Tesla kicked off earnings season with some strong numbers despite having to manage supply chain issues related to the chip shortage. Apple followed that with some blockbuster numbers but shares in the tech giant fell because it warned that chip shortages could impact its iPhone output. Starbucks had a similar trajectory with the company delivering strong numbers but warning that it expects weakness in China in the next quarter. Microsoft closes out our quartet of companies with its own blockbuster numbers and some mildly negative news that may overshadow the good news.

Transcript

Sam Bailey  0:14

Welcome to 7investing Now, a show that teaches you how to take a long term view on investing by better understanding what’s happening in the market now.

Dan Kline  0:24

Good afternoon 7investors and welcome to the Monday edition of 7investing now my name of course is Daniel Brooks Klein, I am joining you live from West Palm Beach, Florida. And I’m being joined today by Maxx Chatzco, who I believe is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of mediocre cheesesteaks. The city where Rocky runs up the steps and now there’s a statue of him there, the city where I almost got killed at a Flyers game for inadvertently cheering when the Rangers scored a goal. Now how is Philadelphia?

Maxx Chatsko  0:56

It’s pretty good. My sister and her husband are traveling so I was called in to try to keep houseplants and cats alive. It’s only Monday we’ll see. I don’t know, anything can happen.

Dan Kline  1:07

So Maxx, I have a great prank idea. Before we get into our top topic, we’re going to talk about the Delta variant and its impact on the economy. I have five questions for you that we’re going to answer. But here’s my prank idea for your sister. Let’s sell all her stuff on eBay. She comes home you have like $600. You hand it to her. All her stuff is gone. I think that’s an epic prank. It would play well on TikTok, I know you have a big TikTok account. Can we make this happen?

Maxx Chatsko  1:33

It’ll be even better because I’m leaving  before she gets back. So they’ll just be like nothing but like a pile of money on an empty floor in the living room. It could work then we’ll talk about it.

Dan Kline  1:43

So we’re going to talk about the Delta variant. And I assume the variants are named based on Greek letters. But I made a little joke to you on Twitter about I’m not sure what’s worse, Delta’s customer service or the Delta variant and you said yeah, coming next is the Comcast variant. What other evil corporation or people names could we give to a variant here? I’m gonna say the Facebook variant would be a would be a pretty sinister form of Coronavirus.

Maxx Chatsko  2:09

I would go with a Flyers fan variant. You know, I mean, have you ever seen the Flyers win the cup Dan?

Dan Kline  2:15

I have not. But I’m going to give a pass because Gritty is my second favorite mascot. My first being the Philly Phanatic. Cousins, I assume. I assume they’re related. We would love your questions. We would love your comments. They don’t have to be about the Delta variant. They can be about the economy, they can be about the market. We’ve had a lot of people asking us about some interesting stocks. We’re gonna do a show probably next week that’s just about stocks people regularly ask us about that we have opinions on. We did Shake Shak on the Friday show with with Matt Cochrane. And that’s just one where I’m pretty mediocre on it. But I actually really like the product. So we’re gonna we’re gonna do that later in the week.

We’re going to talk a lot of earnings this week. I’m going to tape Tuesday with Anirban Mahanti and talk about Tesla’s earnings, which come out today. But here’s a little secret for those of you watching. We’re going to take that live. So if you happen to tune into this channel, Tuesday at 3:30 there’s going to be a secret broadcast of a little segment of 7investing Now. We’re mostly going to promote that to our overseas fans, all of Anirban’s friends in Australia, all the kangaroos all the wallabies will be watching the show. Certainly Crocodile Dundee who I assume is Prime Minister of Australia will be watching and we’d love to have you along for that.

But Maxx, we’ve heard a lot about the Delta variant. It’s scary. I have a friend who’s in ICU right now who is dealing with COVID. We’ve all seen people get whacked by it. We’ve seen break through cases where people who have been vaccinated get it even though they’re generally not having any significant systems or really anything worse than a cold. But let me ask the question first we’re going to go through five questions here we’re breaking from from our our Jewish four question traditions and we’re adding going to a fifth question. That is a joke all the some of the is not really a joke, a a something beaten into you in Hebrew school that many of our Jewish fans would get. First, what risk does the Delta variant pose for both unvaccinated and vaccinated Americans? I ask this because it’s obviously relevant to the economy.

Maxx Chatsko  4:16

Right? So for vaccinated individuals, people who’ve had both doses of Pfizer or Moderna or those single shot of the Johnson and Johnson there’s, really no risk for the most part. You could get infected, meaning you could have a mild or mostly asymptomatic case. But you know, you still have the same risk about, you know, less than 10% chance it’s, I think, less than 5% chance overall of ending up in the hospital. And most of those, that 5% population is older individuals or people who are maybe not generally that healthy to begin with. So for the most part, if you’re fully vaccinated, you really don’t have anything to worry about. If you are unvaccinated that’s a little bit different. Obviously, we’re kind of seeing like this, if this is a wave, it’s not going to be nearly as strong of a peak, as we saw in March 2020, or over the winter, just recently in the second wave.

It’s going to be more regional. So, you know, some states are doing much better in terms of their population that’s been vaccinated than other states. And even right now we’re seeing like the most outbreaks now are happening in Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida. I don’t know the hell you guys are doing down there, Dan. But, uh, so it’s very regional, and it’s in places and you know, this isn’t political. But obviously, the vaccination for whatever reason is become part of it’s very strongly affiliated with group identity right now. Right? That’s a dangerous place to be because it’s really about science. So places that have those types of affiliations tend to  have higher rates of unvaccinated individuals. So we’re seeing much stronger outbreaks there. But yeah, if you’re unvaccinated, you can end up in the hospital, you can die. It’s pretty much the same as it’s always been. No, no secrets about that, Dan.

Dan Kline  6:07

Yeah, I don’t want to be political. And Dear God, we are absolutely not going to take that comment that came in, which is horrifically political, but we would like your appropriate questions and comments about the economy, about travel, about the Delta variant. But that being said, just just to put a little word out there. Selfishly, go get vaccinated, because if you’re vaccinated, you can go do stuff and not have to worry about it. You know, I am very worried about my friend who’s in the hospital, and I don’t know her vaccination status, I’m going to assume no, but I don’t know. And if you get vaccinated, you can do all sorts of cool stuff. It’s a lot safer to go to Disneyworld or the beach or wherever else it might be.

Again, no politics, we would love your comments, you want to say hi, we appreciate that as well. So max numbers are climbing. You mentioned Florida, and there’s a lot of unvaccinated people here people not willing to take it. Does that mean that those of us who are vaccinated and I’ve talked about my vaccination journey and my wife and son are vaccinated as well. Should we expect that obviously, it’s not gonna happen here in Florida widely, because our governor is anti-people living. But are you going to see things like even restaurants voluntarily saying, Hey, wear a mask until your food is served or states and cities saying things like, hey if you’re inside wear a mask, are we going to see some of these restrictions return?

