Earnings Season - Tracking Greatness (Part 1 of 2)

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Randy & Danhai talk with an undisputed Legend…John Jackson.From his start, website, various boards to his general investing strategy and even the Circuit Breaker and his feelings around the market's operations. We touch a LOT in this one!Listen, enjoy and share.📲Contact📲 📧Mail - [e-mail]🐥Twitter🐥  www.twitter.com/Earnings_SeasonRandy - @RTRoweDanhai - @HDanhai🔗Links🔗Apple's Stock Split - https://apple.co/2Qkq2SkSave the Dollar Initiative - https://bit.ly/3wQwxNHBarita Defies Broker's Sell Recommendation - https://bit.ly/3g6cB3iJamaica Tea's 2020 Annual Report - https://bit.ly/3dcC5KHQWI Investment's 2020 Annual Report - https://bit.ly/2ON4VYGQWI's Net Asset Value - https://bit.ly/3dZuE8GStocks Mentioned: QWI, JAMT, GK, CPJ, AFS, CCC, NUFF NUFF MORE.Data Provider: MyMoneyJA - https://bit.ly/3dZuE8GJohn Jackson's IC Insider - http://icinsider.com/ ★ Support this podcast ★

Hi guys, Saranda here for the Earnings Season Podcast and just with a quick message slash reminder, what you're about to hear or see, depending on if you're about to hear or see depending if you're listening to this or watching it on youtube um it's a conversation between myself danai and a really great guest of ours it was such a good conversation we had it go as long as we could it was pretty long i didn't want to bore you guys too much with it just in case it was too much to take in um so we chopped it in the middle and so you're listening to the first part of a conversation with a legend. I won't spoil it anymore for you. I just wanted to give you that heads up. And look out for part two coming up soon.

I must also point out that, yes, we did have some sound issues in this one. I think mostly me. Apologies for that. It's a little hard to hear in some parts. But you can get the gist of what I'm saying. And it's pretty clear. And more importantly, you can hear Danai clearly. You can hear our guest clearly.

So listening, enjoy. And if you like it, if if you like it if you're listening if you listen on Apple podcast it was five stars leave a review it really goes a far away for us if you're watching it on YouTube give us a thumbs up you know share with somebody if you listen in any other podcast after you listen enjoy so nice to donate button there click it so our donation always if it is $1 $1 from people we love it you'll have than i buy that jeep maybe or it might just help us have a more consistent episodes who knows anyway thanks again and look out for part two coming up soon and more things from us i'm out all right hi guys welcome to another episode of earning season as always the show

that is about business stocks investing and whatever else than i have on my mind yeah um and as always we usually have either some really good ideas you would like to think are some really good ideas and some really good tests this week is another week with a really good test uh yeah a huge one a huge one for us if it's so unexcited because i i don't think legend is too too big um i worry for this one it's funny we've spoken about him so much right many many times but before we talk about him let's be in the maker then you know his name there we go so before we talk about him let's talk about two names that you may not know which is myself i'm randy at rt you're on twitter and i'm benedict and this is earning season and this week

we don't want to waste any time we want to bring in our guests very very quickly the one and only somebody who i suspect you guys may have heard about john jackson the the legendary i don't know what to call him investor chairman ceo um these days i've been calling myself a retail investor advocate um and i think the closest we've seen to something like that outside of maybe a legend like mr staple and ralph chen back in the day would be john jackson so welcome to earning season sir jackson how are you i'm fine and thanks for having me all right so we're very, very, very happy to have you here. So, I don't even know

where to begin. There's so many things that I try to start off with the thanks, you know, because it's easy to forget the thanks when you get into the excitement. I should thank him.

I know we have a whole lot of thanks for this gentleman. Oh, definitely. He has managed a few of our companies and made us quite a little bit of money. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He has a lot of thanks for this gentleman he has managed a few of our companies and made us quite a little bit of money yeah he's led the way in terms of the information that would bridge the gap in between something you're looking at and an investment in the thing you're looking at correct um and i think for many people especially in the earlier days of starting out not so no it's

a lot easier without the stock market is or in the early days of starting out you really didn't have that many resources i yeah i read ic insider before i knew who john jackson was it was just what i read um yeah you just know the name so it in terms of as a regular retail investor kind of especially in the early hard days when there's no, no, people talk about, yo, the only thing is for the big man. No, but then if you weren't going to the broker, had a lot of money, you were on your own. So this is probably one of the very first resource places that you could get

some information from as a regular person. So let me thank you very much for that, sir. John Jackson, you've helped me make quite a few millions. You're on the thank you list. You're very high on the thank you list. So thank you very, very much. You're welcome. Yeah, man. And you are, I don't know, I have your kudos here, but I don't even know where to begin. I don't think they're enough. You're on a bunch of boards um you were part of the early wave of showing what the junior market could do with jetcon yeah i got quite a few little hits for

that one because that was one of the companies and uh that's one of my first transformative experiences seeing something that's good seeing something that is a practical obvious business called Obvious Business. And then talking to my advisors about it, yeah, and being told, I'll never forget the sentence, used car? You really put your money in a used car? And the person that said that to me... Was driving a used car.

Was driving a used car. Grew up home that day in a used car, in traffic full of used cars, but couldn't see the value of a business a used car business being listed and i remember jetcon being a little bit of a turning point for me in realizing that wait one you can't really store people saying because they don't really know two if you can see actual value and see a business that projects and puts out actual value

to the shareholders, you don't need anybody other than the share price to justify what you know. It was a very transformative moment for me. And I actually lose a friend over it. He stopped talking to me when JetCon passed 70 percent

literally he said he said he said he was you will see your money is going to burn up i want to pass 20 percent and say what's up because i know at that point 20 was a big deal for him 50 in stop talk 70 in delete the contact and it went hard it went on to over 100%. I mean, I don't own a lot of JetCon now, but I mean, you know, it has really varied. It has moved up and down. In the year after JetCon,

was it JetCon listed in 2016? That's correct. Yes. So I started working at an investment firm in 2016. So I think it was after it listed, I started working at the investment firm in 2016. so i think it was after at least it started working there was summer i started investing at the start of 2017 and about my whole story that i did a bad play with cable and wires because i heard somebody else talking about cable so my whole thought was just investing in cable because people talking about

it lost money there um save up more money and put into the market i went to the jetcon and i did really well there and that that was that was a change because it was no longer about listening to other people are saying but more about looking at the company look at the numbers and saying this makes sense and you might prove me right so one of the things The story that Randy made remind me of my pastor at St. Andrew's Parish Church. So in the early days, he said that he followed recommendations I wrote and bought shares. And from the shares he sold, I was able to buy his house. And his fellow pastors told him before he did that did that that he was going to lose his shirt so in the finalists he did what he had to do and was happy for the the information that he gleaned and he moved on and um the reality is that in many cases, we have to make decisions.

And the issues I constantly remind people of is that Pan Am Airlines and Eastern Airlines and others were high-flying companies in their heyday. But where are they today? companies in their heyday. But where are they today? So the concept of buying stocks and holding on to them forever is not necessarily a good investment posture to take. Because like people, companies' fortunes fluctuate from time to time. And that's something to bear in mind. fluctuate from time to time and that's something to bear in mind the other factor that is of import

that i learned um some years ago when i attended a seminar in the united states is the virtue of diversifying one's portfolio the virtue of reviewing your portfolio on an ongoing basis, and sometimes you trim back some of the investments if they get series of stock maybe the cable and wireless would not have performed but others probably could have performed and and you would have been well ahead of the game I love that I love that I love that it's love that. It's a reminder to us for those people who invested a lot of money in cash plus on O-Lent. And forget about the actual type of investment. If they had followed that principle, they might have lost money, but many of them would not have lost as much as they end up losing because they would not have put a significant amount of their wealth

into either of them or the various ones that were available at the time. So the same principle applies then, applies now, and it applies. It may cause you to make less profit from an investment or investments, but life is one of balances. And sometimes you can gamble.

I had a discussion with a broker the other day, one overseas. And he said, well, if the investment that he made, he had actually bought options. If the investment he made had paid off, I would be praising him. And I said, the way I would have looked at it is that, yes, I'll commend you for actually delivering the profits, but I would berate you nevertheless

for violating the principle that we had actually set up, that don't take excessive unnecessary risk because sometimes it pays off and other times it can be disastrous i like that so we we are i like that you bring in this point because we on this podcast and i think in our own investment um yeah we are we're not huge proponents of diversification necessarily but generally diversification i usually hear the diversification thrown out as something to be done for the sake of diversifying or not as i recently i really respect my major it's not people diversify because they hear that they should diversify

i'm not necessarily so they also they find that they're overify. And not necessarily, so they, also they be finding they over diversify, they spray it with in, for no reason, they pick up stocks that they necessarily don't necessarily believe in because I need to be diversified. So I find I can't cope with that. Well, the point is that you know, there's nothing that says that you have to own stocks.

