trucks has been cooked with coal from Pennsylvania in utensils made of aluminum, China, steel and glass. But the intricacy of one breakfast, if every process that brought it to the table had deliberately to be planned, would be beyond the understanding of any mind. Only because he can count upon an infinitely complex system of working routines can a man eat his breakfast and then think about a new social order. And quote, Matt Ridley appends. This is one thing Matt says I would include in every curriculum. Well, whether or not you encounter that quote in school at whatever level, I'm glad that you encountered it on this podcast this week because it is such a great reminder of the unbelievable interconnectedness of our world economy. Libman was writing that in 1937, we are even by far more dependent on each other. And I don't just mean you and me, dear listener, I mean every country and every other country in this world, every person working a job, dependent upon in some ways collaborating with without even knowing it, every other person in the world. And that's why one of the best antidotes to war is simply trading with each other. Even if you don't like the other guy across the border, making a point of working together and trading benefits all of us and interconnects us in a way that is so beneficial for the future of the world. Walter Libman was writing about, I think, planned economies and what a bad idea those were. They were. They are very bad ideas. You really can't plan to make that breakfast appear on that gentleman's plate in the way that it happens, in the way that happens for you and for me every single day over the course of a year. You can't plan for that, but you can be enamored of it. You can be amazed that we have progressed conscious capitalism to the point that that is not just possible, but indeed something you and I take for granted just about every day of the week. You can follow me at David G. Fool on Twitter X. I don't tweet out that often. I try not to overuse social media, but when I find good stuff, I like to forward it back out. And thank you again to Walter Lippmann, Daniel Smith and Matt Ridley, as it took three people for that line to make it from there to me to you this week. All right. On to one more tweet, tweet number four. This from Chao Zom at Chao Zom. Hi again, David. Just listen to this week's Rule Breaker Investing podcast and this mind bending Star Trek, the next generation past, present and future image came to mind. Wonderful episode. My wife and I both enjoyed it so much. Well, Chao Zom is referring to my conversation with neuroscientist David Eagleman and some of the futuristic elements that we enjoyed together. We discussed time travel a couple of weeks ago, among other things, Chao Zom, you referenced the Star Trek, the next generation episode, and Chao Zom, you included an image. Now, I'm pretty sure I would have seen this Star Trek, the next generation episode, but a long time ago, I know this is a classic. It's an image of data. Now data, of course, how does Wikipedia characterize data? Here we go. Quote, a self-aware, sapient, sentient and anatomically fully functional, male, android, played, of course, by Brent Spiner and in movies as well, data. One of the iconic characters from the Star Trek, Uv, and you included an image of data looking back at himself, looking at another image of himself, and so I needed to double check this. This one's for Star Trek fans. You may remember, I needed to be reminded, Times Arrow, part one and part two. So this was a two-part story, the crew of the USS Enterprise investigates the discovery of data's severed head in a cave, which turns out to be over 500 years old. The plot involves time travel, where data ends up in 19th century Earth, leading to interactions between different versions of himself. The episodes explore the paradoxes and complexities of time travel as data's present self encounters his own future and past circumstances, making it a memorable and intricate story in the Star Trek universe. And just for the record, season five of Star Trek, the next generation, the finale was Times Arrow, part one. And it all concluded with the opening of season six, which was Times Arrow, part two. So there we go. And homage to data to Star Trek, the next generation, and to you, Chazam and Ms. Chazam for taking the time to remind me, remind all of us of a great couple of episodes. And yes, I'm definitely a Trekkie in a long running Star Trek series. You know, I do want to reference again, some of the questions I got to ask David Eagleman, for those of you who may not have gotten to listen to my conversation two weeks ago, I entice you with what I got to ask him in our buy, sell, or hold segment. Now, longtime listeners will know that I did it once again with every author this month. I love with my interviewees to play the Motley Fool's long time buy, sell, or hold game, where I asked not about stocks, but things, if they were stocks, would my interviewee be buying, selling, or holding that thing, buying, meaning here she agrees with it, selling probably disagrees with it, or holding has further thoughts. So here were the five topics that I asked. I'm not going to give his answers. You'll have to listen to that podcast. But my first one was buy, sell, or hold time travel, that humans will ever in any way somehow unlock that. The second was the idea that neuroscience will eventually allow us to completely map out and hack the brain, which would enable us to alter memories and emotions, or personality traits at will. That was number two, number three, the ultimate disruptive innovation for the transportation and travel industry, teleportation, buy, sell, or hold, that it