Maxx Chatsko  7:31

It’s possible, obviously, there’s a lot of unwillingness to do that at the state level. And even at the federal level, they don’t want to put restrictions back in place. Kind of the point of holding out until vaccines are available. Now they’re available. And now we still have this problem. I did read over the weekend, the CDC is considering issuing a mask mandate again. But really, I mean, again, in places that aren’t vaccinated, they’re not going to wear a mask anyway, that’s why we’re in this problem. So I’m not sure how effective any of that will be. Again, if you’re vaccinated, I mean, the risk is very, very, very low. So you really don’t have much to worry about. And if you’re unvaccinated, you’re probably not listening to any of this stuff anyway. So I don’t see that how effective it could be.

Dan Kline  8:14

Yeah, this is you know, and let’s get to the economics of this. So we’ve talked a lot about – I own a rental property near Disney (NYSE:DIS) and it’s been rented out pretty steadily, mostly, to Floridians because rental cars are really hard to come by. So we’re not getting a lot of people who fly into Disney who stay off property, which would normally be something you know, you want more room, you want to you know, maybe not to do every Disney every day, that would be an option. But right now, you can’t get there. So that is a problem. Do we do you think max that this is going to impact travel that we’re gonna see, you know, airlines, you know, locked down for unvaccinated people or we’re just sort of getting back to normal. And when I say normal, I mean, a real messed up normal because the airline schedules are disastrous. JetBlue and Southwest are better than most, but any of the other airlines are just juggling flights, dealing with pilot shortages dealing with staffing shortages. Is this going to make it worse or even cause more restrictions and maybe a pullback of travel stocks?

Maxx Chatsko  9:13

I don’t know. I mean, I know right now, if you take a flight, you do have to wear a mask on the flight right Dan you’ve flown recently?

Dan Kline  9:22

Yes, yes, you do. My mother flew. And I’ve flown and I’m flying again. I’ll do a conference in August. And yes, you have to wear a mask except when you’re actively eating or drinking. And on Southwest they bring around a little card and you hold up a finger for I want water I want Diet Coke. I want coke I want sprite I think those are the choices. And there’s a small little selection of snacks. So it’s it’s not 100% masked because you can move the mask aside to take a sip, but for the most part, it’s masked and Maxx I have to say it’s delightful. I don’t love wearing a mask. I love nobody bothering me and my laptop so I can either work or watch a movie. I’m happy with little chitchat. I don’t need to talk to you during the flight unless you happen to be a really interesting person, or of course, a 7investing member or fan, if you see me on a flight, and you know me from the show, or you know me from 7investing, I am happy to talk.

I actually think there’s gonna be some travel damage here. So we are seeing continued lockdowns from Europe, there are a lot of people who live at my resort who are British and who can’t fly in. So at some point them not using their units is going to leave a lot. You know, there’ll be more rental availability, that’s probably bad for me, I am a minor player, but it’s not great for hotel chains. I think you’re seeing a lot of strength at Disney. But you’re not necessarily seeing it be as strong as maybe you thought it would be. So I do think there’s gonna be some muted impact. There are going to be some people that were planning, maybe large group trips that hold off on those, you know, we all want to travel. But I do still think we’re going to be doing a little bit more safer travel, you’re, you know, you’re maybe not ditching the RV trip to the middle of nowhere in favor of the crowded trip.

So look, I don’t invest in hotel stocks anyway, I think they’re not a great place to be. You know, I’m a huge fan of Disney. But I do think there might be some material impact. In the close of summer, maybe not the fall, I think people who booked Halloween through Christmas are probably going to plunge through if things don’t go worse. But let’s go to question four. And I’ve heard Dr. Fauci. I’ve heard other doctors talk about this. And again, feel free to jump in with your appropriate questions and comments. Are we going to need a booster shot? I actually had my shot back in like February. So I am well into it. And I’m keeping an eye on this from talking to you so far I’m like, I don’t need one. But are some people going to need a booster shot? Or might there be a point where due to the variants where it just make sense for everyone?

Maxx Chatsko  11:51

So if you do a quick recap of that, leading up to maybe last month, all the vaccine manufacturers were and they still are developing boosters and testing it. And they’ve been saying, We need boosters, we’re gonna need boosters. And then it kind of came to a head Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) came out and publicly said, hey, we’re gonna ask for approval for our booster shot. And the US federal health agency said, hey, next time you do that, maybe talk to us about it before you publicly announce it, because we actually don’t think you might need boosters yet. And we’re still kind of cautious about that. And the threat was that, you know, Pfizer, these companies kind of risk, a very delicate public health communication, that, you know, is obviously still being tiptoed around with the federal aid from the government, you know, they’re trying to be as unrestrictive as possible.

And so if companies come and say, we’re gonna need boosters, it kind of risks maybe instilling a little bit more fear into the situation that might be necessary. So in recent weeks, we’ve seen all the companies kind of back off of saying if we need boosters or not. They’re giving the, you know, the floor to a federal health agency saying, we’ll let them decide. The CDC and FDA have mulled and are thinking about maybe certain populations might need a booster. Individuals who are older and tend to have, you know, less robust immune responses. But we’re still collecting data, we’re still trying to figure it all out.

And again, it’s not just about if you have antibodies, or if we can detect antibodies, your immune response, you know, there’s more nuance to it, there’s T cells and B cells, things we can’t always detect, or we need special tests for that. So it’s not just about circulating antibody levels, it’s a little more complicated. And I don’t think we’ll need boosters every year, even if there are variants, we might not need it for several years, some people might never need a booster. Although again, if a significant amount of our population remains unvaccinated, every infection risks mutations. So over time, I mean, that can really add up and also need to think globally as well. So it’s possible maybe every once in a while, we need a booster, just to really, you know, put the pandemic behind us. So this could drag on for a few years, but I think the worst is certainly behind us.

Dan Kline  14:02

Yeah, and these aren’t the cool mutations, you’re not going to turn into Magneto because of this. They’re going to give you COVID in a way that becomes you know, breaks through your vaccine. So there is a selfish thing in all of us wanting others to get you know, to get vaccinated. I would certainly take a booster if offered but I’m glad that so far it’s not necessary not because I’m against it, simply because we obviously if we had a booster we’re gonna have the same run on supply and you have to make them and you have to get them out there and obviously we have a lot more apparatus now. And that’s very good, but I see your comment Max Lucas, we will take it at the end. If anyone else wants to jump in with some questions and comments. You want to talk about travel stocks, we’d be happy to do that. It’s gonna be a crazy, crazy investing heavy week, which is why we started with something I don’t want to say a little lighter because talking about the Coronavirus is not a very light topic. But let’s go to number five here. Has the Covid resurgence changed any of your thoughts on investing Maxx? I have an answer here too.

