Full Transcript
Dr James: 0:41
Fans of the Dentists who Invest podcast. If you feel like there was one particular episode in the back catalog in the anthology of Dentists who Invest podcast episodes that really, really really was massively valuable to you, feel free to share that with a fellow dental colleague who’s in a similar position, so their understanding of finance can be elevated and they can hit the next level of financial success in their life. Also, as well as that, if you could take two seconds to rate and review this podcast, it would mean the world. To me, what that would mean is that it drives this podcast further in terms of reach so that more dentists across the world can be able to benefit from the knowledge contained therein. Welcome, welcome to the Dentists who Invest podcast. Let’s start with proceedings then. In that case, welcome everybody. This is Andrew, and I’s Q&A AMA. Ask Me Anything on Biotech, why Andrew believes in biotech as an investment sector, why Andrew speaks about it in his little known books how to Own the World and Live Less and Invest the Rest, which I read two months ago and I really, really, really like. It’s a different vibe of how to own the world, andrew, isn’t it? Because it’s a lot more specific and you talk about why there was the four that I always remember, the four kind of philosophical slants on investing in gold and how you might do it, and it’s like ETFs, physical gold, then owning gold you have your physical gold, but you also put it in a safe, and then there’s another one that’s just set my mind, but that was something that I find super interesting. There’s a lot of stuff in there, and it kind of builds on how the world.
Andrew: 2:19
We describe it as a workbook, so it’s quite. You know, it’s ostensibly not. How to own the world is the practice, which is why it’s probably not as successful as how it’s known at the moment. Well, because people. It’s the bit where people actually have to pull the finger out and do some work and it’s much more boring. But you know what the hell?
Dr James: 2:35
Got you Okay well, I really enjoyed it. So, yeah, definitely a good pickup for anybody who’s listening 110%. So, as I say, anyway, this is myself and Andrew’s AMA on biotech. As we know, andrew is a huge proponent of biotech. We’re going to delve into that in just a moment why we think biotech is going to change the world and also why it is a good investment Well, why we believe it’s going to be a good investment sector going forwards and how you might take advantage of that. But I’ve done a lot of talking, andrew. For those who are watching and who may not have heard you, maybe it’d be nice if you could do a short intro just to introduce yourself before we get going.
Andrew: 3:13
Sure Well, james, before I do just quickly, I’ve got. I’ve got really good internet connections this morning because I checked on internet speed checker, but you are currently a blurry robot when I’m looking at you. So I don’t know if everybody else is having the same experience, but I just wanted to make you aware.
Dr James: 3:31
Do you?
Andrew: 3:33
know what.
Dr James: 3:37
That’s a bizarre one, so usually my internet is pretty good. It’s like 10 megs, so it could be Facebook or something.
Andrew: 3:49
If it’s recording what I’m seeing, it’s not great.
Dr James: 3:53
Do you know what’s curious, andrew, because on my screen my screen is picture perfect and then yours is blurry, but it’s just got better just now. So I think bandwidth is picked up, yeah.
Andrew: 4:06
Then sorry we’re such a boring man, but then that’s basically probably Facebook’s functionality, rather than us having rubbish internet.
Dr James: 4:13
Anyway, well, I guess things go well.
Andrew: 4:18
It’s brilliant to be here and I massively appreciated the invite me back on again. I got, when we do the last one, at least six months ago, or.
Dr James: 4:28
It was Maytime, I actually remember. So yeah, six months.
Andrew: 4:33
Perfect. Well, so I guess quite a lot of your audience know me. I lurk in your Facebook group and, if very much, enjoy all the stuff that goes on in there and comment from time to time. But yeah, I guess. So basically I started a city career 22 years ago with what was then SBC Warburg, swiss Bank and I spent just over 20 years specializing in smaller company equities. So met over a thousand companies in my career like CEOs and CFOs from every sector imaginable. And then about 10 years ago I took a bit of time out to write a book, which is how, now called how to Own the World, which, much to my surprise, suddenly was selling lots of copies and enjoying quite a few positive reviews. That was the first edition 10 years ago, and then it’s a bit of a long story, but we ended up publishing the third edition in March 19 with a big publisher. And then the final bit, I guess, is to say that so for the last six and a half years I was a specialist biotech investment banker or stockbroker, and I actually quit that job in May of this year, basically because of the success of the book and because we’ve got an investment fund and because we are aspiring to launch next year a biotech investment fund and I am writing a book literally this morning I’ve done 1500 words this morning the working title of which is the Future is Biotech. So that’s a bit of a well, I was going to say it’s a pivot. It’s, if you like, our exist, everything we do, what we do in the existing kind of world that we live in, with our business, playing with finances, sort of super. It’s informed by you know the nuts and bolts of what is finance. It’s kind of it’s very educational and the only investment product we have, the investment fund we have is a very defensive kind of investment tortoise. And what’s quite good about biotech is seven years doing it as a professional and work for something like 70 companies specifically and obviously follow the industry as by virtue of being in the industry. But biotech is about as perfect a complimentary product. So if we’ve got the most boring tortoise low risk fund is what our existing fund is. If people, as they do, come to me all the time go, that’s great. But you know I want something much. I want sex and violence, I want rock and roll, I want something that’s going to do much better returns, this boring tortoise fund, which I acknowledge will protect my money, and, and you know, the second book I wrote, which you mentioned earlier Live Unless Invest. The Rest was about this idea of 100 minus your age. So basically you use your age and subtract from 100. And that tells you roughly what you should be investing in aggressive stuff and what you should be investing in defensive stuff. And so what we’re doing in biotech really gives our audience something for the aggressive piece.
Dr James: 7:17
But if I, if I may.
Andrew: 7:18
Just the final thing I want to say right at the top of this call is so I have to say we are authorized and regulated by the FCA and so we have to be extremely careful from a compliance perspective about being seen to give investment recommendations. So I’m very relaxed about talking about the biotech industry, why I’m excited about it. I’m relaxed about answering questions about it, but I have to. I can’t be seen to be giving personal investment advice. So if I talk, if I make a throwaway comment about, you know, the worldwide healthcare fund or the NASDAQ biotech index or whatever else, I just have to telegraph, sort of by law, because those are the rules at the top of this call. That mustn’t be seen as investment advice, and I think you have those disclaimers in your group anyway, right?
Dr James: 8:01
Yes, absolutely. Well, I think that’s a helpful thing to say as well for the people who are asking questions, so they know where the line is, so that they might not say to Andrew, but which fund should I invest in, which stock should I buy, so which?
Andrew: 8:11
company should I buy? That’s what people often do to go. I’ve heard about this company, renew or not, a Vactor or whatever, and they’re like should I buy?