I mean, if the market, if you, you're not convinced that there are good opportunities in the market, then one way of diversifying that there are good opportunities in the market then one way of diversifying is to reduce your exposure in the market and put the funds on in cash or in some other form of investment until you're satisfied that the market is is um conducive for you to or for one to invest and and expands expand one's investment in in the market i agree so that you we may have i mean you know you can one may take the view that okay i believe bank of north scotia or ncb whatever it is have a long-term future and i'm prepared to buy into it and leave

it irrespective of what the fortunes may be but then if you if you only have 10 percent of your wealth or five percent whatever the figure is in ncb if it if it evaporates then you only stand to lose 10 percent you lose five or ten percent and that's a general principle it's like buying a house or a car and insuring it you know you may never get into us in my driving experience I've not had I've not had an accident that I am being in been responsible for me either but but the law requires you to ensure the thing and and you never know when you may actually make a mistake and and and hurt or damage somebody else's property yeah that that is true and as somebody was damaged thankfully nobody else but i have

damaged some property from being a young and stupid driver um in the past in the fire fight the insurance that's a that's all the risk management and mitigation is key now what i i like that you're mentioning it because we have a lot of new people coming to the market now one of the things i want to talk about is how you feel about the market now and it's good to hear this kind of view because like i know that what dana and i do we tend to be at the forefront of the risk right we will we're the people who will put everything in one stock. And we do the research, don't get me wrong, we're proponents of Buffett's theory, which is,

you don't put all, well, put all eggs in one basket. But you watch that basket. You watch that basket very, very closely. So we do that. But then also we have the kind of lives that allow that, right? None of us have children, unless things have changed recently, don't I? None of us have children, we're doing that. But then also we have the kind of lives that allow that, right? None of us have children, unless things have changed recently, don't they? None of us have children. We're not married. So we can't afford to take on a bit of risk.

We have some disposable income, so we can't afford to take on a bit of risk. But we, I mean, even I as risk, whatever the opposite of risk averse is, but I'm actually pretty risk averse. But even i still diversify um but i don't preach it because needless diversification has gotten so popular so i like that what you have done and if you've seen it if anybody look on ic insider guys check out though i can give him a free plug it's a free ad check out ice inside dot com he has years of what you call your top 10 picks rather right yes and and those are well you know what i said tonight it's the

perfect answer i said i would love to have a conversation with him to know what the hell makes up these picks so you can you can you can tell us they're done what what makes of these things how do you it's a simple simple um simple computation they and i'll tell you the history of it back in early sometime in the 1990s i felt i needed to focus on making some money and i remember getting up on it was a sunday morning early sunday morning could have been three four o'clock in the morning. And I got the idea, go on my laptop and create a spreadsheet and start to wrap the stocks based on the earnings and therefore the potential gains. gains and that year I came up the rankings through Pan Jam and first life as a two top stocks with potential gains of 400% okay and I said to myself but nobody nobody buys those stocks are not popular and what have you.

So I think I bought number three stocks, which did pretty well. But Panjaman First Life did the best in that year. is that it removed the matter of individual preference for particular stock and allowed me to focus on the performance of the companies. So it eliminated that bias that one might have to one company or the other and I just found that it worked like a charm and my performance increased considerably as a result so we did further studies to indicate that and we have some work in over 30 odd years of the history of the market, that says that the top 10 stocks, only about 20% of those stocks repeat in a subsequent year.

subsequent year and in fact the worst performing stocks of a particular year tend to outperform in the subsequent year and it's it's a consistent bit of data going way back 30 or 40 years I don't know if anybody else in this country have actually done that exercise but But it's just a phenomenal, consistent feature of the market. You're talking to somebody who has done that sort of thing. I haven't gone back 40 years, but I've gone back pretty far and looked at those links, and you're correct. There is a phenomenal, consistent history of what, how the, so the person who hands on their stock because they like it, because it did well last year, I like to find that stock.

Because if you bear in mind, what are the factors that drive stocks? Profits and interest rates. are the factors that drive stocks? Profits and interest rates. Basically those are the only two factors over time that really determine what the value of stocks are. Over a series of years? Well even in the medium term, a year or two. It comes back to the P ratio primarily but it's a combination of what profits are doing and where interest rates are where interest rates are likely to be um but so in a country where the typical company is not going to grow profits more than 20 or 30 percent per annum in a market where stocks have gone up two three hundred percent in a year what that performance is doing

is discounting most if not all of the undervaluation of the stock because they would have to come with another hundred two hundred percent growth in profits to be honest that that good performance and therefore you move from stocks that have performed very well because it often in most cases they have underperformed for a period of time relative to their true value. And they come because what one observes is that there's a rotation and people tend to where stocks are attractive to the majority of investors everybody is like honey bees flock to honey right probably less so to pollens and and and so the crowd goes after the ones that are popular and the ones that are not popular are left to languish and the people who understand those things can look and say okay i am prepared to

to buy those stocks that are not as attractive to the mainstream investors um i can just wait for the payoff it's like like QWI which we spoke about last night QWI is the second best I think performing main market stock this year early in the year but well it's up it's up 50 it's up 50 percent and that's not a bad performance with less than two months of the year to go that's not a bad performance let's give you your flaws the market in its greatest year did not rise 50 percent 2019 the market rose 31 percent 2020 the market fell negative i think 12 some percent so to be up 50 odd percent right after yeah the main market was up was down 20 23 or 24 percent of their vote yeah and the junior market just about 21 down so um the at the moment the main market index

or indices are down um just over one percent the junior market is up 7.5 percent um so the point is that the tendency is in markets is for people especially when you have an influx of new investors there many of them are looking for instant gains and sometimes those well in an era where people have been brought to the market through IPOs and in ninety or eighty ninety percent of those IPOs have actually gone on to record strong gains. That is very enticing to people. You know, when you make your first investment and it pays off very well,

you're almost sold on the virtues of the market. And therefore when a stock doesn't perform, people, and rightly so in many instances, get rid of it and cut your losses and move to another one. The unfortunate thing is that many people in cutting losses, in my view, don't go about it the correct way. The way to cut losses at times is to look for an alternate investment that you can actually recover from, and that makes it easy for you to cut losses at times is to look for an alternate investment that you can actually recover from.

And that makes it easy for you to cut your losses and recognize at a fairly early stage that the thing is not likely to bounce back in the medium term. But when you cut your losses at the end of the day, when the stock of the market is actually bottomed out and about to rise well just a bad a bad way to go about investment if you look if you looked at QWI shares it started to inch up from the technical indicators pointed that it was going to go up from sometime like a part of the summer months and it started to eat that consolates started to consolidate and started to move slowly upwards so the so those are there's those are some lessons that and it takes time to learn them and and the best will in the world is not a science

it's an art of thought that you have to try and watch out there what what can be helpful to people but the average person is not going to avail himself of that is the one matter of technical analysis which can tell you i mean we have written in you probably might have seen it without the market the junior market causes you know at the beginning of a bull market um the latter part of last year. The technical indicators, the Golden Cross pointed to a fairly strong rally for the market and based on the early days of this year, it suggests the market will probably go up to over 4,000 points by the end of the year. But at least it should be well into the 3,000 hard points shortly once the earning season is over and people digest those numbers.

So for the... I have a lot of beginners who listen to this. So let me just translate. Yeah, so I could translate pretty much what John is saying there. You can correct me if I'm doing wrong, John. It's that he has looked and he has studied the market for so many years that you eventually develop

a sort of innate understanding for what certain events indicate will happen, right? And when you do that for a marketing time, they call it technical trading. So that's trading on the technicals. And you mentioned something there, the Golden Cross, I think. Yes.