Maxx Chatsko  15:06

I think I mean, the simple answer is no. I mean, when your long term investor, this doesn’t really matter so much I mean, what was it a few, maybe last week or two weeks ago, you know, the stocks kind of had a really bad day. And everybody kind of pointed to all there’s concerns about the Delta variant. And I don’t know if that was just fitting the headline to the data of the stock market falling as the financial media tend to do. Or if that was actually why the stock market fell. But you know, I’m not really concerned either way, even if there’s a little correction, because of concern about the pandemic, you know, maybe the recoveries is now slower or put on hold for a little bit because of this resurgence. I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

But I’m not worried about that, from a long term perspective, you do have to consider, you know, international money has poured into the US stock markets as well. So we can’t just be concerned about what’s going on here in United States. I know, it’s really hard for Americans, there’s, there’s other there’s at least five other countries in the world. I don’t know if you know that Dan. So, you know, like in the first half of 2021, international investors poured $900 billion dollars into us equity markets, that’s a record. That’s insane. That’s a lot of money. So a lot of people again, like are you gonna invest in Europe, or Asia, like, or South America right now? No, like, relatively speaking, the American economic recovery, and how we’ve handled the pandemic, or at least, how we’re rebounding from the pandemic, I should say, is better than other places in the world. So that’s going to cause a lot of money to come in. And if there is a resurgence that might cause some of that money to not come in as as hastily as before, so that could affect it as well. But long story short, now, it doesn’t affect my long term view on investing. Dan, what about you?

Dan Kline  16:47

Yeah, I’ll be investing in a gin and tonic in the Bahamas. I’m not sure that’s going to change their economy, but I will do my part. So here’s what I will say about the pandemic overall. It absolutely was a litmus test on who’s a good operator and who’s a bad operator. Like you saw companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s to pick two really obvious ones – Walmart, Target, Best Buy, that you kind of knew where the better companies anyway, but you saw the pandemic, oh, my God, they turned on a dime, they did everything they needed to do. And I know Amazon, you know, got some negative feedback about, quote, how long it took for them to get temperature checks and safety equipment. It took them like less than two weeks, like that’s pretty impressive for a company the scope and size of Amazon. So I’ve been very impressed.

The companies I like tend to have done really well, you know, I was on a cruise on July 3, and the level of safety on that cruise, I was standing next to the CEO of Royal Caribbean cruise line. So if he didn’t feel it was safe, my guess is he wouldn’t have been there with his kid. So you know, you are getting you’re seeing who the good companies are. You’re seeing who was ready to deal with something bad. And do I expect another pandemic? No, but you know, we’ve seen this with Home Depot and Lowe’s, they’ve done an incredibly good job of being able to open after like a natural disaster, where they’re incredibly necessary, and they may not have power, they may not have all the things they need to operate, but people need lumber and sandbags and batteries and whatever else it might be. And the snow shovels they open very, very quickly.

Let’s take Max Lucas’s comments to close out this segment and 7investors let’s get more active. I would love more questions and comments. Went to rural Idaho the other week, and it was busier than ever. Traveled to the mountains is stronger than ever. Yeah, I was in the Carolinas. I was in Birmingham, Alabama. And it felt very normal. You didn’t see a ton of masks, though you did see some. The casino I was in was relatively crowded for during the week. It wasn’t overly crowded. I do think the world is largely back to normal. But and again, I’m treading on the line of not being political here. I do think when you see some people who thought this was no big deal who get very sick. I hope that’s a warning sign to other people in their sphere. Again, I am heartsick over my friend who’s battling this now.

And I don’t know all the circumstances, it could be some some combination of bad luck and not not being vaccinated. But for people who see this, I really hope they get it. And I understand the fear. I understand the risk. But my god, you don’t want to be in a hospital on a ventilator. That’s terrifying as someone who has a lifelong asthma and has dealt with breathing issues. Not being able to breathe is really really scary. Part of why I live in Florida cold makes my asthma worse. In Florida, I almost have no asthma. So, you know, we have terrifying lizards and mosquitoes the size of a dog, but we don’t have a lot of cold weather. We’re going to talk in a second about a microbiome drug that failed a key test. I didn’t even know that microbiome tests were coming up. I was too into the Olympics.

No I have barely been watching the Olympics. Dear God, the US basketball team lost to France, Francis coaches a mime. That that is how bad things are going for the US basketball team. That is not true, but it is bad. Next we’re going to talk about this in a second. But before we do that we are rapidly approaching the first of the month, what is the first of the month? That’s when the new 7investing picks come out. We have already recorded our video presentations. We each present our stock to the other members of the team. We can ask questions, we can push back – wait to see the probing questions I have on Maxx’s stock. No, no, it’s not me. It’s it’s mostly Dana, on Maxx’s stock.

But we all push ourselves. That’s the best thing about this team. Because we’re all friends, because we all like each other. We can ask each other questions that if we didn’t like each other would be taken as offensive. But because we do it actually makes it better for our members. How do you get access to this? Well, you have to become a 7investing member. How do you do that? That’s very simple. 7investing.com/subscribe, you go there, you register, you agree to pay us either $49 a month or and this is the deal $399 a year. That is more than two months free. For that you get access to seven stock picks each month you also get our our top buys for the month. So we sort of give you an idea of our past picks. Here’s the one we’re most excited about. I’ve never remember what we call those Maxx. What’s the actual title for those?

Maxx Chatsko  21:26

Most intriguing ideas.

Dan Kline  21:28

most intriguing ideas. And that might be because the obvious name for those is being used by another company that’s like if you were Dairy Queen, and you got Blizzard, that’s why I’m eating a Carvelanche, like is that the best name? No, it’s not. But Blizzard has already taken so so that’s sort of why we call it those. But with that being said, you also get access to our members only call that is a rollicking 90 minutes where you can ask us questions about any of our stock picks. We don’t talk about our stock picks here on 7investing that we’ve been doing some bonus member calls in the evening with Anirban Mahanti because he lives in Australia, and time is completely upside down in Australia. So we would love for you to join us. It’s a family. It is a great place to be we love talking to our members.

I joked a little bit earlier and I said like hey, if a member sees me on a plane talk to me. Yeah, if a member like I’m going to be in Vegas, and I’ll share those dates. It’s like the 15th through the 19th I’m going to a wireless convention staying at Caesar’s Palace. You live in Vegas, you’re visiting Vegas, you want to have a drink, I’ll buy you a drink. You want to have a cup of coffee, maybe a snack, we would happily do that. So I won’t belabor it 7investing.com/subscribe, Martha Berry West, we will take your question or your comment later in the program. So Maxx, I don’t pay that much attention to microbiome news. I know that’s shocking. But why don’t you tell me what happened here and what key test did not pass.