Dr James: 8:19
And I’m like you know I can’t, I can’t see, I can give a view about this. Absolutely Best. We clear that off at the start.
Andrew: 8:26
Okay, brilliant.
Dr James: 8:27
Well, yeah, I have to say privilege to have you once again, andrew, and, yes, looking forward to this one Cool. So let’s cut to the chase then, shall we, andrew? Why do you believe Biotech is such a pertinent investment sector for us? Would be investors out there? Why do you think that it’s going to grow and potentially offer us good returns in the years to come? I’m intrigued to hear.
Andrew: 8:47
So look the way. So, as I said, I was really honoured. One of the reasons I left my full-time job was because it looked pretty clear I was going to get a book deal from my big publisher. Well, hodder are a really, really big publisher, along with Penguin, basically the biggest publisher in the world first equal and they gave me a book deal with a small advance Don’t worry, it’s not like Megabucks running out to the Ferrari garage, but enough to keep the lights on and give me a bit of downside defence. Well, I write. Actually I’ve got two book deals from them. One is Working Title the Future is Biotech, which is the one I’m going to talk about now. The other, just for what it’s worth, is we’re doing a teen and young adult-focused version of my first book, how to Own the World. So those are the books I got and so, yeah, so that’s yeah. Yeah, you’ve got to read my emails because I’ve sent a very boring long email about this, but anyway, I’ll send it on to you anyway later. Sorry, I’m rambling, but so yeah, that was the news from earlier this year, and so I’ve actually now the rubber’s only really hitting the road now in terms of working on the Biotech book after doing lots of reading and lots of research and everything else, but the way I’m framing that book is nothing less than and this is what I genuinely, genuinely believe this is like the introduction of the book, like why am I writing this book right and why is it super interesting? is that the basic tech 2.0, so you know, the internet, the fang stocks, facebook, apple, amazon, netflix, google and IBM and others have been the biggest creators of real economic value in like the last 30 years. Let’s say right, Comfortably right.
Dr James: 10:22
You know I mean we never.
Andrew: 10:25
If you said to any investment bank or a stock broker or market professional 20 years ago that there would be a number of trillion dollar or in the case of Apple, I think it’s still north of two trillion dollars there’d be trillion dollar companies. When Microsoft was the biggest company in the world and it was valued I don’t know, 100 billion or whatever it was, people would have just laughed at you, right? But as human nature so often is, we consistently underestimate, like we overestimate what might happen in a year and we underestimate why I haven’t been 10, 15 or 20 years right. And so tech has changed the world and it goes a lot deeper than just. You know we’ve all got an iPhone or an iMac, or you know we’re all using Word and Excel and stuff. I mean that’s the stuff we know about. But tech is embedded in so much more than that. I’m sure many people in the audience appreciate that. But, like you know, going through an airport, every touch point of the logistics, how the baggage is run, going into a shopping centre, I mean the tech that’s embedded in the architecture for a new building, it’s just everywhere. It’s marrying up supply chains and that is why it’s created several trillion dollars of real economic wealth, and that economic wealth is actually a reason, one of the key reasons why you know a billion or even two billion more people in the world have a much better standard of living than they did, you know, 20 years ago in places like Brazil or India or China, right, and the point I want to make is that, so that if you’re looking at really big picture things which economists call contractive waves, basically 50 year themes, so we go back to steam, power, electricity, automotive, you know, cars, trains and then aviation, airplanes, from the 1920s, 1930s onwards there’s, there’s, it’s quite often you can relatively easily identify a 50 year contractive wave which is based on basically a new departure. Now, tech is the contractive wave we’ve been in for the last 50 years and biotech, to me, is the most unimpeachably, obviously the one that’s going to be next. And why is that? When it’s basically and, by the way, that’s absolutely related to tech, because without that tech, the what we’ve just had in the tech industry in the last 30 years, you wouldn’t have the platform for what I think is now going to happen in the biotech industry. But basically, if you like, the one way of describing it is, tech is about physics and biotech is about biotechnology, right. So what is biotech? Biotech is using living organisms to create valuable products, right, whereas tech is about using physical physics, properties, electrons and metallurgy and mine, and we have to create products right. And the reason that that is so incredibly valuable and powerful is because, in fact, because, ultimately, real economic wealth is created by solving human problems right, and the biggest human problems, and this is another thing I want to impress upon everyone when people think about biotech, they immediately think about drugs, therapeutics like curing cancer or, you know, curing dementia or rolling back obesity or diabetes, and that is obviously a multi-trillion-dollar-pound-euro whatever opportunity. Because I genuinely believe and I can say this with a straight face that biotech companies are actually going to address and you know, you’ve always got to be very careful about that saying there’ll be a cure for cancer in five years’ time. But the direction of travel is incredibly encouraging, right, and we can perhaps talk a bit more about. You know, not many people know that Novartis, which is a huge Swiss drug company, basically launched a drug called Kimrea in 2014. It was approved, or no, it was approved in 2017. They started working in 2014, which has an 88% response rate for kids with leukemia. And so, you know, not many people know that that already exists, right, all these sort of miracle cures already there. The problem at the moment is they’re very, very expensive. They need to come down in price. But just to go back to the core point I wanted to make is biotech is about solving human problems that are much more than disease and what that and what I would contend. What I’m writing about at the moment is that they’re not only going to cure cancer, dementia, you know, disease in the central nervous system, post-traumatic diseases you know there’s an awful lot of work being done right now on post-traumatic stress disorder, depression. You know all sorts of diseases. You know schizophrenia. What’s the world I’m looking for? I should know the answer to that. But basically, psychological, you know mental illness, mental health problems. This is another frontier. There are millions and millions and millions of people who have serious mental health issues and biotech companies are working on that as well. So that’s the human therapeutic setting. But what’s really interesting is biotech as applied to, for example, energy generation and agricultural production and transport. And you know mimicking things like what’s called biomimicry, like the fact that if, when you’re building a ship, if you actually do a lot of work on how dolphins swim. As spurious this is sounds. It improves the design you can embed into a ship. So I guess so sorry, it’s a very long-winded way of saying that the biggest value in the world has created several trillion, many trillions of dollars of real wealth and lifted like a billion people out of poverty or more. I think the next, the sector that’s going to do that, and so I mean to give you a really quick vignette. In agricultural production, india wastes more than 50% of its crops every year because of basically, well, all sorts of reasons, but poor irrigation, bad storage, you know all sorts of things. Now there are biotechnologies that can be applied to the Indian African agricultural sector. That will make India more like Holland, where Holland has unbelievably efficient agricultural productivity and can produce enough food for 30 countries the size of Holland, right, which is why we borrow our chicken and eggs and everything else. So, so, so I guess that’s the point. Why is biotech interesting? Because, at the most fundamental level, it’s going to solve a whole bunch of human problems that are a great deal more than just health care problems, and that is going to create trillions and trillions of value because of the fundamentals of what biotech is, which is using live organisms to make products.