Yeah, what was the Golden Cross? What's the golden cross that you see for the jamaica market the golden cross so the junior market is is um the short term moving average of the market um crossing over the medium term so in in the one that i've plotted I use 20 day moving average very short averages so the I think we have 50 days 45 50 days is roughly two months crossed over the longer term 120 day moving average and that took place somewhere in around November October November and and the and the and the 120 day is in the process of crossing over a long-term 240 day moving average and the last time that happened the market went up some like five six hundred points so it's not so much a matter of the history of the market i i've i tried to to play to do for forex trading and very critical part of forex trading is technical analysis you have to just you can do fundamental but that's not the

fundamental but that's not the basic aspect of of forex trade because the market moves regularly throughout the day and over a period of time it moves up but you can there are signals in terms of trying to remember the candlestick movements and those things that have coded messages in them. It gives you some indication if you understand it, where the things are going to go. There's also the matter of trend lines. I mean, in the US market, one of the things that hit me very forcibly was Netflix, where Netflix is into a trend line, a channel. A channel is two trend lines,

your top one and the bottom one, which provides support and resistance. The bottom one provides support, so it hits it, and it will bounce off. And the top one provides support so it hits it and it will bounce off and the top one provides resistance and and the investors have been trading the overall market is going up but in between the going up this stock is bouncing is hitting the bottom support and the driving trust before results are out or after they hit it down and and you get these patterns that many people are at it regularly

pick up and if you if you're good at it you buy on the low and sell on the high so the market may go up 50%, but you can multiply your capital significantly if you can be alert to some of those movements and those trends. That's correct. So that's the issue. Sorry, the element of the technical analysis that it tells you. I mean, when we, when Ice Insider wrote in 2015, I think, September thereabout, that the market was going to break out. It's not until April 2016,

when Mayberry had some conference, that out of that conference came the message that the market was was going to rally or somebody started three four five months before signal there five months before so the average person only here about the market when it hits the headline in some shape or form. That board is stuck, it's gone up 50% and that one 100%. But the seed and the genesis of it was laid months before. And the same thing applies to the main market. The main market is struggling now, but the indicators are that in a month or two,

the golden cross is going to take hold. And you see, people are looking at P ratio of 20 and 25 in a number of cases and considering that high. As I said to the chairman of some listed companies last year, I think, or year before last, and he said that the prices were overvalued and I said no for one many people in historically at what earnings historically have been rather than looking to come and I say when you have interest rates and you see the same situation in the States,

where they talk about the average P ratio in the States of 15 or 20, but when you have a company that's growing profits at 50% per annum or 100% per annum, and interest rates are virtually zero, or let's call it 1%, a P ratio of 100 is not, if you believe that those interest rates are sustainable over

some period of time um a number of years then buying profits at a hundred times earning this is is equivalent to putting your money in the bank and um well it's better because the profits are growing up a hundred percent for ann if the profits are going up 100% per annum, the profits are going to go up next year and the stock will keep rising. So where we have interest rates in Jamaica with threshold bill rates under 1%, 20% for stock is a giveaway. And what people are likely to recognize in some years on the road is that a stock at 20 times earnings was probably better still because the P ratios, if the present economic conditions remain where interest rates remain pretty low, you will find that what are the alternatives do you want to hold cash

money and earn two or three or four percent or five percent whatever it is and be taxed on it or do you rather own and we think of use it as an example that the profit may grow at 20 percent or 25 percent per annum and increasingly pay you more and more dividends each and every year um it's it's it's it's a no-brainer so your the choices are you go to real estate so what one is going to going to find is that really state prices are going to go through the roof um and likely become a social issue as more and more people are pushed further and further away from the center of of economic activity to live further and further field and wake up like if you live in new york you you'll take you one hour or two

hours to get to work and told that because yeah that's funny you say that conversation is actually very fresh right now as in people are arguing online almost see if you use a little bit I've seen one or two discussions on various things but yeah. But you don't really follow it up day to day? No, I'm looking at some of this stuff on some of the comments that some of the people I'm connected with have to say. But I don't have a lot of people in the thing

that are stock market people. So I probably have to rely on my son-in-law to provide some. And that's funny because there's a lot of people, like almost the only thing I do online now, and I have a few thousand people following me, is stocks. And there's a bit of a community there, and the community pays keen attention to what you say. Yes.

Yeah, you discuss all the time but that's true you don't have to be there to be discussed it's a good point but i mentioned twitter because the conversation recently has been around exactly what you predicted housing prices and it becoming a social issue no from our perspective like i know i understand why it's happening it's a business a thing. If I get a house right now, if I get an apartment in New Kingston right now, I'm not going to sell it for $10 million just because I'm helping poor people.

I'm going to try and get as much money that I can get personally from it, right? And the real issue is that housing is sold by persons. If you're sold for $10 million to a poor person, that person is going to take it and sell it to you. Because he doesn't have you.

$40 million. Immediately. Yeah. So the state has a responsibility to provide and be a referee for things. And at the same time, we have to recognize to recognize I mean one of the unfortunate things about Kingston is that a lot of people want to live in Kingston but we have half of Kingston that is dilapidated and the values are down because nobody has really taken an wholesale basis to try and deal with the black urban blight that exists in the country so that we could we could create habitable space for many persons

um by by tackling the problem which is another problem that can be the result um one of the one recommendation which i'd make on your, which I hope it goes forth, is that what we have done, we have distorted the system. We have created something like NH felt that it was more important to pretend that they could help the poor um by taxing the society excessively and doing things that the private sector should do rather than allowing the system to self-balance rather than allowing the system to set a balance. And then you provide the resources, social well-being,

for what the system cannot deliver. The NHT should not be there to be delivering housing and mortgages for people who are in a position to go to the regular billing societies and seek loans. What was important in the past is that the economic policies should have been geared to keeping interest rates and inflation and interest rates low so that people could go to the traditional lending agencies or it's just ridiculous that when you look at the banks and on building societies,

they are lending building society, maybe 40, 45% of the resources that they have and banks maybe up to 60 odd percent at the moment. But you look at Trinidad and the last time I looked at the bank, they were lending 80, 90% of the deposits that they had. So when you when you when you distort the system in that way what you're doing you're causing the people to borrow to be

paying extra money for borrowing because the banks need to make a certain level of return on investment and they have to look to better deposit um rates and or hike the interest rates on loans. I mean, one of the ridiculous things that has happened in the country is that before we had this economic crisis, NCB had a credit card and I think the interest rates were something like 18%. Yeah, and the mileage was? Rates went up to 60 odd percent and they're stuck at 44 percent and we have a minister a personal minister in in there was a minister at the time talking about bank charges etc where a lot of the people who are using credit cards and could probably use credit cards and to help them considerably

have found themselves into a major problem because they're borrowing money at 4% interest per month, which is 70% or 80% per annum. And many of them cannot afford to support the credit cards, and some of them need it for emergency purposes. So those interest rates that stock-to-load rates on normal loans are now down to 7-8%. It's just a crazy

situation that exists in the country. And nobody is doing anything about it at all. So there are lots of things in society that requires attention, probably by the government and maybe in some cases the opposition

who can actually come forth and identify things that are just not in the interest of the country or the people in the country. Because what is going to happen are those people who utilize those facilities um become very despondent and and and you run into the problem that you know as you say they run into where people a certain group of persons who believe they have been disenfranchised and take it on themselves to to try and the wrong that they see that's true and the system can i say the system can never be beaten that's the simple truth honestly yeah the system can never be beaten the most happening is that they can influence the system you can influence the system

and then we have to try and influence the system yeah and that's what you can't beat the system you have to change the system yeah yeah yeah so that's i mean that's you know what i feel like i've committed like there's an interview scene because we're so excited that we jump straight into stocks with you and i should have said should have been said jumped into really you you who you are so let me start with you who is john jackson let me let me i know it's like late but we'll shift gears who is john jackson really the man who is john jackson the man that we know about um that's an excellent that's a good question uh i i hate to talk about myself um and i when i go to speak i ask people to speak minimally about me. I'm just an ordinary Jamaican. I am from a family that have some bright brothers and sisters.

I don't necessarily particularly regard myself as bright. What I find is that I observe certain things, and there are things that I'm interested in that intrigue me, and if I'm intrigued, I will go and find out a lot about those things. My family, like many, didn't have a lot of wealth, but they certainly had the understanding of the import of education. And if one gets educated, the world is open to us. um similar my knowledge of investment i've been drawn in my first interest was actually agriculture and and actually in high school i did agricultural science um yes so so um so so um that was where my interest lied and um but eventually i i morphed into into accounting and then into into investment and i've always loved investment my first investment was 10

bank of nova scotia shares which to £2 each at the time. And I think I doubled the money. Never knew anything about investment per se. I think one of the next stocks I bought was Montica Freeport. Bought at a 57, equivalent of 57 cents. I think I sold it at $1.50 something. Again, wanting to have lots of capital so it it it's on paper but um i've always been intrigued by what stocks could do and then in

in the 1980s i started to write on stocks um and recognized ultimately that I didn't know as much as I thought. They said it don't include anything. That's a big lesson. It's one of the best lessons you can get. Sorry? It's one of the best lessons you can get. Well, it forced me because Zagina invited me to start to write for them.