Maxx Chatsko  22:53

So last week company called Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MCRB), announced that it had a drug and microbiome drug in ulcerative colitis, right. So it’s a gastrointestinal issue disease. And it didn’t even come close to giving patients remission, so relieving their symptoms, didn’t perform any better than placebo and had more side effects. So it was a shocking, shocking bit of news that it had absolutely no signs of efficacy for patients. Now, this is interesting, because last August 2020, Seres Therapeutics announced results from a big trial in c-diff. So that’s another infection. Sometimes it’s you know, antibiotic resistance. So it’s a very, not a fun infection to have, you can end up in the hospital, you can actually die from that. And that drug candidate from Seres Therapeutics absolutely crushed it.

So the company takes microbiome samples. So it takes samples from healthy individuals, and then implants those into affected in individuals with diseases or infections. And it tries to restore the correct proportions and populations of healthy bacteria that are colonizing in your gut, to help treat symptoms of diseases and so forth. So right out of the gates, you know, in August 2020, the company crushed it, everybody ran into microbiome stocks. They’ve been hyped up for, you know, years. And this was the first time we had clinical evidence, you know, that they worked and they were safe, and they could be approved, potentially. And then here we are with this, this other drug here from last weekend didn’t even come close. So we have like both ends of the spectrum in terms of do microbiome drugs work?

Dan Kline  24:34

So Maxx, the answer here is, we don’t know. Right? And as an investor, this isn’t like a death knell. It’s more just like, whoa, hey, this part didn’t work right. Like or is it worse than I’m seeing it?

Maxx Chatsko  24:47

Yeah. So last August, you know, shares of Seres Therapeutics shot up several 100% when that news was announced, right. Last week, shares dropped over 50%. So they’re trading at $20 a share right now. They’re still under $8 a share today, and that’s after like a little bit of a rebound. So, you know, the takeaway here is I mean, you know, specifically for Seres Therapeutics, you know, has a big partnership with Nestle Health Science, most of its pipeline programs have an option for Nestle’s Health Science arm to co develop. So that’s good. That offsets risks that shows interest from a big partner. It also kind of dilutes the economic opportunity for Seres Therapeutics, investors.

But nonetheless, you know, they’re still going at it and multiple different programs. But you know, for the most part, yeah, this signals that, you know, we just don’t know yet, you know, the probability of success for microbiome drugs. So this is a good reminder, generally speaking, that drug developments risky, there’s no such thing as a slam dunk, even if the first trial or two for new therapeutic modality crush it, as happened here. You know, and it’s still risky. Biology is still complex, and specifically with microbiome stocks, you know, in the gut microbiome. There’s a lot of variables, right? I mean, we’re adding living things to try to treat disease, and we’re colonizing your gut, which has a lot of other living things. So very difficult, almost impossible, really, to control for all of those variables, we’re still kind of learning exactly, you know, how to tweak these therapeutics to have an effect.

Dan Kline  26:17

Is it just a matter of time, Maxx? Or is it possible that this just doesn’t work?

Maxx Chatsko  26:21

Yeah, I think it’ll work eventually. But again, like, you know, is it going to be one year, five years, 10 years, I think we’re gonna make iterative progress. So for example, Seres Therapeutics has another drug kind of a next generation drug for ulcerative colitis. The drug that just failed was simply just they took healthy bacteria from patients or healthy bacteria from healthy individuals, and put it into affected individuals to try to treat the disease, their next gen drug, which is an earlier stage development, they took bacteria from healthy individuals, but then they kind of tweaked them a little bit before putting them into patients. So maybe that drug performs better. Maybe there’s certain diseases and conditions where you have to have a little more engineering of the therapeutic, you can’t just do like, you know, take a take a donor sample and then implant it, maybe it’s not so simple. There’s other companies that are just engineering the bacteria to begin with, and trying to you know, restore healthy gut populations of bacteria. So there’s a lot of different ways to go. Oh, we have a comment from Simon Erickson.

Dan Kline  27:23

Yeah let’s bring this up. This is either our CEO Simon Erikson, or an excellent impersonator of Simon, but we’re gonna assume it’s Simon, because it’s a good question. Max, why don’t you read the question?

Maxx Chatsko  27:35

Alright, Simon, son of Eric says Is Seres’ recent failure indicative of how challenging the microbiome is to treat, are there more failures on the horizon from other companies in this space? Will they require a different approach? You’re only allowed to ask two questions, Simon, three is extra or reserved for members only. So we’ve kind of talked about some of these. And again, we can’t read this through too much to the whole field, because there’s a lot of different approaches within gut microbiome drugs. But this does suggest, hey, look, there’s some things that we need to understand. There’s just more things we need understand, there’s more variables, right. So I do think like tuning some of the therapeutic payloads in the populations of bacteria were restoring, can help. That can have a benefit, but it’s just gonna take time to understand, you know exactly what variables we need to adjust in order to have a therapeutic effect. So the therapeutic modality is not dead. But this is a good reminder, you know, don’t get too carried away, drug development still risky.

Dan Kline  28:35

So Maxx does this just sort of show that in this space, you just need to take a basket approach that betting on one company, because something sounds promising is probably a bad idea. Because, you know, you’re gonna have companies with failures that later succeed. But you’re also gonna have a lot of companies. I mean, you know, what is it gonna be 30 40% at most make it to actually being viable, and only a couple of those become a real hit? This is a very experimental area to be in, right?

Maxx Chatsko  29:03

Yes. So there’s different ways to invest. I tip, I don’t personally take a basket approach, right. So I think that would be the kind of more like a top down approach. You look at an area, oh, microbiome drugs, I think that’ll be a big deal. And then you go and invest in the various microbiome stocks that are out there. So that’s kind of the basket approach, I do a more bottom up approach. So I look at the whole landscape, try to understand the challenges and the opportunities. And then I pick my spots, I’ll invest in maybe the one or two best companies within that space. So that’s not the basket approach. For this, I mean, there’s just too much unknown. We don’t have a handle on – this is a totally new therapeutic modality, right? We don’t have really much clinical data. So it’s really hard to get a read on what company has the best approach. What company you know, might have the best shot at succeeding. This is certainly adds another data point for investors to consider. But yeah, it’s definitely going to be a difficult space to pin down at least for you know, the next year or two.

Dan Kline  30:02

This works better than my macro biome approach, which is a terrifying bacteria you have to wrestle with. Simon, of course says thanks, Maxx, I’m a big fan of the show. Well, Simon signss our paychecks. So I hope he is a big fan of the show, we really appreciate getting to do this show and so many of you playing along. This is just this is just fun. And we often do very investing heavy shows. This is a little bit of a different show. But I’m excited that we have a whole bunch of questions and comments to deal with as we get towards cclosing things out in the Sam Bailey, I know you’re a little bit under the weather so I apologize for keeping things going. But if you want to go with Martha Berry West’s comment, we will start to close out the show. By giving the best advice we can on the questions were being asked and feel free to get in your non politically crazy questions.