Dr James: 16:54
Real quick, guys. I’ve put together a special report for dentists entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes that dentists make whenever it comes to their finances. This is the time dentists are going through these issues and they don’t even necessarily realise that they’re happening until they have their eyes opened, and that is the purpose of this report. You can go ahead and receive your free report by heading on over to wwwdentistunevestcom forward slash podcast report or, alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details the seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them. We’re really looking forwards to hearing your thoughts. I feel, as people and as a species, we’re very good at solving these very mechanical problems. Okay, so it’s like you have this issue. Therefore, you take this drug and you’re better, but what we’re yet to master is the really new on stuff like the things that, what you’re saying, like psychological illnesses, like long term chronic conditions, like diabetes. And we’re actually, for me, now we’re getting to that point where our understanding of the world has reached that level where we can understand the world to a sufficient level of nuance that this industry is maturing and all these exciting possibilities are just becoming real. That is the essence of what you’re saying, if I’m correct.
Andrew: 18:16
Yeah, I think also, what’s really important here is perhaps not to think of biotech as being that discrete from tech. It’s about convergence, and you’re right, and it’s about a whole allied series of technologies, so something like. So one of the big criticisms of big pharma companies, which I think is a fair criticism, is, you know, they treat the symptoms, not the underlying cause, which is what you’re saying, right, and I think you and I have talked about diet and exercise and the ability, the quantified self, the ability of people to wear oar rings or have jaw bones or Fitbits or Apple watches and all of that stuff is is also, you know, I’ve got a whole chapter and all of this the quantified self, measurement using big data, using transmission, you know, advanced telecoms, collaboration across sciences all of those things will create value in a much more, as you say, holistic, big picture way than just like a company having a pill that cures cancer and it’s all related. But if you’re going to take the fruits of tech to be able to do the quantified self, to have better diagnosis, you know, if we get to a point where literally your blood, you know all your nutrients, are monitored inexpensively with a ring, you know that has an infrared or an optical technology that can read your pulse and everything and ring the size of that ring. What that? Then? The dividends that pays for absolutely everything else. And again, and it’s I mean I’m rambling slightly, but it’s about injecting efficiency into what we do as human beings everywhere. And it’s where big tech meets biotech.
Dr James: 19:53
And here’s another thing that people are really bad at conceptualizing. Okay, you, you speak about Moore’s law in your books and in your materials. So for anybody who doesn’t know what Moore’s law, and anybody who’s listening, every 18 months there is a law, an unwritten rule or a law that the fastest computers in the world double in speed. Okay, this law is held true ever since the 1950s.
Andrew: 20:16
Okay, now the human being is actually held since the steam age.
Dr James: 20:24
Oh right.
Andrew: 20:27
So a guy called Steve Gerbertson, who’s one of the board directors of Tesla and is a big, very famous VC, american venture capitalist actually and this is in my article on biotech from a year or so, a year and a half ago and basically he took the Moore’s law and the crew. The other point is Moore’s law is the processing power per pound or dollar spent doubles every 18 months. So it’s so you get twice as much power for the same cost, right, which is obviously super important, because if it doubles but costs twice as much, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve got an economic. And what he did is he? It’s wonderful work. He basically said, well, hang on, this was invented. This idea was invented in the late 50s, early 60s by Gordon Moore, who was either an Intel or IBM or Carmen, but anyway one of the two and Gordon Moore observed this and then we said, well, that can never carry on. It’s carried on from the 50s till the present day and it’s astonishing if you look at it. So Steve Gerbertson had people go back and look at sort of steam power, all the previous human technologies, back to the agricultural revolution, and basically it’s human processing. However, that’s being done before transistors with steam engines was also proceeding. So it’s this weird. It’s a bit like pie, it’s like a law of nature, it’s an immutable law of nature. It’s fascinating.
Dr James: 21:47
Pie or fi? The golden ratio, that is another crazy one, but we’ll not get. Have you heard of that? Yeah, but anyway, I feel like we could probably talk about this forever, but let’s not digress too much. But Moore’s law with. The reason we’re bad at conceptualizing Moore’s law is that every 18 months this processing power and cost it doubles. But here’s the thing that’s exponential, of course, with time. Yeah, so apparently the point in which these transistors per unit area, whatever the processing power becomes Directly proportional or it becomes the same as the processing power of the human brain, is 2039, and then after that 18 months, they’re twice as powerful, then they’re four times, then they’re eight times, and that’s when things get really crazy. Okay, that’s who things get, but our brains. From where we’re sat right now, we cannot imagine exponential things. And the reason I’m mentioning this is because this ties into the biotech sector, because progress occurs Exponentially and that’s why it’s really exciting.
Andrew: 22:48
You’re gonna say so there are a couple of things yeah, there are a couple of things say about that. It’s exactly right. So there are. There are tech Experts who think that the basic you know how I said earlier about it so tech is about physics and biotechs about biology, right, and one of the sort of frontier areas of computing which and I’m pleased you reminded me about this is there are. There are physicists and software engineers and hardware engineers and the tech sector that say that actually Moore’s law is gonna not be possible anymore with existing transistor technology, with microchips, right, because at some point you just can’t the dimensions of an electron mean you can’t, it can’t happen. So then that’s when you so. So then the answer potentially is a biotech based computer, which is really in the realms of mental science fiction. But it because you, because if you’re using proteins and cellular structures, you can actually, rather than just the zero, and one of binary based, you know, computing, which what we’ve used for last, you know, ever since, invented last six or seven decades, whatever. Yeah, since who did Benedict Benedict come about to play in the illumination game, what’s called?
Dr James: 23:57
The imitation game. It was of course. Oh my goodness, I’m gonna pick myself this.