And it forced me to do research into companies and research into economy and what have you. So I educated myself from then. And I unearthed a series of marvelous investments, Lassell's, Democardo, Jamaica flour mills and others that are just incredibly undervalued and those were exposed to the general market and the general market ultimately recognized the values that were there and drove them from nothing to something that was very incredibly invaluable. I just love to do the research, examine financial statements, unearth nuggets that are there that the average person is not seeing. And I'm intrigued to give you an example, the IGR stock that is now top 10, top 15, they have gone ahead, they have cut costs,

You know, they have gone ahead, they have cut costs. The latest results are out. The TV station segment of the market, the profits trumped considerably in the December quarter. Nearly $400 million segment results there compared to a much smaller amount a year before um and and um and they've got some of the costs in the operation this year which i estimate about 200 million seems to be redundant to cost right now when you move from that situation and recognize that now when you move from that situation and recognize that i just recognized this past week that whoa you have two new larger companies and one lots of companies had about six six or seven

pages of ads in the paper so that it means increased revenues for the gleaner and i presume for rgr itself the tv station tvg etc etc because they are going to continue to be you know when you have competition um whether it be liquor or those type of things it just means increase spending all right so we just come back from a small break um i think john before the break you're telling us about rjr I know you see it and just picking up the gym. That's one of the examples of a gym you said that you pulled out. You noticed within your financials that you're making more profit now. And they did promise us a reorganization and a re-organization of the group.

We've seen that with the new chairman coming. We've seen the numbers improve since the latest results in the first quarter 2021. yeah but based on this history you know it's not a lot of people are going to be focusing on because it has had um rocky past rocky recent past since since the um the merger but it it it um we have written in ic and said about it some of the changes that have taken place and are taking place but when somebody has actually made cut cost out of out of an operation significant cost then you're probably looking at substantial jumping profits when you also take into consideration that last year was

a terrible year for many businesses where they lost revenues, it means that going into a period where you ought not to have that level of revenue dislocation, you and with low cost, you could be looking at nice pick-up in profits and and i believe it's one that is going to surprise a lot of people going forward but it's you have to do the assessment the analysis and use some some business skills to understand where where are some of these things what the implications are for many of these many of these companies and look beyond just the current financial statements because um if we can look beyond the current financial statements we may see exciting multiple increase in in profits and stock price. I mean, our Jamaican Tees is a good relative example of that,

where last year or a year before last, we suffered from the – well, last year, actually, suffered from the decline in the stock market. And in fact, the Q's performance had on the operations. But people seem to have partially, not totally, partially ignored the fact of the core entities in the group, plus the real estate department, which I think you guys spoke on, on an episode that I listened to. I think you guys spoke on an episode that I listened to. You listened to me on that?

Well, a friend of mine, as I told Randy, he has been speaking to me about you guys wanted me to appear on the program, etc. So I actually listened to it and fast forward fast forward listening um i'll keep it anonymous but we got that listener yeah and i was i was um i was hearing your excitement you guys had about the stock split and the other fact that you seem to have been um and the fact that you seem to have been um coming back from the grave etc etc yeah um so the the the opportunity to to sometimes pick up little tidbits that gives you a wider picture into into the future is is is this all the thing that I I look for you know in in Venus I call myself a semi journalist of sort sometimes somebody tells you says John rain is falling and that's it that's all he says and you know the rain falls heavily maybe somebody who is

taught in agriculture they farm at the flooded animals get killed etc etc so you have to then take that little tidbit and and put some interpretation on it and do your do your homework to find out what is really happening in the marketplace. Yeah, what we call it is, we call it that. I do a lot of dot connection. Yeah, for connecting the dots. Yeah, man. I actually started making that joke back when I used to.

I give analysts a hard time because I think that analysts don't do a very good job of actual analysis and recommendation. When it comes to local equities, that's my view, there's a lot of room to improve. And I started making that observation when I was an analyst, not an analyst for the public, but I was a business analyst. And I used to make a joke that the typical analyst is a type that will go outside in the middle of a hurricane with a rain meter and come back inside and then tell you that well based on current trends we predict a hundred years of rain and I'm saying you know yes of course the rain meter is full but you have to factor in the fact that you went outside in the middle of a hurricane not in the center when the calm is, and not in the eye of the hurricane.

Eye of the storm, exactly. Because the same analyst will go to the middle of the eye and tell you that the storm is gone now. And hearing you say these things in another way has really impacted us. Because Dana and I have been talking about this stuff for years and we've gotten the response has not always been good and i know yeah i know just based on some of the responses i have gotten publicly and privately that there you must have faced a lot of the same thing because it's one thing i realized for all these stories we've heard is that when you are literally setting a trend or doing something that you know is right very often it's not going to be accepted by masters at first well my my my theory you know um butch jordan passed the other day and may god bless his soul but

and may God bless his soul but I had the temerity when he had initiated it the dollar the same dollar initiative to oppose it in retrospect I probably didn't oppose it if ever approaching it, I would approach it somewhat differently, but I would still have opposed it because it didn't, situation was even worse because they never dealt with the fundamental issue that was required to sustain the value of the currency. So the government kept on with this reckless spending, heavy fiscal deficit at the time, et cetera, et cetera,

that just undermined the possibility of the daughter could have been kept. And I said to my wife, I said, you know, I must have been a brave or a stupid man. And they had this session upstairs of the Pegasus on the top floor. And I felt that boy, they could have thrown me off. And Butch Stewart was one of the Pegasus on the top floor and I felt that boy they could have thrown me off and but Stuart was one of the speakers you know that night I was the only one who said it made no sense um

but one of the things that you you you I said to people if you if you don't want people to throw stones in your direction, don't go to the public domain. And I have always had a desire. When I was younger, studying accounting, I wanted to be, thought I'd become a politician. wanted to be thought I'd become a politician but I recognized my upbringing was one where lies you don't tell lies you you don't curse it on do terrible things and I recognized that this is that's what I tell myself and I see evidence of it in the United States at the moment where people are burying their own personal conviction in the interest of a mafia type operation and I

was never brought up in that and I've always been set myself apart from the crowd and I'll do what I believe is the right thing to do as opposed to doing what I believe people want me to do and that's their examples set by my parents not maybe in exactly the same way, but in how they undertook their own, lived their lives. And that's the, that's the, some of the elements. So I will say what I want to say, and I've learned over the years to modify how I say some of the things that I want want to say so it's not as offensive as I would have been when I was much younger but I do what I have to

do I I've been blessed in in having an accountant qualification I've worked at KPNG, one of the leading accounting firms in this country, and I have a long interest in stocks. And therefore, I've written about stocks for a prolonged period of time and the economy. And therefore, I've gleaned certain things as a result of the analysis. And I keep on, I still keep on learning more and more. It never ends. It's just an exciting, incredible learning experience that I wish every single Jamaican could participate in because there's a rich reward for those of us

who take on that type of endeavor. So I'm not worried about, I mean, I critique. I remember, and if you did the research on IC Insider, you'll see where we had written an article, I think, in 2017 or thereabout, I think in 2017 or thereabout, or 2018, where a major investment house was recommended that people sell burrito in the September or thereabout of that year. We were recommending that the same day that people buy burrito because it was undervalued. So their recommendation, sell it at $3 because it was one and two dollars and we're saying in fact i had a good fortune of recommending to a person who worked at that same broker jobs

a basket of stocks and one of them was actually burrito. After she must have bought it, she said to me, but John, why, tell me why you say burrito? So I presume she meant in giving the audit to our broker, the mother said, well, why are you buying burritos? I said, just buy the stock, put it in your suitcase, put it in the bottom of your suitcase, don't look at it for a number of years. And when you do look at it, you'll be very happy.

Right? Um, so the, the, the, the, um... So one can stand in line with where the crowd is, or one can do what you're convinced, and your training especially, tells you is in fact the what appears to be the correct measure and you just stick with it sometimes you you you make mistakes but invariably if you keep on plugging at it you're the right and just move on yeah i like that each person has to do their own thing and um you know we we

will comment on various things from time to time but we can learn from others to see what people are not looking because one of the beautiful things about investment if you broke a say don't buy the stock i'm going to see don't buy the stock and and and one book by the stock and you can look at it and see what the rationale is they're from UK might have to wait a little longer for the payoff once you have done enough homework to tell you what the factors are you know you just have not indicates a very terrible eater because all the company was managed and you know you guys on the podcast that I listened to,

you recognize the virtue of trying to satisfy shareholders. Many managers or management believe that their sole responsibility is to the bottom line of the company um as far as i'm concerned my responsibility is to the bottom line of all stakeholders right and a factor that is of import in the jamaican scenario i compared trinidad for example trinidad at one stage was trading more stocks than we are, but they have done nothing for their shareholders. Which is why their market is, I think in my view, that's part of why the market is so dead. I didn't get that. I think in as part of my view is that

that's part that's a huge part of why the market is so stagnant, so dead. It is, it is because part of why the market is so stagnant, so dead. It is, it is, because you keep individual investors out of the market by having stocks that are overpriced. I mean, when you look at it, the GDP per capita of Jamaica is, I don't know, call it six, seven, eight, or whatever it is. Trinidad, maybe 15 or whatever. It might be two, it might be three times.