We had a couple we had to block here. And Dear God, we are not the place for conspiracy theories. I own 115 companies, I’m gonna guess that means stock in 115 companies I am teasing, I know Martha pretty well. My top 15 make up 64% and are up 90%. How should I look at this? Should I trim some, I think they’re all great companies. Maxx, I’m gonna jump in first here. In my mind, if I have and I’ll call it second party verification on a company I own that’s not one where I do all the homework on that means that one of the six of you the other 7investing lead advisors, or a handful of friends I have in the investing space, like maybe my buddy, Matt Frankel, or someone like that has real conviction on a stock, I don’t feel the need to do any homework on that stock. So if you’re telling me to buy something, and not telling me to sell it, I own it.

So then I have whatever it is 15 to 45, it’s probably closer to 15 now, or it’ll grow to 45 stocks in my portfolio that are stocks that I picked, that are my recommendations, and my job is to keep up on those stocks. So I’m comfortable owning a heavy amount. And I think this is really, really personal. If you think they’re all great companies, I don’t actually think there’s any reason to trim. And if most of your winners is coming from a certain group, I actually think you might want to look at the ones that aren’t winning, and decide if something’s off on the reason you own it, maybe an event happen, that means this company isn’t going to be as big as you thought it would be. And sometimes that is a reason to get out, we talk about de risking events. If a company fails a de risking event, that doesn’t mean it’s never going to get there.

But in my space of retail, if a company says you know what, we’re gonna stop expanding, we’re just gonna be we’re 400 stores, we’re gonna grow by five stores a year, that might be a point where I go, Oh, wait a minute, I no longer want to be invested in this company, because I don’t think it’s the best use of my capital. So I have no qualms with owning that many companies, if you believe in them, and if at least on some of them. And I know Martha is, you’re getting sort of that that independent verification from people who spend their lives researching those stocks, which is most certainly what we do. When we are not occasionally throwing darts, or in my case, being on a cruise ship or playing blackjack for the most part, we are investigating and researching stocks. Maxx, your thoughts on this one?

Maxx Chatsko  33:18

Yeah, again, I mean, there’s different ways to invest. Martha, you own about 100 stocks more than I do in my portfolio. So I mean, you know, as you own that many stocks eventually, you know, you’re kind of just building like an ETF. So that does kind of diminish the returns from the bottom companies. But still, I mean, you know, if you’re putting in a little bit of money, even if it’s a small position, it’s still investing, it’s still better than putting it in a bank account or something else where you’re still probably getting better returns. So you know, I’m younger, I have a smaller portfolio. I’m not quite at the 115 stock level yet, but maybe I’ll get there in a couple decades. But yeah, I don’t have much to add over what Dan said.

Dan Kline  33:56

Maxx endlessly pointing out that he’s younger than me, Michael Schultz shares. Wait till samples that up. Some people have been worried about the opening – tech growth, I just did not understand how the opening of itself should be worrying. I mean, the whole world is dependent on tech. So here’s the logic, the logic, and I think it’s faulty logic is that the world is going to open and we’re all going to throw our phones away, stop going to Zoom meetings, and everything is going to be different. Here’s the reality. And I think it’s a really important reality. We’re going to have slightly fewer zoom meetings, something, you know, some things like my son’s school always had a Zoom option, and I’ve lost Maxx, I hope he he popped back up here at secondary is and my son’s school – it wasn’t zoom. It was Google Classroom. They were broadcasting every class. So 80% of the kids were at home, and I thought they would continue doing that next year.

So if a kid had the sniffles and didn’t want to come to school, he could still go to class. they’ve opted not to do that. I personally think that’s a mistake. The technology is there. Why not use it even if you only turn it on when you have, you know, what if you have a kid in cancer treatment, and he can’t come in for for 60 days, because he’s immunocompromised, you have the technology, you should be using it. But I do think most places are going to see a slight slowdown in use of technology because they’re going to have in person meetings. But let’s say we have an all team meeting and I happen to fly to Houston. And Sam Bailey joins me at Simon’s house along with some of our marketing team that’s from Texas. That doesn’t mean that Maxx is going to be there that  Steve Symington, that Matt Cochrane, that Dana Abramovitz, anybody else on the team are going to be there.

So there’s still going to be a digital component. I do think you might see things like, the 10th most important show on Netflix, not get as much viewership, because we’re only watching nine shows now. But I agree, I don’t think it’s going to be meaningfully different. When the world is open. I’m going to use different technology. Look, if I’m in the Bahamas, my use is going to be my phone a lot more than it is my internet connection. At home, I’ll be watching streaming services more so than cable. But I’m not all of a sudden going to be like on Naked and Afraid not using any technology. Your thoughts Maxx?

Maxx Chatsko  36:08

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think this is one of those things that became a narrative in the media. But how did it start? You know, this could have been one guy at a Wall Street firm. And he said this once and then became a headline, and then five other publications made it and now enough people believe it or just regurgitate it. And now we have to talk about the reopening and how does that affect tech stocks. And I don’t really see how it plays into the long term story, or even the short term story, really, as Dan said, I mean, we’re still very dependent on technology and screens and all these services. And they’re growing like weeds. And if you, you know Anirban and Matt on our team have said, you know, like the amount of you know, like corporate infrastructure that’s like, on the cloud, or using some of these services is still like in the single digits. I mean, there’s a huge runway left for the next decade or longer. For a lot of these businesses to keep growing, whether there’s a reopening or recession or correction or whatever. I think the growth stories are still intact.

Dan Kline  37:09

Yeah. And to go into Matt’s area of digital payment, once you’ve set up Venmo, or zelle, or Square or Apple Pay, or whatever it is, you’ve set it up. So you’re gonna use it like the second I use Apple Pay at Whole Foods once. I’ve used Apple Pay at Whole Foods every other time I’ve been there, because it’s easier than pulling out my credit card. I know that sounds silly, because it’s not exactly difficult to put your credit card into the machine, though. I can’t see that well, up close if I’m not wearing my glasses, so maybe it’s not that easy. Look, are we going to order Doordash or Uber somewhere between 10 and 50%? Less? Yeah. But in Ubers case, we’re also going to Uber more because we’re going to go places. So are there going to be some technology shifts? Yeah, you’re gonna see some business go back to restaurants that was being done via delivery.

Do I think that’s going to be bad for say like a Domino’s? No, they’ve shown unbelievable resilience no matter what the condition is. And I had coffee in a Starbucks this morning. And I actually like got into the drive thru line before going, Oh, wait a minute. Like I can go in like, why am I? Why am I in the drive thru line, I was lucky enough I was able to get out of it. So I think there are some changes and our consumption is going to be a little different, but it is not going to disappear. We would love more questions and comments. We’ve got time we’ve got a few left. Enrique Felix has a question. And Enrique, you are not in danger of getting banned for this question. The people who we blocked were people asking really, really political questions that we would never touch.