will be developed in the next 250 years. A few more, the belief that dreams are a window into alternate realities, or parallel universes buy, sell, or hold, and that there are people living on earth today who will live more than 200 years buy, sell, or hold. The last one, the concept of digital immortality, uploading human consciousness to a computer or the cloud to live on after physical death, buy, sell, or hold. And what I really appreciate is that David Eagleman took on each of those directly and gave a pretty convincing, straightforward answer to each of them. So again, part of what I'd like to do on mailbags is entice you to go back and listen to an episode if you missed it. And Chausom, you certainly got it and you reacted with your time travel data image. But for anybody who may have missed it, that was maybe, maybe my favorite buy, sell, or hold ever just earlier this month with an author in August. So there you have it, four hot takes from Twitter X. Understandably, by the way, there are no mailbag items or tweets about my deep dive into games with CT Nguyen earlier this week because we recorded this episode, the one you're listening to right now earlier this week before we even published out that podcast again, because of the contingencies of a cancellation and rescheduling. All right, I have a rule breaker mailbag item. It's item number one. That's what we're doing this week. And it's from longtime full Adam Nelson. Adam wrote me on August 19, two weeks ago, I am so wildly flabbergasted to hear about an author speak about a course in miracles on any motleyful podcast positively. Let me clarify that my gratitude that John Mackie was so candid about this and that it was so profound to him, it's just still seemingly difficult to comprehend writes Adam, but hey, this is what synchronic events are supposed to look like, I guess anyway, I felt compelled to share and this one episode has really cemented me in coming back to these episodes just as much as I love motleyful money and round table. Thank you. Adam Nelson. Well, let me say back first of all, Adam, you were so welcome and second, I'm not familiar with a course in miracles that material myself, but I love how John put that out there along with two book recommendations, which I mentioned earlier, ethics and excellence by Bob Solomon and a theory of everything by Ken Wilbur. You know, I view my role on this podcast to put my fellow fools in touch with the best ideas, the best people, the best actions that I've come across, not every author in August, not every investment idea of my own is going to be right for every listener. I've always counted on my fellow fools to pick out on their own and choose what for you is the best, most applicable rule breaker isms for you to follow or at least to try out. In fact, testing and learning is something I probably don't talk about enough, but I highly recommend it. If you come across a new idea or an old idea that's new to you or an old book that's new to you, try it on, try it on for size, make an extra buy in your portfolio or try that technique out at work or wake up with it at home next weekend and give it a try. You know, most of the ideas I've chosen to follow over the course of my life, I've done so by testing it out first and seeing how it felt and whether it worked. And I feel like I hit you up dear listener with literally thousands of thoughts and ideas from this podcast just in any given year. And we're now into our 10th year. I love exploring new terrain, the greater the island of knowledge, the longer the coastline of mystery, one of my favorite lines attributed to Archbishop William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, the greater the island of knowledge, the longer the coastline of mystery. And so in many ways, rule breaker investing is a variety show from one week to the next. We do some recurring things because I love traditions. So thank you again, authors in August. And a lot of what recurs is the latest update or episode in one of our long standing series. I can rattle some of them off alphabetically right now, blast from the past campfire stories, essays from yesterday, games, games, games, got to know the lingo, great quotes. I fought the law and the law won the market cap game show, mental tips, tricks and life hacks. That goes on. And in fact, none of these series was planned or in place when rule breaker investing launched as a podcast in July of 2015. I had never heard of or thought of a market cap game show, every one of my dozens of recurring episodic series simply came about as a kernel of an idea, sometimes one suggested by one of you that we tried, it felt good, it turned into a thing. We reified it with a name and a purpose and we made it recur wicked is among my favorite musicals. I know there are some mega fans listening to me right now and others who've never even heard of this Broadway smash hit, which retails the story of the Wizard of Oz, but with a completely different take on the so called Wicked Witch of the West. Anyway, here at the end of this podcast and of this month and yes, during a holiday weekend as well. I want to celebrate one of Wicked's best songs because it kind of summarizes what I've just said and how I think about this podcast and investing in business. It's called dancing through life. And indeed, there's some positive intelligence laced into this, just some of its lyrics dancing through life, mindless and careless. Make sure you're aware less trouble is rife, woes are fleeting, blows are glancing, when you're dancing through life, full on. As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Miley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at rbi.fool.com. (upbeat music)