Andrew: 24:07
Who is it? You know the sort of British genius that you could argue was pretty instrumental, kicking off Computing zeros and ones and logic and everything else. But basically One of the theories about biotech is the biotech, maybe the, maybe the vehicle or the vector by which computing power can sustain Moore’s law. Because if the physicists are right and you basically haven’t got enough space at the molecular level of electron and sub molecular particles to For more sort of work because you know, ultimately a Microchip is just millions and millions and millions of millions of little things on a board, when it’s remarkable that we can lay Substrate and we can lay that down on a chip, you know to the tolerances we can, but at some point the theories, that runs out. Then you have to swap into a biotech based thing and obviously quantum computing, that these are the two other things. So that’s an important point to make. The other point I want us to make, those when you’re talking about Moore’s law, is that pretty much the only thing that has significantly outperformed Mawls and Hall, if you can believe that’s thing, in the last 15 years is the cost of sequencing a human genome. And actually if you map I’ve got a graph or you map the development of Moore’s law against the Defall in the cost of sequencing in human genome and just for everyone’s benefit there. So the first genome was sequenced in sort of the late 90s, early 90s and the Fully freighted cost of doing that, which is basically to read the code of the how many billion you know pieces of the human, of human genetic makeup which people remember, you know, quick and Watson, the double helix and DNA, and all that stuff Was basically anywhere between three and five billion dollars to do that right, and it took about five years to read the x million piece of code. I mean, we can come on to why that actually matters. It matters for our ability to cure disease potentially. But and it was a huge, you know, is Nobel Prize winning work and Clinton was deeply involved in funding it and so is the welcome trust in the UK, put millions into it as well, and so it’s a sort of great Western collaboration to do that, five billion dollars, five years, right now it costs us $200 and can take basically an hour. So that, so that you got from five billion dollars two hundred dollars in 20 years, whatever it is, and that is outperforming even Moore’s law, and so it’s. The point is, you know, by taking one of the few things, that that has the ability to outform more law, because it’s not zeros and ones and because of all sorts of other, the new, the complexity embedded within the science.
Dr James: 26:37
Basically, that’s awesome, that’s so interesting. And just to quickly build on what you were saying about Moore’s law continuing past the transistor age, bio tech is one solution, but also possible quantum computers. But anyway, we’ll not get into that for the moment. Not go too far down that rabbit hole, but apparently to add to your bio tech coming of age and maturing and culminating right at this very present moment. Apparently that threshold happens when the transistors, or when the little connections on the circuit board hit nine millimeters. Nine millimeters of nine, no, sorry, nine nanometers is what I meant to say. Apparently we’ve just hit that threshold in the last few years. So now we’re ready to go, we’re poised, and of Moore’s laws to continue, we need to rethink our conventional strategy for building computers. And that also leads into what you’re saying about bio tech. How interesting is that?
Andrew: 27:25
Yeah, no, I mean, it remains to be seen. It remains to be seen whether somebody can solve it with. But again, the other thing is what this discussion is working with an existing paradigm, which is not, which you know. I’m trying to think of a solid analogy, but here’s one slightly spurious. Somebody was making the point that in the film Blade Runner Isn’t it crazy that the way human brains think is when that was written in the early 80s. Deckert, you know, the Harrison Ford character is in a flying car and then to telephone his girlfriend he has to go to a payphone in the street in like yeah, yeah, in the human paradigm of the early 80s it wasn’t obvious to people that you know, if you’re gonna have flying cars, you probably have mobile telecoms, right, it’s. And yeah, now which I’m trying to draw is working with the paradigm and Moore’s law and conventional computing and everything else, and actually what will come will be something completely from left field which is sort of beyond our ability to conceptualize right now, and that will come out of the skunk works of good or Novartis or you know one of these people, and we’ll will materially change everything. And you know, I do go back to it and in my considered opinion, it will do nothing less. Biotech is gonna do nothing less than completely transform and revolutionize energy production, agricultural production, with building, the building industry, the transport industry, by extension of the clean energy and the energy production piece and, and you know, material science and health care is. I mean, I think health care is the most obvious area. It’s gonna generate several trillion of value in the short term, but in the longer term, is these bars biologically informed processes that will impact all of the above and you know it will be Magnificent for humanity and in a source of great optimism, you know.
Dr James: 29:17
Totally. Yeah, we’re not talking small potatoes here in that case. So, so, so, so, so, so, so. What a brilliant description and a very passionate and invoking argument and debate and Discussion about the reasons why biotech will change the world. And I was. I was in stroll listening to that. There was some real gems in there and I’m sure everybody who is sat at home listening to this will say the same. Let’s get on to the nuts and bolts of how one may Structure, obviously, as we said before, not straying into the realms of financial advice, because we would never do that, of course. But how? How might we consider getting some exposure to the biotech world? So here’s an example Active funds versus passive funds. Are there any passive funds out there that hold blue chick, blue chip biotech stocks, or do we have to with on the active rate?
Andrew: 30:10
So yeah, so the first thing to say is I mean, I’m on record of saying that most people should just have, they should cultivate an exposure If you don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of learning all sorts of complicated things about how to value shares and finance generally, you just want to do something vaguely sensible. And, crucially, if you do that every month, I’m always on record of saying it’s kind of 90% admin, 10% asset selection, because if you’re investing every month, whatever you’re investing in, you’re smoothing your own price. And if you’re doing over 20, 30 or 40 years, let’s say, from the age of 30 to the age of 60 or 70, you’ve got a very, very high chance, based on big mega trends and growth in human technology and population and the economy, of doing really well and you don’t really need to overthink it. And so the point of my saying that is, if you have exposure to, let’s say, the S&P 500, or because we’ve had 30, I’ve written about this as well we’ve had 30 years of American exceptionalism right, where all the very biggest companies, but recently China’s you know there are a few coming out of China and Europe and wherever else, like Baidu and Tencent and Alibaba at least those things, right. But broadly we’ve had 30 years of American exceptionalism, because America has been a place where capital is well treated and the smartest of the you know Microsoft is full of people from India, right, because all the smartest kids who get their exams in India go to work for Microsoft in Seattle and that is robbed India of amazing software companies and it’s been greatly to the benefit of Microsoft. But that’s because America sort of provided this environment where all the many of the greatest minds in the world would just choose to go and live there and work there, because it was more peaceful and more affluent and everything else. Is that necessarily going to be the experience of the next 20, 30, 40 years? I don’t know. When I look across the Atlantic right now, I think America is really, really challenged, and so the only reason I mentioned that is, you know, the S&P 500 has returned just shy of 10% a year, going back to 1872 on average, right, and the S&P 500 is one option. But you might, instead of the S&P 500, think about something called the MSCI World or the MSCI All World, because that’s not 500 American companies, it’s 1300 global companies. And so what I’m saying there is, and you will capture what I’m talking about just by owning those big indices. Right, because if the next five multi-trillion dollar companies that follow in the wake of Amazon, alphabet, google, apple you know the obvious, really amazing, massive ones right, that have done what I said they’ve done the last 30 years, they’re all going to be in the S&P 500 and all the MSCI World. Right, and actually in the MSCI World. If it’s a company that comes because some genius Nobel Prize winner in São Paulo, brazil, builds a company you know in the 10 years from now and it creates, it becomes another trillion dollar company, that will be in the MSCI World and actually, you know what, it will probably list in America and end up being the S&P 500 as well. So my broad point is the very simple if you like slightly cop out answer to your question is just make sure your long equities and make sure your long abroad based equity index, because now that is a relatively diluted way of benefiting from this theme, right? So what you’re really asking, but nevertheless, I think for a lot of people you know, it’s just further evidence that while on earth wouldn’t you be invested in a big equities index, and it’s such a shame that too few people are right.