On the big store names was it really the companies that were allowed to stay open? It was the others not being open. So here’s the reality. You couldn’t be open in some markets. If you were like a TJ Maxx, you know, or something that just wasn’t necessary in certain areas you had to close. in certain areas, Walmart was only allowed to sell certain things. But really good companies figured out how to adapt, Best Buy figured out how to go to curbside pickup for things that aren’t easy to do curbside pickup on. Ollie’s which is generally a company that sells a very broad line doubled down on grocery because you know what? He did rice and soup and other basic staples and toilet paper. So we saw that companies that had versatility, they won and there are some grocery chains. Look, Kroger did a good job even though I don’t think Kroger is a long term buy because I think Amazon and Walmart are going to eat their lunch by being able to out price them because they don’t need to make money in groceries.

But a lot of grocery chains did not do well compared to Costco, Amazon you know Walmart. Target so we saw who the good players were ensure is it does it stay if you’re a I don’t know, you sell stationary and you had to close you say you sell you know children’s clothes to get the at the mall and you were closed for a while. Yeah, but none of those companies could open. It wasn’t like there was some like political advantage where like Walmart was open and Stop and Shop or Publix was it like if you were a grocery store you were open so I don’t think there was any politics there. And Maxx, I think we saw it with the, with some of the biotech companies too. Having your stuff together and getting your vaccine into the pipeline quickly, was important. We still have what three, four other vaccines that are like in some vague stage of testing, and they’re going to finish and we’re all going to be like weight, like, Did you just bring like dessert to a party that ended three years ago? Like, you clearly see where class matters.

Maxx Chatsko  40:25

Yeah. The companies that have vaccines on the market now tended to get into clinical trials sooner rather than later. And you’re right, we have I don’t know what the exact count is. I think it’s like over a dozen, maybe dozens plural, other vaccines that are still in development? Why? I don’t know, do we need 13 vaccines now? I don’t think so. We have enough supply or planned supply, you know, based on manufacturing agreements in place for Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, AstraZeneca. And there might be some other ones as well. But, you know, we’re kind of set on the vaccines. So I don’t know that I think those other ones that are in clinical trials probably aren’t going to – I’m not even sure like if you if you would approve them, what do we need them for right now.

Dan Kline  41:09

The pandemic showed us how versatile companies can be an even doing things like this show, which maybe would have just been a podcast in the pre pandemic world, there might not have been that hunger of people to interact, to ask us questions to do it live. Look, we’re still learning. We’re figuring it out as a company. We’re, what 15-16 months old. So we make changes every month for how we deliver things, how we service our members. But I think you see with us, you see what the other great companies out there that a willingness to adapt and to move into the circumstances as they’re needed.

Like, you know, I can’t wait until Maxx and I are doing this show, you know, from a bar or a coffee shop or an improv or whatever it is, because it’s totally cool to all be together and everybody’s excited to do that. Those days will come. We appreciate your Thank you, Mike, but we are here, or that would be Michael. I have a friend Mike Schultz. So I’m shortening your name, you may not do that. We appreciate you being here for us. It is a lot more fun to do this program when we’re getting lots of questions. Let’s take Scott Elgonberg’s comment here. As we move towards wrapping it up. Have you ever went all in? Or what is the largest you have ever put in one stock? Any interesting stories or insight with this? I’ll let you go first on this one, Maxx.

Maxx Chatsko  42:26

No, I mean, I don’t think you should go all in. I think that’s pretty risky. Right? You should definitely diversify your portfolio. My current largest position’s about 20%. I’ve been trying to dilute it to lower allocation percentage by adding more to other positions. So 20%, that’s pretty high. I would say. I don’t know about you, Dan, you have a larger portfolio more bets, probably 20% is pushing it for you.

Dan Kline  42:53

Yeah, so my largest bet is probably about 20%. It’s Microsoft. It’s also the position I’ve held the longest. So it’s not the largest because of any brilliant thinking on my part. It’s the largest. And this this is before I was a professional. This was the beginning of my career in the finance world. I worked for Microsoft, as let’s call it a financial journalist picking stories for their finance app, which changed names like six times, but I was like the launch editor. And I pored through financial stories. That’s how I sort of got my, let’s call it my undergraduate degree in financial news. It’s just spending a year reading every story produced by like Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal and all these major, major players while having financial news and a boss who was super into the stock market.

I bought Microsoft, because I super believed in Windows 8, I bought Microsoft for exactly the wrong reason. And it’s up I want to say close to 400%, you know, in my portfolio, so that’s worked out for me, and I’ve never added any, I’ve also never sold any and same as you. I’ve been stepping up a little bit my investment. And I have to think about in the coming months. Do I own like 10 shares of too many stocks and I should maybe consolidate? No, I’m not that worried about it. If it’s a emerging biotech where God 10 shares if the company’s thesis plays out, that might be you know, my downpayment on an island. But some of these more mature companies, I own that I only know a few shares. And those might not be logical bets, where if I’m expecting them to say 200-300% over the next decade, maybe my money could be better spent elsewhere. So do not go all in. That is a bad idea. I understand. Even as a gambler. I don’t play Texas Hold’em, because the idea of going all in based on mathematically knowing that you have a 62% chance of winning or whatever the numbers are. That to me is absolutely terrifying. I like to gamble but I play $10 blackjack, I’ll play 15 if I have to.

Maxx Chatsko  44:50

And if I could add you know, if you ever consider going all in and you think this is the next big thing and you found a company. Oftentimes that signals that you’re kind of being tricked by your own biases. So you may be overlooking information that you should incorporate into that. So if you went all in on a company, you’re usually following your biases. And if it doesn’t work out, then you don’t want to put yourself in that position financially, you or your family. So you know, I usually see that as a warning sign. If I get too bullish on a company, I try to bring myself back down to earth, and maybe like, dig a little bit deeper into some of the obstacles or challenges that might face .Why might this not work out? So always remain objective?

Dan Kline  45:28

I always take a long term view. We’re nearing the end here if you want to get some last minute questions and feel free to do so. David Ngyuen points out Maxx has an up graded setup. Wow. Nice, Maxx. That’s pretty impressive. But it’s not yours. Right? You’re at your sister’s house slowly going through all her stuff, right?

Maxx Chatsko  45:50

Yeah, this is my sister’s. I’m allegedly keeping houseplants and cats alive. But I actually leave before she gets back. So she’ll never know. Well, she will but I’ll be gone. So no consequences.