But you have a typical stock in Jamaica, NCB is $8.50, TT dollars. In Jamaica it's $130. $8.50 is $160 Jamaican or something in that region 160 170. um so the typical stock in jamaica at that price people find it challenging to be attracted to it and and ncb is one of the cheapest stocks in trinidad um republic bank says so 134 140 140 tt dollars that. Republic Bank sells for $134, $140, $140 TT dollars. So multiply that nearly $3,000 Jamaican dollars. And normally stocks are selling in what would be the equivalent of $1,000 Jamaican. And only a few shares are sold yesterday, what? 300, 400,000 shares were traded in the market. So people are not interested in providing all investors with the best value. I mean, in the United States, people are used to stocks at $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. But Apple split the stock from $400400 to about $200 and the market was happy about it and

they drove the stock price up. And they did the same thing with Tesla and their sales. So it just tells you that in any market there's a price that people don't find attractive. Right, not enough value. Right. And therefore, you pay dividends, you look at the market, love stocks, but you want to have also liquidity for the market because what Jamaica Tea has done is to create liquidity. I might be wrong and I don't have the physical record but I can't remember Jamaica Tees having the level of liquidity that we have seen as we have

seen in the last two three months yeah well I mean the performance is performance be careful of that chart with that with that thing that is not adjusted. I don't know why the stock exchange don't... This chart is specifically... This is my chart. I was using this stock exchange data. This is my chart. It is adjusted to show you split correctly, but it's done this way for me deliberately because I want to... And so the volumes down here you are correct the problems are much stronger since this since announcement of this yes and actual split

we have seen much stronger um volumes almost daily coming out of out of county yeah yeah um and that's a question that people always ask you know as to why why um why do i stock split why is it why why are they doing a stock split and usually the given reason is liquidity but i think what people think is almost that you're going to do a stock split and then suddenly sell off all your shares that's not that's not all it is it's to give you at least my view is that it's to give investors an option to be able to sell a fraction of their share of this year's easily well the way I look at the way I look at it is that I'm of my perspective they and I've come to the conclusion that a junior market company ideally should have at least

two billion shares two to three billion shares in the marketplace to provide certain amount of liquidity um so if the stock is undervalued then and the investing public likes it and that's one way to to actually um drive the price forward so should we take from that then the inference that until like 2 to 3 billion shares and Zitcon is just a part of that? Sorry, I didn't get that. I'm just saying, should we then take from that, you're saying that you think ideally a trillion market competition of 2 to 3 billion units? Yes.

Should we take from that then actually inference because this one only has half a billion half a billion units 500 million well the the fact of the matter of all things being equal i don't know objection is yet at that level for that amount of of shares i mean see you could you could but um that wasn't their their problem um and they are more recently listed you know in the case of jamaica thesis listed some some time ago and um so the the um And so they, but a billion to $2.5 billion. If you look at what has happened to Lasko, Lasko is one of those groups that tend to trade fairly frequently. frequently um and and and it came about because of the because when you when you when you have

a billion shares and you're issued you know 200 million shares to the public um that are relatively small in value um you know you get the top 10 people can't control 99 i mean take a company like ISP, the top 10 companies control 97 or 98% of the stock. Yes, there is not much trading going on in that. And you can see the ISP's movement, you can see with the big jump upwards and downwards because just because of liquidity. Right. There is a liquidity premium on it basically. I mean, at the start of the year isp has traded twice yeah i'm gonna jump

so the point is that one needs to recognize if i were if i were at isp i would have stopped long ago and i would have advised i would have recommended because as as chairman or director one has theoretically one vote but one can use one influence so right and in the case of jamaica t is we have we have had we have had three stocks so far and it has it has paid off um i think the unjohn I think we can drill into that because we have learned to recognize, at least from you, we learned to recognize that the John Jackson companies and the John Jackson group that moves with Jante's and then QWI on the Jante's. I don't know if I'm gonna have this right probably probably most excited about something currently so I'd be we seeing I

Don't know how to ask this person dice. I'll ask the answer. Oh you can I mean what what's next for Jante's? I will see I mean you guys have no need to stand a junior market No, and I personally think that you have some need to Go to the main market because it allows it to raise. We've seen a lot of export improvement, manufacturing's a chance. And you know, aging out of the, or have aged out of the tax break, I think from October 2020, right? It was June or July. June or July, okay.

So you're aging out of it, have you have aged out of it already, correct? Yes, yes. So there is no need to remain on the junior unless you plan to do, which I've also heard rumored by you guys, a spin-off of your arms or maybe your manufacturing arm. I noticed some things happening with the supermarket arm also. so what can you tell us about that what what are you seeing with regards to Jamt what is it what is the overall view why should I keep buying more I have a lot The scenario as it stands currently is one that we don't have to go to the main market. And we don't have to stay on the junior market.

The options, and we have discussed it in the past. We have just delayed because there's a lot of discussions within the group currently as to various things. But, well, what's happening, the opportunity that could possibly crop up, like in 2021 with some companies under pressure, et cetera, et cetera. We don't need to go to the market for capital under normal circumstances because we are a generator generator of capital so we have limited borings so it is the ultimate question as to whether one stays or go I think we're going is going to really be predicated on what is probably best for the company and for shareholders. I think probably before the end of the year, if we are to move one way here. There are a number of years of the issue of a spin-off and that thing John Mifood spoke to publicly.

It's something that we have deliberated on. But as I said, there are a number of things in the mix that we have to, as a group, we have to sit down and determine what it is that we have to we as a group we have to sit down and um determine what it is that we we want to do and the time frame that we want to do them in um but it's a dynamic environment um you know we have the factory expansion that we have to deal with. We're dealing with the building. We're starting a new apartment complex. It's going to be pretty dynamic. You know, the investment side, I believe there are opportunities down the road to to to really expand in that area all things being equal so it it is it is I think gonna be an interesting

period ahead of us so and I can't tell you whether profits will be better or worse off. I hope that what steps we do would be a reflect of what we have done in the past. And hopefully, hopefully we'll, I mean, I'm not a member of the family, but, you know, my company and myself myself we own a few shares in it and we have options or I have options that the better the stock price does the better but it will be hopefully for myself so and my family so that the objective is really to continue to build the operation and build it into a profitable attractive enterprise that will keep on adding value I mean if you look at it and your report I did not know but I think it was on the website you see where there's some graph in the jamaica these thing where you know what has happened to profits what has happened to to um equity

over time and it keeps on looking up and up and i believe the investment arm is going to contribute considerably you you ask the question um my thoughts on the environment currently. And the reality is that when you look historically at the market, our market tends to go through a period of, I thought it was six years. I went back and looked at it, and I find it's more like eight or ten years. went back and looked at it and I find it's more like eight or ten years. I guess in robust bull market run it's probably about five or six years. And so we have had a break and the market pulled back considerably. So I believe with the environment that exists now, we should be looking at,

I would expect a fairly decent run of years. The economic policies of the country, if we can overcome the ravages on the economy of the pandemic, then it means that things can get back to some level of normality. Hopefully tourism can come back roaring and financially, fiscally, we can sort ourselves out. If all that happens and the pilot of the plane keeps the flight relatively smooth, then what one should be seeing is relatively low inflation relatively low interest rates um and incidentally the the bank of jamaica's target is i regarded as but the only logic i see for it is really to to to to be a part of the equation to reduce the debt to gdp ratio because there's no other reason that one

can the logical reason one could put forth to why we would want to target 46 percent brand when the logic suggests you should be looking at every two to three percent inflation so that the environment is conducive generally speaking to continued growth in values we've seen a significant growth in a number of players of come to the market with the launch of some of the recent IPOs in last two three years I believe that growth is going to continue. Once people, newer people can make money and see the opportunities are there, they will tell their children and the children will tell their children and their neighbor and

so forth and bring more people to the marketplace. My major concern, however, is the number of APOs on ipos that might come to market and drain the matter of some level of liquidity and create stagnation in the secondary market so that's an area one to look at um recovery in a number of companies in the main event event, the express catering, the tourism things, and we can get back to some level of normality. Those prices have been knocked down. CPG, the Caribbean producers, so Jetcon, our company has suffered significantly from the pandemic and others, but if things normalize, they could be candidates for multiple appreciation in stock prices but in the meantime like you say you are really driving your part of the ship to ensure that things

one however things work out you win because even though things haven't quite recovered yet we see moving back to jamt and and I mentioned Jamty and QWI because QWI is essentially the investment time of Jamty, as I see it. And you have positioned it in such a way that over the last report, as you've really been heading back into profit, we saw, you know, after you have hit NAV

for the first time in, I think, ever? NAV, is that right? I'm sorry. Repeat the NAV question. for the first time in I think ever have the right share president be the nav question now we're talking to you in the traffic and that is no 125 as of yesterday as a Friday and the price is so it keeps keeps on rising the One of the things, and I guess people have come to the party a little bit late, but the share price has also for the first time gotten very close to it. 117 is probably the closest we've seen it get to one. Well, it traded as high as 126 during the course of the week right so it went as high as 126 so that it one stage and somebody came in and sold um

the the truth be told is that if you if you um if you are of the view that the nav was continuing to rise appreciably then those people are not if i were not an investor in it then and i wanted a fair amount i would have like a question in buying the buying at a premium to the nav the band at a premium to the NAV right because you know in our top 15 forecast we have been enough and enough the stock price going to about $1.80 which would be a hundred percent yeah that's a strong thing I see you've been driven heavily or you so many see you've been proven heavily well you took so many different things you've been driven heavily also by the us market which you've been playing in um let me name what you guys let me

we pay close attention to you so i keep this is as is as much as we can this is your top 10 holdings at that December 31st, 2020. So I mean, it can maybe be up to other people watching, but we see the direction of this line. It is consistently up, it continues to grow. I'm on record, I should say, as saying that you guys to contact Albatross of Aptis Financial.