Dr James: 33:45
Can I just? say one thing no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s why I’m listening. I’m really intrigued. This is brilliant. But can I just say one thing on that? Even though you said that that was quote unquote, a cop out answer, I actually still think that was worth saying, because you know what, when I ask that question, I actually haven’t considered that at all.
Andrew: 34:09
And it is a true, it is totally true that once these companies mature in Commonwealth, own the world, right? Because the insight is that basically the world you know the world in 2000 was roughly $32 trillion the size of the world economy and by last year it’s more like $105 trillion, right? So it’s gone from $32 trillion to $105 trillion. Now a lot of that is monetary inflation, which is another top, but a lot of it is real development. It’s the fact that you know there are 2 billion more people in the world who have smartphones and fly around the world and air travel has gone by pre-coronavirus. It’s real economic progress, right, and there will be a lot small real economic progress in the future. And the easiest, maybe like the lowest burden in terms of complexity and thought oh God, how do I do something with my finances? The simplest thing is just to get exposure to the world and that technological development. And I think one of the simplest and most inexpensive and easiest and you know ways of doing that is to buy the SMT500, which I’ll say is returned nearly 10% a year for like 150 years. To me that’s pretty good because that will have a huge impact on your ability to get wealthy, rather than sitting in the cash eyes at half a percent, which is a you know well, I think a point I made on Facebook this morning, someone was the SMPs returned more than 9% a year to 1872 on average. Most investors have only returned 5% because of human emotion, because even the people who decide to invest in the stock market get caught out by fear and greed. They don’t have a system they don’t think holistically about, they don’t invest every month. They buy. They’re oh, everyone’s buying the stock market. Let me get into it. Oh God, there’s been a crash Can we get out of it? Which robs them a 4% a year of performance, which, over a 30 year investing career, is the difference between being a multimillionaire and having a large six-figure sum right. So that’s really important the difference between the market and the market, once you’ve subtracted your human frailties and all your inherent cognitive biases that make you inherently a bad investor, because our brains are hardwired to be bad investors and you know the only way you can defeat that is by learning the stuff right. And then, but even in England in Britain I should say it’s appalling because 80% of the population doesn’t even invest in the stock market. They don’t know English. So what are they doing when they finally get to a point in their life I think, oh, I should probably do something about savings investment. They don’t know what’s in the pension and they save any short-term stuff in a cash iso which is guaranteed to destroy real wealth. And then they think, oh, the stock market’s too risky. It’s absolutely. I mean, it’s what you know. I’m on a man on a mission to change that reality, obviously, which is why we have a business, but I digress for them to go back. So it is important because, like, I’m a big believer in the fastest route from A to B, in the 80-20 rule we talked about earlier, like 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your efforts, right, it’s actually probably more like 90-10 nowadays. And if you just do something as simple as making sure you have exposure every month to a large, diversified global index of great companies, you know why is the S&P 500 as 4,600? Why does it keep going up? Because there’s a hell of a lot of money out there, but there are only 500 companies in the S&P 500, right. And if there’s lots and lots of money, it’s the same thesis with Bitcoin, which I know, you know very well. But if that’s a bit anodyne and you’re like, oh, you’re on. You know, don’t come on and tell me about biotech and tell me the way to get exposed to it is to buy the S&P 500. That’s fine. There are the most famous bellwether index for this is called the NBI, the NASDAQ Biotech Index, and you can buy an ETF of the NBI. And the NBI has all the really big, you know, multi -billion, like Amgen’s, the biggest stock, the biggest specialist biotech it was North of a hundred billion dollar company and there are others. And the NBI gives you biotech exposure a bit but it gives you very therapeutic biotech exposure to companies trying to, you know, cure disease, right, not the bigger picture stuff I’m talking about. And you can buy the NBI in your Hargreaves NASDAQ account. You know, in Besco I’ve got an ETF on it for various others, like any big, like the S&P, like you can buy a Vanguard S&P ETF or you can buy an iShares or you can buy an Invesco one or whatever, right, it’s the same deal. You can buy the NBI in a variety of ways, but it is, you know, it’s purely biotech and it’s also large-cap biotech. And so I guess, another thing so when you’re questioning about so that’s passive, I mean it’s whenever you buy a sectoral ETF. There’s a nature of active to that right. Because if you’re deciding to buy the biotech, even if it’s a passive index on biotech, you’re still deciding to buy biotech, right. So it’s sort of semi, it’s a hybrid of passive and active. But I think the other thing to say here is that I think active I’ve said this, I’m on record of saying this quite a lot Active fund management has merit. The smaller companies are and the more specialist something is right, over and above just passive. I mean I just said buy this, it’d be 500. Because if you want to understand the biotech industry you can’t just be some sort of generalist stockbroker who you know yesterday was talking about telecoms company. Tomorrow I’m going to talk about a restaurant company you know buy Peter Express when it floats again or whatever. And then on next Monday I’m going to suddenly decide that I’m an expert in immuno-oncology. It doesn’t work like that. But that means you can. The other point I was literally writing about this morning is smaller companies versus large companies. I think it’s very good to own large companies through a big index like the S&P 500 and the MSI World. But actually if you’re trying to juxtapose the merit of active versus passive. Let’s say analytically one really big company like Apple. Or let’s say Pfizer or Mike or whatever, analytically trying to understand that company is probably the the intellectual equivalent of trying to understand 100 smaller companies. Because Apple’s got dozens of divisions, thousands of products, it functions in 160 countries, in 120 currencies, whatever. Right, let’s say so. Analytically trying to understand a mega-cap company is roughly as complicated as understanding 100 smaller companies. Right, that between them do a whole bunch of different things that are analogous to the different products and divisions in an Apple or a Microsoft. But here’s the point. Does that not therefore imply that trying to work out what the share price of Apple may or may not do, based on that analytical complexity, is probably 100 times harder at call than trying to work out what the share price of Games Workshop might do? Right, does that make sense? Because with a small company that might have one product or a handful of products and it might only be focusing in the UK market or Europe or whatever, next to a gargantuan Leviathan like an Apple, once you’ve decided analytically, it’s a hundredth of the burden of understanding Apple in terms of time and complexity and currency risk and political risk. And once you’ve decided, oh, actually I’m really confident that there are lots of geeky little boys, like I used to be, who love Citadel miniatures and want to play Warhammer right. So maybe Games Workshop’s a buy, which is something that lots of people did 10 years ago and they’ve made 30 times their money right and you can then get exposure to just that thing. You know geeky little boys who want to play with dragons right, whereas in Apple you can’t get the pure exposure. So I’m rambling slightly. My broad point is when, if you want to choose active versus passive, I think active can really work where fund managers or even you as an individual, if you’re an engaged and interested person, can get pure play, exposed to something where you formed a view, in a way that you can’t get with mega caps, if that makes sense to everyone, and that’s true of healthcare and indeed every other set of youth economists.