Dan Kline  46:00

Maxx, the cats have to eat every day, preferably twice a day. That’s my little piece of advice for you. If anyone wants to throw out advice. We had a party over the weekend we had a party with my elderly relatives mostly is probably putting it a little a little hard, but I had my cousins and my aunts and uncles over. And one of my cousins brought me a houseplant and it’s a cat-safe house plant. And Max, I don’t know much about plants. My wife’s actually going to bring this to her office because her office has a window. Because as much as it won’t kill our cats, they’ll kill the plants. But this thing I don’t know what it is, it’s purple. It looks like the plant you have to find when Batman has been poisoned, and you only have a certain amount of time to find the remedy. And there’s one of them.

It’s a really cool looking plant. But I have a black thumb, I try to stay far away from the plant as possible so it can survive until my wife goes back to her office. We’re going to come up with two more here. Just some comments  – Michael Schultz throws out. We might get lower use of video meetings, but our eyes have been open and the tech will then need to be developed e.g. better group meetings. This is just the beginning. Yes, and no, I think that’s absolutely true. We all have better equipment. We’re all conscious of what our shots look like what our backgrounds look like. Every company that builds a conference room is going to put video conferencing equipment in it. You know, we’re pretty used to that I worked at Microsoft, which, you know, a decade ago, every room had video conferencing equipment, our former employer absolutely had video conferencing equipment.

That’s going to become the norm in every place in schools in places that normally wouldn’t have had it. That being said, I do not believe we’re going to see some major slowdown in travel. I think we might see some travel that looks different. So companies that aren’t requiring people to go back to the office might do quarterly get togethers where you know, they expect you to live close to the office, and you come in for a couple of nights. And maybe you stay in a hotel, maybe there’s group dinners, companies that have gone to all remotes, like ours, maybe we’ll do like once a year in Vegas, once a year in Orlando, you know, or once a year at Steve’s house in Montana or my family home in New Hampshire. You know, I think you’re gonna see differing travel, I don’t think you’re gonna see any change to you know, core business travel involving sales.

My brother is a big time sales executive, he’s going to close big deals in person, nobody’s giving you hundreds of millions of dollars over a Zoom meeting, it just doesn’t work that way. trade shows are going to be busy as ever I mentioned, I’m going to be at a trade show at Caesar’s Palace in August. And you know, their numbers are trending where they were before the pandemic. And this is not a particularly big show, I think CES in January is going to be as big as ever. That being said, there’s also going to be an enhanced digital broadcast part of that show. And for the big shows that’s incredibly relevant. Why? CES is so big that you could be attending and sometimes not be able to get where you’re going and being able to watch a conference or a press conference or a meeting or whatever it is later. Or even from someplace else in the convention hall or one of the three convention halls in 17 hotels, when you’re in a show that’s that big that technology is here to stay.

I think the ability to virtually go – Maxx went to a number of virtual conferences this year, there are shows you wouldn’t travel to that you would absolutely go to some of the show digitally or virtually. And there’s going to be a benefit for allowing media to do that for allowing certain high level executives to do that. So we’re gonna see a pandemic touch on everything we do. But that’s not necessarily a negative. That might mean more people get to experience parts of a big trade show like a Consumer Electronics Show, or like some of the the pharmaceutical and drug shows Maxx goes to. That sounds much more sinister. Those are of course, drugs as in drugs being engineered to make us better. It’s not like Maxx is going to the illicit drug seminar, which I assume would not be in Las Vegas.

And Ricky Felix says any thoughts on snap? Yeah, I don’t want the seventh or eighth player in a space. And I know I’m being dismissive there. And I’ve said Same thing about, you know, Pinterest, which a lot of people really, really love. But I think in social media or communications or whatever you want to call Snap, that the biggest players are going to win. That Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn to a point are going to suck the life out of the room. And might there be room for a niche player like Pinterest or Snap? Maybe. But I think Pinterest has a much better chance to be that winner. Maxx you’re young, do you use Snapchat?

Maxx Chatsko  50:29

No, I was gonna say I’m the youngest on the team. And I haven’t had Snap in like, I don’t know, like 5-6-7 years or something, I don’t even remember. So, you know, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a bad business. I don’t cover this space enough. So my opinion is not really valid on Is it a good investment or not? I did see a headline at least where they you know, they had some increase in you know, advertising revenue recently. So, you know, there’s a business model there. Maybe it works. I don’t know if it’s good investment or not. But it’s it’s, you know, can you compete with like TikTok? Is that how it competes? Is that what its competitors? I don’t really know.

Dan Kline  51:02

Yeah, I don’t think TikTokk is gonna be all that valuable a player either. You know, the reality is, advertising centers around business, it centers around things. Look, Twitter has struggled to monetize really only Facebook has done a really good job. With monetizing, I’m going to guess there are other players that we just don’t know about. But that being said, I really look for quality. We were going to talk about Kraft macaroni and cheese releasing an ice cream and I’m always hesitant to do these gimmicky stories cuz it’s not like this is a meaningful product. You know, this is obviously like it’s like when Kentucky Fried Chicken came out with with a lip balm. And that’s just meant to get media attention. But we’re not going to talk about that because we don’t have enough time.

Maxx Chatsko  51:50

Quickly, would you try a macaroni and cheese flavored ice cream? I wouldn’t. That sounds nasty to me.

Dan Kline  51:57

Oh, no, here’s the thing. I often joke like, you know, why is there not more savory ice cream? Like where’s my salmon gelato? Or, you know, Wagyu beef, you know, ice cream. And here’s the reality – there are some like sweet and savory combinations that work. But no macaroni and cheese shouldn’t be an ice cream like it’s wrong. And I feel a tad manipulated. You know as that. Maxx before we close out here, do you see any other comments you would like to address here before we move on and hit our finisher?

Maxx Chatsko  52:29

Here? We can take David’s question. That’d be fine. The last one there. Sure.

Dan Kline  52:32

Final question from David Nagoyan. What professional subscriptions? Do you have to get updated on biotech, clean energy, etc. And also talk about I know you read  Biopharma Dive, I’m gonna guess you read Stat, which is my old friends at the Boston Globe. It’s a spin off there. I know, some of the editors and writers there. Feel free to be brought up this one.

Maxx Chatsko  52:52

Yeah, I mean, I just subscribed to 7investing, Dan. That’s no, yeah, Biopharma Dive. So there’s a lot of digital publications I look at, you need to be conscious that a lot of those are from industry groups. So like, sometimes there’s conference platforms that write about these companies, but they are in business because they get money from the companies they write about. So you have to kind of take that into account when you read those articles. Maybe they’re not so objective all the time. So you know, I read around those, but that’s not where my research ends. That’s just kind of like staying relevant. And then it’s a very small part of my overall research. I do a lot of like, really nerdy, I’ll read it, like scientific literature and academic papers at the ground level to really understand things at a good level. But yeah, to keep pace with developments and things. You know, there’s a lot of industry publications, just be aware of, you know, some of the biases and shortcomings of some of those.