But obviously if you believe in the long-term viability of a company being able to take a stake that early and that large wouldn't it might be found on no but in five years it might neither be here nor there well i i believe in a medium term it it i see i mean the in a medium term it I see I mean the access December results although 20 odd cents is better than the September quarter the revenues are higher than the September quarter the loan loan the loan figure is higher than the law that end of September so they have they have taken significant provisioning for loan losses, so I wish they're recovering. So basically what they need to do is to get back to the stage of growing the top line, which apparently has started.

And they'll be okay. Again, people, many investors just focus on the wrong thing because we have NCB in the portfolio. We had Grace in the portfolio for some time and Grace didn't perform. Yes, it's not the same size as Axis, but we have had BNS. So there are a number of stocks in the portfolio that have not delivered in the last period of time. But we have seen growth of others. So our base has started to move, and I think it will move up substantially

during the course of the year. We bought Jamaica Jamaica teas and people didn't want it at $4. We bought a block of them at $4, $4 a little bit. And that is almost 70% since then. We bought a mill at under $2. We bought Lombardy at under $2. We bought lumber, they brought under $2. So we think we have done a number of moves. We, our overseas portfolio is split in two. One of it is handled by the broker, smaller portion. His last time I checked on it his portfolio was

that almost doubled within less than a year here we also tried that so again just a top thing that you told us that's what people this thing here so yeah from alphabet Google home people and video and those are doing what i'm seeing literally just on the data is that these numbers aren't instructing for the whole period plus on the day today we've seen four downs but my own knowledge of the u.s market is that you are well in terms of things that are pandemic not even pandemic proof and then you know everybody is at home and online over close so and online or at home doing more home work from home and video and I had a long conversation about the and AMD

because both those people's much so we need our own more and more and more they're being bought into stuff they have started a heavy shortage in the market and has been for the last six months so when i see nvidia and amd holdings i am very i'm happy about that i'd have to sell anybody on amazon i'd have to sell anybody on ib i'd have to anybody on apple i think maybe the only one don't only want to be thermoficial that's okay so so you know these things are the things that they are they are um that's how the portfolio is done well the jamaica side is coming it's coming back um the access again you come back to the one matter if you have one stock is 10% of your portfolio then you don't I think it's probably less than 10% now you

don't have to worry yourself on Julie about you I mean you wanted to perform but in the very nature of stocks one the reason why you diversify you're hoping that your selections will pan out in the final analysis. What has essentially happened to the entire financial service sector is that the pandemic knocked out a lot of the bottom. So had it not been for that, access would not be at $21 now. It would be at a higher price. And the same thing would apply to NCB and Scotiabank. And Lascaux Financial Services, it got hurt.

It's now the results, the last results are positive, very positive and pointing in the right direction. So at 10%, holding is not going to necessarily hold on your performance unless it falls and falls sharply yes if it moves up because what happens is that it it's one sentence equivalent of all well it depends because your things are rounded up but between let's say nine million jamaican dollars and and nine and maybe 18 million jamaican dollars would probably equate to a one cent movement in the nav it's going to vary from as a as a value increases it's roughly about 13

increases. It's roughly about $13 million is equivalent to a cent in the movement in the market. So if like Jamaica Tees that has, we have 30 million or 30 odd million shares in it, if it moves like it moved during the course of maybe maybe 50 cents that alone is probably one cent added to the portfolio so um while uh access is something like eight or nine million shares so if it moves up at the same level or down at the same level it doesn't have the same same impact impact impact sorry I think you've hedged 34 million a 37 million lies in the value of at the point that we're talking and um and that 23 million fall in access but again that's a hedge and that's the sort of thing i would want to see if i'm managing a whole portfolio of things with multiple moving parts and I have to think in both the near term and the long term. I'm not sure I'm following totally.

One of the things that I'm going to give you an answer, which may not be the answer that you're seeking. One of the things about portfolios, at Unitrust and ourselves, is that once you have made a loss, you have made a loss, you have made a loss and you revalue the assets from day one. So it's not the fact that you bought it at $32 and it's now at $20. Once you have recognized that loss, that's in the past. And you start

from day one with $20 or whatever it is. We have to bear that in mind. So, yes, if it doesn't perform, it has a negative impact or it slows down the movement in the growth in the net asset value. But in the final, this is, you know, we have the net asset value has moved from 106 at the end of September to 125 today which is which is quite with 20 percent or whatever the whatever the percentage

is how much yeah okay nearly 20% so if you that is two months sorry that's since then so we are just seven four months four and a half months into the new year

so that's equivalent to 80% for a full year if the trend continues. So we would have moved from $1.06 to $2.12 at the end of the calendar year, or fiscal year calendar, whatever it is that trend were to continue. So we would have actually surpassed our highest net added value ever by some degree. And if we keep, you know, if we do that and keep on growing it, then at roughly the same pace, by next year, you know, we're at $3 or somewhere in that vicinity.

So maybe at that time access will come back and access may well come back with roaring and add even more home today to the performance What I do here is I literally just watch it, watch the quarter. You are actually, as from my internal view, and obviously you would also know the intrapise that you have done from the start of the quarter as well. But from my view, I am seeing an overall, the top 10 elements in the portfolio, at least the TMZ side of it, it's already up to 6.6%, which is that extra 61 million so that's what i was looking at and saying that even at this point everything else is more than pushing it so you are well you're well ahead yeah yeah i was calculating based on what you see adding at the end of december 2020

empty at the end of December 2020 and what that amount is worth currently it is worth thirty seven point eight million dollars more currently and it was at the end of December okay 23 million less I'm saying the champion is more than against anything in access I was love another 32 million from another 32 million from mail but those three things I mentioned all those know because I'll also go type cement in there because I'm also expecting great movement from all four of those things for various reasons no milk has strong business that had been seen since listing up last year and TK I think is about to surprise a lot of

people with a lot of moves them going to the merge a money activity over the last few months the mark insurance we made quite a bit of money. Because all the valley that was found and seen there was, you have to look at the business and understand what's happening in the business. And his past performance is not a good base to put it from because who he was two years ago is not who he is now. That's correct. Yeah, and so that allowed me to, I agree, it pissed off a lot of people for some reason,

me seeing and seeing it, but we have seen where the share price, I was buying it at $1, $2, $3. It went all the way up to $8 dollars to benefit from that um right benefited from that i still benefit from that and they're about to report no and i suspect they're going to report either profits or a lot are you stuck the radio stars yeah the last last year in this part the quarter reporting now is terrible it was a 400 and something in one quarter and come off the quarter to trade into the months

exactly i have some pcs to write back who know gk themselves have been making some crazy moves um i would be surprised to buy another very quickly, another listing company or two very quickly. And remittances are working in their favor right now. Yeah, remittances, that heavy spike in remittances has helped them. Every organization, every business has helped them. I've been looking at the money heavily. I wouldn't be surprised if they buy CPJ if it doesn't do it. I guess that's not going to happen, but there might be an immense cooperation between the two parties. They've been working together on a few projects and really and truly CPJ don't have

much choice today. Well they have choices but you can rationalize some aspect of your operation if you think it's beneficial. You're definitely not saying something. Well, I don't have all of the things, but I am understanding, as you said, that they're incorporating some elements of it. I mean, it's not an impossible. Sometimes things are there and people are not talking and suddenly

you know if people find that overnight there may be opportunities that never really focus on and people change their mind. I get you well either way you do you have a strong holding in them and they are one of the most undervalued on the exchange currently. One of the things that we have to just a small point what you will find it may not have existed so much in the December quarter and it probably the off the offers of offers on access the offer prices have actually declined some large amounts around, $27 some months ago. We are now at $24, $25. And what used to happen is that,

and it's not just access, it happens too. There's a window dressing scenario that takes place at the end of the month, every month. And when you compare, for example, so our quarterly results reflect values, in some cases inflated, because the bids and the offers are adjusted, or the last prices are...