Dr James: 42:11
No, true useful information, absolutely. And yeah, it was a nice distinction that you drew between big companies and you basically just highlighted in the fact that these things become so Complex that they’re just totally beyond the point of our ability to process this information, beyond the capacity of the human brain. There also is another point which a lot of people I see. People Make this mistake from time to time and they feel like they have to understand everything about a company before they invest in it. But you’re also, as a caveat to that, you’re highlighting the fact that you don’t need to 110% On it, you don’t need to totally understand the market to invest in it, and you’ve just highlighted that up the kids that well.
Andrew: 42:49
The other point, as a corollary to this, because it’s related, is what I’ve just been talking about is fundamental analysis, right, it’s like trying to understand divisionally, how our products growing, has it rolling out internationally. What’s the current? Obviously, then this technical analysis, which is, very simply, look at the chart and it’s gone through 30 in the RSI heading north. That looks interesting a bite which obviously you use in crypto a lot. Now I would contend that the bigger company is, the more valuable, probably on a relative basis, a Technical analysis versus fundamental analysis, because fundamental analysis is bloody impossible to extrude a viable signal about company. There’s got 500 products and functions in 150 countries in 100 currencies, right, so what? So then, what you’re left with is okay, but technical analysis is really, can be really robust and it’s really liquid, so you can say you can get in and you can get out of Using technical analysis. Where it’s technical analysis in a small cat, which is really. It functions in a really inefficient market and one shareholder who wakes up in in the morning sides I want 10 million goods worth. This company can drive the stock up 30% over a period of two weeks. You know you can’t capture that in technical analysis in a small cat. So so that’s exactly right. You, the bigger company is, the less granular fundamental information you need about in order to monetize it, but the more you need to understand technical analysis. Or, again, go back to my earlier point, you just express a view by just owning the whole market and throw away the key right, which is probably not very helpful, but but then you know in, but then in biotech, just for what it’s worth, if I may. So what are we doing? Because I said we are aspirations to launch biotech fund next year. Well, the reason we’re doing that and this goes to the smaller company, do you have an edge? Kind of argument is, in 22 years of doing equities, doing smaller companies, I’ve never seen a situation like the one inviting the moment, which is the following, which is that there’s this incredible I’ve just said everything I said about the structural opportunity, the rising tide that could carry all ships right, the value creation of Curing cancer. The technology, the amazing technological advances, the diagnostics, the you know People will have heard of gene therapy and sell, you know, gene sequencing, the app that there’s, this huge sort of any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right, which is what? And Arthur C Clark, the guy who wrote 2001, a space on a series of great quote appears and there’s magic in biotech going on like an Arise inside carrying all ships, but but it whilst that’s going on, whilst is really really clear to me that structurally, the world is going to allocate more capital to this magic, because it’s you know, if a company is going to cure breast cancer, it’s probably going to create a lot of value and that’s going on. But weirdly enough, that magic is not evenly distributed and it’s not even as something as obvious, as obviously a villager in Senegal doesn’t have the same magic going on in their health care system as somebody in California. Obviously, it’s much closer to home and what I was going to say. So what has become clear to me in the last decade of doing this is a company with a couple of assets Cancer assets listed in Nasdaq in America is valued at a multiple of what a company with almost Identical assets is valued out in the UK and they are valued on the aim market in London, london’s stock market in London, at a multiple of what the same assets about it out in Australia on the air sex market. And that’s really, really clear and clear. To evidence. It’s really easy. You can just look and go hang on. These guys are in phase to addressing lung cancer. You know. These guys have got a phase to asset, addressing post traumatic stress disorder. These guys are based in Chicago and listed on Nasdaq and they’re valued at a billion dollars. These guys are based in Cambridge and listed in London. They’re valued at 200 million quid and these guys are based in Melbourne, which has got one of the best cancer cancer centers in the whole world and this list on the air sex and valued at 20 million Dollars. What the hell is going on? And I know what’s going on, right, which is why it’s one of the most amazing. It’ll be two of these sort of five or six years to figure it out, but it’s very simple. Australia has no specialist VCs that focus on health care. They basically just there’s like three of them. They don’t have a VC industry, right? So if you’re coming out of Melbourne or Monash University or Brisbane or what, and you’ve got you’ve got a Nobel Prize-winning Scientist with great science, there’s no domestic market, apart from a few mates. You might put a million dollars in to support the hundred million dollars you need to get through your clinical trials, right?
Dr James: 47:15
So what are you going to do?