Dan Kline  53:46

Yeah, and nobody cares about what I follow. But I read Retail Dive, which is a sister publication of Biopharma Dive, I read Retail Wire, which has a very good curation of press releases, among other things, but my primary research is at the company level. Is at the documents the company is putting out, or if an executive is speaking at a conference, I actually think you get much better info. Now sometimes, I’ll go to say a Retail Dive and they’ll have a news story. And that will tip me off to Oh, company x spoke somewhere. And I’m not going to use this reporter who might be a very good reporter, or like my friend, Danny Klein, no relation at QSR magazine does some wonderful reporting on the restaurant space. But often, I’m reading his article and then going, oh, let’s go to the source material and see what I take of it.

Not because I don’t trust it. He’s a great, great reporter, but because he’s writing for an audience of restaurant tours, people in that market, and I’m writing for a stock market audience, so you know, I want to see what the CEO said what the CFO said what was done in the presentation, but more research is always better. And if you’re a member of 7investing, we do that research for you. We spend a lot of our time geeking out to this stuff, you know Maxx at like 11 o’clock on a Saturday night will share like 15 paragraphs of gobbledygook on some biocarbon I was like look up words I’m like, why am I looking at words that like, you know, like I should be watching like Simpsons reruns now, why am I looking up words of it that’s how I ended this we are. Or I’ll have like a conversation with with Matt Cochran over dinner, where we fully intended to just talk about football, where we spent the entire time like, you know, talking about some, like, target back end process or, or, you know, Walmart using drones to take inventory, or whatever that is.

Martha Mary West says great show. As usual, thanks. We thank all of you. This is more fun when we get a ton of questions. We want this to be the number one interactive investing long term investing program, on the internet, on television on whatever devices, I’m excited for our Oculus presentation where you’re going to see us of course, in in 3d Maxx and I are going to do things like shoot arrows at each other to make it more exciting. No, we’re not going to do that. But we are on all sorts of platforms. And it’s fun when you play along. We know there are shows where there’s a ton of you watching, and it just doesn’t lend itself, you know, to questions and talking. But today was a blast had a really good time. But Maxx, I am tired, I am going to go work out. I think I’m going to use the rowing machine which, which is not something I’ve ever spent significant time on, but I’m old and that is nice on your joints, and it’s really hot out. So I don’t really want to take a walk. I think I’m gonna go use the rowing machine. But before we do that, let us climb up on the top rope. Give a little Ooh, yeah, and hit our finisher. Thank you, Sam.

Maxx Chatsko  56:37

Oh, I asked this question What? What pre commercial energy technology are you most interested in owning a piece of and I added the disclaimer now or eventually. Advanced nuclear – 24%. Long duration storage the winner at 36%. Offshore wind in the United States, almost nobody cares – 7.7%. Solid state batteries. 32%. Yeah, this is interesting. I almost wish I knew what people meant by long duration storage, because that’s kind of technology agnostic. I wonder if people mean hydrogen or other things like long duration batteries. And then there’s like thermal salt reactors and engines and all kinds of weird stuff. So maybe I’ll have to follow up with that. But I’m very interested in that. And advanced nuclear.

Dan Kline  57:20

For me, it’s wind, because I understand wind, like, like I get I’m not saying I’m not interested in all the rest of these. But if you tell me someone has a wind farm, and it’s going to generate X amount of energy, I believe you, I understand the tech in some of these other things, I will invest if those are recommendations you make, I believe I am invested in a couple. But I’m not that interested in learning how they work or how they don’t work. Those are areas where I’m going to offload my research to you. And that is something I gladly think our members should do. Totally cool. If you want to learn about this stuff from Maxx, he does a great job teaching. So any other thoughts on this one before we close out this edition of 7investing Now?

Maxx Chatsko  58:00

Yeah, just quickly, I mean, so offshore wind, I think I would agree with that level of interest. In terms of as an investment, offshore wind is probably one of the most important technologies to combat climate change and decarbonize the economy. And that’s because we can park offshore wind farms near population centers and cities, right, so along the coasts of the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean, and even in the Great Lakes here in the United States. So we can actually use offshore wind to power seas with renewable energy in the you know, in New England, or in the Mid Atlantic or southeast, that typically don’t have very good renewable energy potential. But to get access to it in your portfolio, you have to own like utility companies and power generators that maybe aren’t the best run in those regions of the country they’re not like green investments to begin with. So in terms of owning it, maybe not but in terms of the importance overall one of the most important technologies we have.

Dan Kline  58:54

Well to our friends and co workers in Texas we hope the hamster that powers your electric grid is still running because it is there’s some heat left this summer I mentioned going to Vegas a couple times Maxx, it’s gonna be like 105 when I am there. Here’s the good news the only time I’ll be going outside Caesar’s Palace is to go to one of the pools at Caesar’s Palace. I will not be exploring – when it is that hot. I feel bad for the you know porcelain Mickey Mouse or the guy dressed as as dirty elbow. I even feel bad for the you know, the naked cowboy. It is a tough time to be outside when it is 100 plus degrees. With that if you’d like to get in touch with us at info@7investing.com that has questions about your membership questions about our service, questions about my travel itinerary, whatever it is, you want to know.

Probably not would you research the stock for me? We’re always happy if you share with us stocks that we happen to be researching or we’re interested in like a bunch of people threw out Krispy Kreme to me and it’s it’s what I know a lot about from the previous time they were public and yuck. No Don’t. Don’t invest in it. But that’s that’s a very quick opinion. We’re going to talk about that longer on a future show. If you’d like to interact with us on social media, that is @7investing, that’s the number seven investing, tag us. I’m on social media, I’m on Twitter all the time. So if you think I’d be interested, tag me, I have a lot of conversations with other 7investing advisors. And we want you to play along. If you hit me with something that you’d like to talk about on this show, we are happy to do that. So for those of you watching, here’s a secret, tomorrow at 3:30 Anirban Mahanti. And I will be doing a stealth broadcast where we talk about Tesla earnings, they’re coming out today.

But you know, Australia’s in the future that it’s tomorrow, a lot of other things, you know, an earbud has to deal with being in lockdown. We’re going to tape live on this platform. So on our Twitter on our YouTube for Wednesday’s show, but we’re going to do it right here on this platform for those of you who want to watch. So a little bit of a treat a little bit of a test to give our friends, our fans, our audience in other parts of the world a little bit of an option to be part of a live broadcast, even though it is also going to be part of a taped show. We’re gonna have a really busy earnings week there’s a ton of companies reporting if there’s any you’d like to hear about that maybe we’re not thinking about, feel free to hit us up @7investing or any of our Twitter’s, which are shared under our names, but with that we’ve got over an hour that’s too long. Apologies for that Sam Bailey, who has a bit of a sniffle. So she is a trooper putting up with this today. I am Dan Kline. He is Maxx Chatsko. Sam Bailey is behind the glass. We will see you on Wednesday. Thanks, everybody