There's some adjustments at the end of the quarter, end of the month, that you see in stock prices. And therefore you'll see in the case of access, access values will spike to $3 at the end of the month. And as a result of that, you will compute and say, well, next mid-month, the values have actually gone on by 20 30 million dollars um and it well yes that's so but it really hasn't changed very much from what it has been for the last several months um and yes you might in a month move might help

and yes in a month move might help enough but ultimately investment is not a short-term thing it's it's I mean sometime it is but when you when you hold millions of dollars shares it's oftentimes a longer-term medium-term endeavor and one has to focus on some of those things so once you have the investment the question one has to ask oneself um should you get out of it if if it's not likely to perform very well in the short term how do you hold it and the problem with an access if you get out of it when things turn around it's not like an nB or Scotiabank or even a Grace Kennedy where you can come in. I want to use Grace, but Scotiabank or NCB where you could liquidate it such that you could come in and get a fair amount. Or you can Scotiabank more easily. But there's no reason why Access should not, earnings should not get back into the three dollar to four dollar region within the

year or two all things being equal all right of course and of course and that's why i'm saying you have to i mean a lot of retail investors listen to the show but we have to make allowances for the fact that you are not necessarily managing things as a retail investor yeah you have to you have to have a basket of goods that you manage properly and I would that point is good I'd like to know what do you feel about the retail investment right before you go to retail investment because one of the things that you want us to bear in mind I mean I am the chairman of investment committee and I'm following the stock

market or locally and overseas on a daily basis but even then you know the way things are that one the even a local marketer does what 100 odd listings the way the platform is it's not as easy to to observe trade in the way it was some the Nasdaq system come with a lot of benefits is stable but it's not a platform for observers. You can't, you're only lucky to see your trade has gone through. Other ones, it would have a light up, you could set up, you could light up, you could see, you can look back

at what the last trade was easily. This one, it's just not, it's just not possible. So it comes with a lot of advantages, a lot of disadvantages for observers and then you can't set up I can't set up a platform I can't set up a things work well I guess the favorite again set up but there are limitations so in the world platform platform had a junior market screen and a main market screen so it's easy to slip between one and the other I'm not getting a sense that when you set it up the other disadvantage if I click on a thing in my favorite and

somehow it accidentally clips remove it just you have to reload it reloading it everything in a certain order server if it's a junior marketing which is on the top of my list and I and I delete it I'm a long cheater as process to get it back into into the place that it should be so it's not a it is it's a needs to be some work done on it so people can see what the normal system has a stream and thing that show you what stocks traded or what have you. This one doesn't provide that type of licensing. So it makes it so things are happening, you're not even aware of it, although you're also supposed to be in the market um u.s markets are big markets unless you

have the stock as as um highlighted to watch it um yes yes you can you just can't pay unless you tell the thing to to give you give you a send you an alert if something particularly has happened um has happened so it's and therefore that restricts insert and some of the things you can do or investment committee generally speaking me once a week and in between with me we may if something happens with me and you can throw each other and make a decision but it's individual, but it's like an individual, you watch the market after the market closes and say, all right, this stock has gone up. Maybe it's close to where I want to sell, let me sell.

So there are some of those restrictions that exist in when you you can move I say they won't matter of getting volumes in certain stocks when you want to get it when you think of the time to pounce the opportunities may not always present itself so even somebody softener like a lasco and a lot you want to get the price you want to get it up because you might be able to get this volume the question do you can you get it at the price that you find advantageous to you i get you um and that's a that's a real thing that you bring up there with the platforms affecting you um you'd have seen so much of the platforms change over the years even then i i tell them i like just

much of the platforms change over the years even then I I said then I like just certain problems never existed when even I started right as we've got new features we've got new problems that I learned this I learned a circuit breaker rule and it was a very clear thing to me when I started grown and grown and grown and grown the point where I wonder if it I'm not sure if it serves the purpose it should anymore it doesn't serve any purpose is not one nobody can point me to let me give you an example or useless the circuit break mm-hmm cement company put out their September results towards the end of October mm-hmm big drum in profits yeah that normally I remember when there is also i get my gleaner or observer to see it happened that week that i i just didn't i didn't remember so on when i opened my platform i saw the bid up at 50 or dollars

i said something has happened and then it dawned on me that they put out the results then it dawned on me that they put out the results so I got the paper and looked at it and so it was and I immediately wrote an article on the results and released it during trading and the stock was frozen because of the move in the price on the Monday. And so you'd have thought that's a logical situation where a price has gone over 15%. That they would get information to the investors. And those results never came to the market until either the Wednesday or the Thursday yeah yeah as you said those are

you listening to the market would know cap cement often releases the results and get it on the website sometimes you can get it on the training market you can get it all over and then oftentimes days later it's on the jsc right so the information is not in the public domain and you you stop the stock trading for one hour presumably to get information to tell you why the stock has jumped and yet the market investors don't know no change the whole point of the stop ever make any sense right so the other factor is that even if you want a circuit breaker room to be there watch it there's no need to freeze the stop from trading for now and what it was in the last of trading if you freeze it at midday or 1159 you can't trade again for the day it doesn't make any

sense in a small country where information I mean in in my days you didn't have your telephone and so if you wanted to get a message you have to get to a landline to call somebody to get information right and then it morphed into one in which before digital came some people had cell phones some people didn't have cell phone right so and of course you had facts right now information Now, information can go relatively, you see part of the problem is, I mean, one of the issues I have, if you went back to the junior market report on the stock exchange, then you can pull it up.

For about three months, they were claiming, not on the stock exchange, they were saying that 40 stocks, junior market stocks traded every single day i thought so if you go back sometime in december or or or um or even the market report some report was saying 40 40 securities traded and it was consistently 40 every day and I think you have 40 or 41 ordinary shares listed on that market right and nobody pays any attention to it Nobody pays any attention to it.

You know, we have a situation where I use the trading data on a daily basis and update reports. And some days, there was one day this week where, can't remember which company traded, Scotiabank, Scotiagroup. It traded, they said it traded like 60, the actual NASDAQ said 62,000 shares. In actual fact, it was 80,000 shares or something. And so you get those ugly disparities taking place. And one is not getting the sense that there is that

quality control at all to be there to spot these things and make sure say okay fine system throws up errors but at least you'd expect to see some input on the website to say listen we're having some problems with these things very often to get fix there's no's no such message, nothing. And that's not the way to operate markets. You need to, if something is wrong, you need to try and identify and tell people what is wrong, and that's being worked on.

I agree with you. It's something that I've also brought up. We've brought up many times on this, and I think it steps on a couple of toes when you do when well he's when we do it I can tell you I can tell you personally I have been told that it steps on toes because I pointed out those things but my thing is that listen it's not a friend thing our job is at the end of the day this is like people's money like I have either lost money or not made money because of poor information or a rule that has changed

and nobody know about it until the public has changed. Just changed. Part of management is that you need to look at, you create rules and you re-examine them. I mean, you know, look at what has happened in the united states at the moment i mean what has taken place over the last four years dictate that some people are who are sufficiently alert and concerned if they are in a position to will change the rules so some of the things that have happened you minimize because you can no longer rely on the integrity of people the way it was some years ago to do the right

things. And if we, the truth of the matter is that Jamaica is the foremost capital market in the Caribbean, if I may say so. And if you want to build a system and have integrity, we want foreigners to invest in the system. There are so many things that are not right with our system. You know, you have players creating agreements and reaching agreements and also things taking place and it's as if there's no recourse but I won't say there's no recourse but we can be the system where you are forcing for the right things to be done. And, you know, the minister spoke to the issue of APOs and things being marketed like lollipops or whatever. Not sure that's how they market lollipops, but I see more like ice cream or what

have you but I was gonna write an article which I probably still rewrite if I get the time to is that the trustees in bankruptcy has taken control of taken control over CMP industries because simply industries the majority shares were bought by cash plus the people old cash books are just plus operational and that has gone on for many years and shareholders have not had there's no AGM which is in which of the economy law there's no financial statements which is in breach of the Communist Act. There's no financial statements which is in breach of the Communist Act. And nobody, the company is a profitable company and it has outside shareholders and these people have taken control over the entity and don't provide

investing public or the shareholders with relevant information. It was profitable. Nobody knows what has happened to the profits of the company. Nobody knows what has happened to the cash resources of the company. Has the trustees in bankruptcy taken all the money which doesn't belong to them? you know so so so Minister Clark is right but he needs to also ensure that his house is in order entity cannot we can't have a government or not our government entity that is in violation of the law. I agree. Agreed, agreed, agreed. And you said this is CMP Industries? CMP Industries, right. The trustees in Bank of C has it.