Andrew: 47:16
You got a rank cancer trials in America at Dana Farber or you know it’s any of the big, like MD Anderson, the big Harvard, or you know MIT or the medical school M S he’s not a medical school, but the medical schools in America. And then what is the problem? There are 600 American companies ahead of you in the queue right, and also the people with the, with the controlling the strings, that Wellington health care fund in Boston that has 20 billion dollars Right, or all the med tens of billions of dollars that are looking there. If you’re a young analyst at Wellington health care fund in Boston and I come to you as Andy Craig and I go, look at this company in London that has the same two assets. This with the same probability of success with Science that’s come out of Cambridge University, just as good as science that comes out of Cambridge Massachusetts. You know Cambridge UK. It’s valued at one tenth those three companies that you’ve just invested in. He goes, I Hear you, but you know a. I’ve got 600 companies in my wheelhouse. I’m gonna look at, you know, and be the other. The other structural challenges. If you’re running 20 billion dollars and I come to you with a 50 million pound company, if you bought the hot, the amount of the number of hours of your time you will have to spend to figure out whether that company is a good investment or not. It’s the same as the number of those you have to spend to work out if you’re billion dollar one that you’re looking at At the moment, because it’s roughly the same complexity and science and assets and intellectual property and patents and whatever, and the dress for market opportunities or whatever else, and so you’re gonna look at, you’re gonna look at me and go look, if I’m right on this billion dollar one, I can get a hundred million dollars to work in that one and I only own 10 70 company, right, and if it doubles, I’ve made a hundred million dollars. If you’re right, mr Craig, and I’ve got 10. So that company, in absolute terms, I’m gonna make a tiny fraction of millions of dollars of profit, as I’ll make here. So, and this is all real. So this is why I laugh when I hear people talking about the efficient market hypothesis, right, oh, financial markets, pricing, total bollocks, just drives me nuts. That anybody can think. I mean, certainly if you spend 10 minutes working the biotech sector and indeed smaller companies. But but the great thing about these, these huge structural differences, is that eventually, like In the short term, the market is a is a voting mechanism. In the long term, the market is a weighing mechanism, which is a bill Warren Buffett quote. The point being is that truth will out, and so and you’re beginning to see it so Bill, the Gates Foundation and George Soros’s hedge fund made an investment in a company called Moe logic, which is a British Covid diagnostic company, a few months ago and that’s like a, really like canary in the coal mine transaction this week. Last week, on the 8th of November, the week before last, a Blackstone, which is a massive, massive American private equity venture capital firm, one of the biggest in the world and very smart, made a 250 million dollar investment in a British company called Autolus, which is addressing cancer care. This is beginning to happen because these guys looking across the landing, going hang on like what, what you know they’re. Finally, despite what I said about, they’ve got 600 companies to look at. Once you see a few companies start to go up 510, x, and then you realize there, others, it’s funny your job to look at, and and whilst the guy Wellington, running 20 billion dollars, might not have the headroom or and have too much capital to monetize a British or an Australian company, the guys sort of the next level down. Maybe the hedge funds in New York that are running a billion dollars are beginning to take notice. So so so I’ve never seen such a confluence of, like you know, the damage aging population, increased obesity, cancer is a disease of age, global growth. China’s to healthcare markets me the same size. The USF there’s all these huge, huge demand pull drivers. The technology is amazing, and then there’s a structural opportunity to arbitrage how America values biotech and how the rest of the world. But those but and when I say the rest of the world, you know I mean British biotech coming out of Nobel Prize winners in Cambridge and Oxford University and elsewhere. I this is not like crap science that you know. Some punter in in some to. You know, I don’t really rude about, I don’t want to name any countries because I’m gonna be rude about you know. But this is not, this is not somebody coming out of a university in the third world. That’s 200 on the list of universities. These are, these are science. Comments are the very best universe in the world and it’s fundamentally undervalued. God, sorry, you can see I’m on. You can see I was writing about this this morning on all my high horse, but it’s it’s really interesting situation, for sure. I love it.
Dr James: 51:55
I love the energy and you know what. I can tell that you feel really strongly about this and I can also tell that what that you Think. Those are all the reasons very eloquently explained why you think it’s such a Good potential opportunity for people to diversify, and I think that’s tremendous and that’s a brilliant description. And now I see now I see it so much more through your eyes and I thought I understood it and I thought I understood why, but not how. I understand so much more and, as I said, there’ll be a lot of people at home who feel that way too. So thank you for that description and, andrew, what we are going to do is try to keep this Q&A to under an hour, just so that it’s tangible for everybody and also that it’s accessible. So what we’re going to do for the final 10 minutes, you’re going to throw the mark up to the floor and we’ve already had some questions flooding in on my phone just here, so I’m just going to be, I just going to look down at those and read them out to you, and they will Take us up to an hour very comfortably, because we’ve had about four or five here, so I’ll pick the best ones. Here’s one of my favorites. Once come through from an on and it said Andrew, where does biotech fit in in our investment portfolio, in terms of our Aggressive versus defensive investments? Do you think this is such a surefire thing that this could ever be a defensive investment?
Andrew: 53:07
No no.
Dr James: 53:08
No, no, no. Nothing’s succinct.
Andrew: 53:14
Well, because biotech is actually and this may change right, but ultimately, biotech is still volatile and for a long time will continue to be volatile. Because it’s risky, because company, you know, if you’ve got a phase two asset, across all phase twos, you’ve got a 30% chance of that becoming a drug. Right, that’s a 60, you know 70, it’s actually 33, it’s 66, it’s basically a third, two thirds, so 65% chance of that never becomes a drug, and you’re going to have to spend 100 million quid on it and then it doesn’t become a drug. So it’s risky, right. That’s why, then and the crucial thing about when I talk about defensive versus aggressive, what’s really important to remind everyone is the defensive. It has to be stuff that protects the downside, so that if you’re 60, and you there’s a 50% stock market crash, you don’t lose 50% of your money at the age of 60,. You’ve got to be the 30, you know. And so biotech I massively believe the thesis. I think it’s going to create tens of trillions of dollars of re-electionary value, but if you own it, it’s going to have times where it’s down 50%, which means you can’t think about it as defensive because you don’t want to be that person who’s got, you know, 500 grand in all sorts of biotechs. Isn’t it brilliant. You’ve taken 100 to 500, but then you happen to be 60 when there’s a massive correction and you’re down to 250 grand. So sorry, that’s clear.
Dr James: 54:32
No, that’s awesome, that’s brilliant. Okay, and another question that’s just come in, andrew for these smaller companies, is it practicable that us, as dentists, who are really busy whether nine to five jobs might be able to research these, or is it probably the more likely scenario that we’d be best off just investing through a fund?
Andrew: 54:54
Well at Caviar MTOR Biobiware. My obvious answer there, given that I’m someone who’s going to launch biotech fund next year, is you should let somebody like me do it. You know because I’ve got six and a half. Actually, my co-fund manager is a guy who’s a published cancer research scientist. He’s won awards with Cancer Research UK, with the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He’s a proper PhD genius who’s published research papers. I’m the sort of big-picture economist who can go out and raise the money and I am an economist. I don’t have any medical pedigree, by the way. I read lots of books on science. But what I’m not saying is and that’s why I sort of joked about Caviar MTOR it’s not so much that I’m super smart, actually, it’s just that it’s going to be not far off my full-time job. I’ve spent a lot of the last few years not in, but I used to do smaller companies, generalist smaller companies. I talked about games workshop earlier. I talked about EasyJet or Peter Express or Burberry or all these companies I worked with over the years and I used to invest quite a lot in myself in smaller companies. Then I got too busy professionally. So the broad point is it’s just an hours of your time, bandwidth problem. I think to do a good job and to protect the downside in this space, you probably will want to own 20 companies, right, because they’re that risky. I’m going to own 30 companies. That’s my aspiration. I think one or two of them will go up 50 to 100 times. I genuinely believe that. I think there are $300 million companies that could be $30 billion companies, right? Truly, I think a handful of them will go up eight to 10 times, three to five times or whatever. Some of them are going to go bust Quite. A few of them are going to go bust, right. Some of them will just go sideways and disappoint, not generally. I’m going to have the capital to invest in 30 companies, right. I’m going to have the time to really consider what those 30 companies will be of the 300 that I could consider with my partner, dr Lou Jo. I guess everybody’s welcome to go and try and buy a Vactor or else, but all the sorts of companies that we’re going to be looking at but do you really want to have to go through the oursake of owning 30 of them to guard again? Because you’ve got to do this on a portfolio basis, because if you just buy three that you’re excited about. If all three of them go bust, you’re not going to be very pleased, right? And that is possible. That’s why I do think in this area. It’s the smaller company argument. It’s my full-time job versus not somebody else’s full-time job and it’s like, actually, unless you’re very wealthy. The other thing is, even a wealthy dentist has been like this for years. If you’re going to buy 30 companies, I’d say you probably want to have at least 10 grand each to make it worthwhile, right? So that’s 300 grand. That’s your entry ticket. If you’re going to faff around with much less than that, then it becomes just such a. The ROI of your time versus your upside is just not there in my view. I hear you Awesome.
Dr James: 57:52
Thank you for that. We are just coming up to an hour, but I think we can squeeze another question in edgeways. One final question, which has just come in Andrew which country do you feel has got the most exciting biotech sector and that you are most intrigued to invest in from the point of view of ROI?
Andrew: 58:12
Right. So if it’s purely, that’s a brilliant question.
Dr James: 58:17
I like it. I like that one.
Andrew: 58:20
Well, the question is, which country’s got that and is most underpriced relative to the others, right, as an investor, right? So to me, it’s absolutely clearly Australia, based on my, because Australia has world-leading universities, brilliant intellectual property, english language, huge dressable market right on their doorstep in Asia. The Cancer Center in Melbourne is one of the very best cancer centers in the world, running perfect, brilliant intellectual trials, and their companies are ludicrously undervalued. There was a company called Imugine that we worked for, where it was valued at $15 million in 2015. I looked at it yesterday. It’s currently valued at $3.2 billion. It’s gone from $15 million to $3.2 billion. Now. There’s been some fundraising there. There’s been some dilution, but, you know, I think there are a number of companies in Australia that maybe won’t quite do that, but they’re going to go in that direction. That having been said, though, just broadly, in terms of science, obviously America’s brilliant at this. You can’t take anything away from that, but it’s very, very priced in in my view. But Scandinavia, the UK, switzerland and, in diagnostics and medical devices, benelux, belgium and Holland are phenomenal at that stuff, right, and Benelux the Brussels you’re in XMarkets got some really cracking companies that I’m going to be looking at once. I’ve got money burning a hole in my pocket, I think, on a, on a. And the other thing, by the way, is China. China are catching up, china are. China have got more gene sequences in the Beijing Genetics Institute than America has got in the whole of America, which is nuts right, and they’ve been registering more patents than America since 2014. Now people can ask questions about the quality of some of those patents, because some of them are a bit dodge, but I think you know and that’s right. So Dr Luke Zhou, my co-founder manager, was originally a Chinese national. He comes from China. He’s got a British passport. He’s been in England, for he did his PhD in England. He did his undergrad in England. Sorry, he did his PhD in Scotland, I should say in Harriet Wat, but anyway, you get the point. But having Luke, that’s like another. He’s got an office in Shanghai and and he’s I mean I did a two week tour of some of the big cities in China in December 19 and went in and saw some of their their cutting edge labs and clinical facilities. It was just amazing. Anyway, sorry, I don’t a lot, but yeah, Scandinavia, Australia, Benelux, Switzerland, UK and China. There you go.
Dr James: 1:00:54
I love that. Thank you so much. Okay, Andrew, we are coming up to just shy of an hour and I think that’s been a brilliant Q and A AMA on biotech the future and its power going forward, and. I can certainly feel the energy coming through the screen and I can tell you feel strongly about this and everyone else will know, dr Boothney. So thank you for that. I’ll pin on brilliant description.
Andrew: 1:01:16
Can I just say next time you invite me on, I will remember that actually what you want to do is quite a lot of Q and A and I won’t. I’ll shut up and not give you 30 minutes on the screen. I totally forgot about that. I’m really sorry, it’s fine.
Dr James: 1:01:30
I think the ratio was perfect because we got three brilliant questions in there at the end. So for anybody who’s listening to this wants to get to know Andrew better, andrew has a deluge of media, including Andrew’s books, which, of course, andrew will do a better job of describing them than me, of course, how to own the world and live less and invest less and looking over at my shelf just here. And then, andrew, there is, of course, your Facebook group as well.
Andrew: 1:01:52
Yeah. So I mean basically, if anybody’s interested in asking what we’re up to, the easiest thing to do is go to plainenglishfinancecom or plainenglishfinancecouk and it all tells you what we do, what future plans are, and then if people sign up to our free email, which you could just put your name and then your email address at the bottom of our landing page to scroll down, it usually annoyingly pops up for you if it’s your first visit to our website. But do sign up to that. I only send emails about every. I’ve been pretty bad in recent months like every month or so in the normal world of things, every two to four weeks. I’ve been very busy doing a bunch of this stuff, writing the books and stuff, and then we basically share. We’ve got 12,500 email subscribers, growing at sort of 300 a month. We’ve never advertised and that’s from these sorts of calls when people signing up, and then people will just be aware of everything we’re doing. So if they want to know about our biotech fund next year, about all the other things we’re up to, about my views on crypto which is, as you know, james, long overdue I’m writing a piece called Crypto, crypto, crypto, crypto, crypto there’s no Limit which fans of late 90s house music will remember is referencing a bad dance song from the 90s. But anyway, yeah, go to the website, sign up and everything’s on there. All the information’s on there and that’s the best way to keep in touch with us, basically.
Dr James: 1:03:13
Tremendous stuff.
Andrew: 1:03:14
Awesome.
Dr James: 1:03:15
Cool, seems like a good time to draw a line under proceedings today. Andrew, thank you so much for giving up your time. I know you’re very busy writing your new book as well, which you mentioned earlier, and so much knowledge Dish start on this Q&A, which we will release as a podcast as well, and we’ll also be available on the group for everybody to catch up with.
Andrew: 1:03:31
Tremendous.
Dr James: 1:03:32
Thank you so much for coming on, Andrew. Always good to chat, my friend.
Andrew: 1:03:36
Likewise A real honor to be here. Thank you very much, James. Speak to you very soon.
Dr James: 1:03:40
My absolute pleasure. We will catch up very soon, buddy. Hope you have a good day. See you there. Bye. Thank you for watching their finances, well-being and investing knowledge. Looking forward to seeing you on there.