And no shareholders, I mean, it was listed on the market. It had been delisted back in the 1990s. So the 2000 period period whatever it was profitable own property on Marcus Calvi guys has rented old she was don't can get information we have good here that was being liquidated a good year the liquidators had the money in current account um and up to now people don't can't get final payment for the auto liquidation and the money was was in cash you know so so there's a lot that needs to be done with the second with the industry um and people are not, there's not sufficient attention being paid to sorting out some of the mess that exists. I agree.

And I think I'm seeing a lot of the effects of almost you need to have the crowd or understand why something is important. Because when I started talking publicly about it, I tell people, listen, things should be better, blah, blah. And it sounds very good and what you stay makes sense a man or woman listening doesn't see how

it affects them probably just ignore it so like when I used to complain about hitting my advisors you know getting analysis or strong analysis and recommendation as complete not investing so they don't i mean what you say is saying but it does sound good right um more that a lot more people started to do it they've realized that way who is the person that's out here telling me about who is the person advising and they've started to see what you're pointing out and what i think minister clark was talking to i really appreciate that i think it's going to take a couple of maybe companies, I think a couple of lawsuits are going to happen.

And then you'll see people start fixing up. You'll see people start pulling together. And it's obvious across the board. I'm not asking aspersions on any one thing, but we've said it to other people, I say to you that we can tell when there's a John Jackson company, because one, the numbers are not hard to go through. It's a very colorful if you get to see a lot of companies that are not talking to the shareholders, like if you're not a minority, if you're not one of the top shareholders, then you don't really matter. Yeah.

We're using a certain standard from the companies that you're attached to. And I think that's largely because you're an investor yourself, so you know what you want to see in a report. Other companies, they really seem to cater to the people that listed it, the original owners of the company, so you're not really getting certain information. So you feel like there's some sort of asymmetry. If you're not in the company, you're not understanding it as well, just by looking at the finance of the company. What I would say, you're probably correct.

But one of the things that I'll comment on and make is that I've seen over the years that some of the things that we we and I use we not necessarily mean a Jamaica tease some of the things that have come to the market in terms of information or style I've seen a number of companies adopting them so I see if you look at Jamaica Tees, we're trying to give you some analysis of the financial balance sheet, the P&L. Simple analysis, but it saves the investor from having to go and take a calculator and try and do calculations um and i see where so we talk about the cap the income state when we speak to the the balance sheet and some of the items are um statement of financial position

and try to give people some sense as to what some of the major movements, what caused some of the major movements in there. And that's especially coming from my own personal in analyzing financial statements. It would be nice if you see something out of the ordinary happening that the management who has more knowledge or more intimate with the data could provide you with answers rather than if you have to take up a telephone call and call them and find out why is this so or if you go to an AGM or something or to get those answers. So yes, I've put some of my own personal idiosyncrasies

into those courts yeah um and influence them in in in in quite some way um where possible and hopefully hopefully it it is setting a standard that you know others can see the example and try and contribute and i've seen seen it. I see Honeybun, if my memory is showing, improved commentary in some instances. I was talking to Jason Morris the other day about his report, saying what he's indicating, that they have tried to give investors

a lot of information so they can digest it and get an understanding as to what's happening and where they're going yeah and that works and it's funny enough Danana has spoken about Cygnus on this show many times because we say that Cygnus is one of the few companies whose MD&A, the management discussion and analysis, is actually useful to us. Right. Yeah, as in we actually read it and it provides context. Yours, things do it. My personal method is I read the MD&A last. I go through the financials first, I get my own view, and then I read the MD&NA to hear what the company is saying about these numbers

and that's well that they have copied my style because I Turned on to undergo to somebody giving me I mean one other thing if you look at my Jamaica teas or whatever what a typical Directors are post out of directors are pleased to present yes then the thing here and i'm saying but why am i pleased to present office is down in this as i know you know there are certain companies that have reported losses and that we are pleased to present 200 million down right right and i'm saying i don't want to tell so i move away from that and try to identify

um some news i i'm an optimist by my nature so unless i particularly want to send you shocking news i'm going to try and identify some positive things that I believe people. And I just got a report and the thing starts off, boy, the pandemic, this and that. That happened during the pandemic. What did I say? You can't find something in the stuff and put out the most pleasant bad news you can have.

Because once you start out that way, people are not going to read the first couple of lines and not going any further. They're priming you for bad news. You waste all the time and effort to do the report. So I guess

in a sense there needs to be a course, some training session to help people to focus on putting these things together right because I found that to offer people just oh yes this is traditionally what happens are we gonna see if you have seen that I said to people I mean you know I get things coming I said but I don't want to say that to the shareholders i don't have to say to the shareholders right um i mean you guys have gone

through the accessing and i'm saying yeah people are focusing access why do we have to focus on the access um we've made it we've invested and and and we made a conscious effort to buy. We never even got all that we ordered to buy. Really? It happened that when we bought it, the price moved up. We bought it at $32. It was at $40-something. And then the price came down.

And then you have the pandemic that made it worse. Yeah. And the truth is... If your values are improving and if you're satisfied that that is going to go up there, the thing has stabilized, so we move on. But if people want to hear from us as to what we're going to do with it and we're convinced that that is important. Then one may deal with it.

But even my style, I'm not necessarily going to, well, it depends on what wants to be done with it. But, you know, as I said to people, we don't have only one non-performing investment in this. If you start to talk about one, you might have to talk about all of them. And what is important at that time is the movement. See, when things are moving in the right direction, then one can focus on that.

If things are not moving in the right direction, then you have to start to tell your shareholders what are the actions you're going to take to deal with things. then after dealing with the individual one citizen if we're not already done so we're looking at getting rid of this or getting rid of some of them um and redeploying them elsewhere i like that i like that sort of proactive i like i like that sort of proactive management um and well it brings me back to the retail investor point because we're now facing a market with the strongest retailer base that we've had before i've heard the whole sprinkle salt on these numbers but i've heard numbers of

14 000 j trader users and it would mean that these are these are active people trading from their cell phones or from their um computers themselves yes which then means that the retail base now has more power than it has had in i don't know if maybe ever and that's a fair i think that ever i think is appropriate or yeah and then that then speaks to companies now needing to speak like you're speaking to everybody because you don't know i personally i am not going to go to every agm i don't i don't not often is there a need to go to every agent but if i have a need i will go other times i might read about what happened there i read it in the financials my recommendation for agm i used to go to agms regularly and then one advantage of going to AGMs is the

opportunity to rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of industry right so um I tell this story my first article on grace kennedy was done years and years ago as you probably would assume. And my first article is something that sticks in my mind. I don't remember the contents of the article fully, but what's stuck in my mind is that I had put a call through to the company that i wanted to do an article and i wanted to have met with met with carlton alexander so i put the call through maybe i'm on the morning what have you expecting fully well to be told by secretary that first of all who are you who are you calling from, etc. And, you know, Mr. Alexander can't talk to you, you know, he's busy. And maybe you might want to call back in a few weeks or he'll call you back in,

whatever. So I went unprepared for any instantaneous encounter with the gentleman. I called, said, lady said, let me see if we can talk to you. And in seconds, I was speaking, the man was speaking to me. And it's, you know, so I said, well, I wanted to write an article. Do I have to come in the process of doing that? Because I wanted to have an interview. And he said, when do you want to come?

And, of course, I wasn't prepared. I had no time frame because I expect the thing to be somewhere down the road. frame because I expect the thing to be somewhere down the road in a few days I mean I caught Brett and told him maybe next week or whatever it is when don't do they ask when he said well it's the first time anybody but I've contacted him but the thing is that here is a man that was a super business person in the society and I was able to get through to him no layers and layers of secretaries to go through yeahGMs, because the directors don't, most people who are, if they go there, have an opportunity to talk, to discourse with them. It makes you, if you have to try and get information from the company, it provides an opportunity that once you put the call through, the person knows who is calling and is prepared, all things being equal, to entertain their questions.

And it's something, as well as to intermingle with other investors. Yes. Because it that matter of investment is not purely what I know but is also what other people know and what you can you can or you can interact with them and get information from them that may be useful in investment decision-making. I love that. Hi, guys. Randy just reminded me again that what you just heard was part one of a two-part thing. We didn't want it to go too long, so we edited it to

give you a lot of the gems, but not keep you bored, right? I hope you enjoyed the conversation. There's more to come. If you liked it, like, subscribe. If you're listening to us and not watching us on YouTube youtube feel free to subscribe or share with a friend or if you listen to apple five stars leave a review thank you really i hope you enjoyed it and look out for part two coming up soon all right yeah double homicide